NCJ Number
86248
Editor(s)
F Elliston,
N Bowie
Date Published
1982
Length
507 pages
Annotation
Philosophers and criminologists address moral issues raised by attempts to define and quantify crime and by the law enforcement and sentencing practices, prisons and inmate treatment, and criminal justice policymaking.
Abstract
Articles urge new ways of looking at crime that emphasize reducing social harm and point out value judgments involved in defining crime by focusing on the behavior of the rulebreaker or using legal authorities' designations of criminality. An article suggests that a combination of legal, polemical, and empirical definitions might lead to a more complete understanding of criminality. One author attempts to specify the characteristics that differentiate white-collar crimes from other crime. Discussions of police ethics concern use of deadly force, responses to hostage takers, and treatment of women and minorities. Papers on ethics in the courts discuss mandatory sentencing, the insanity defense and punishment as a device for controlling the crime rate. Articles on prisons and prisoners examine principles that justify incarceration (retribution, rehabilitation, and incapacitation), the death row experience, and the moral rights of prisoners. Forcing inmates to donate blood or submit to castration as a condition for probation or a reduced sentence is seen as a distortion of justice. Analyses of criminal justice policymaking call for more social science input and identify elements of 'collective irrationality' in the system impeding just punishment as a morally necessary response to crime. The volume also addresses ethics in the teaching of criminology. Chapter notes and an appended bibilography with about 230 references are included; name and subject indexes are provided. For individual papers, see NCJ-86248-70.