NCJ Number
79442
Date Published
1981
Length
0 pages
Annotation
Dr. Norval Morris, Dean of the Law School of the University of Chicago, presents a comprehensive overview of criminal justice philosophical and practical perspectives and relates prevailing mythologies of criminal justice to these insights.
Abstract
Basically interested in reform, the speaker nevertheless notes that criminal justice reforms have often made situations appreciably worse than they were before the reforms were initiated. The three main issues in criminal justice should be crime control, efficiency, and decency. One prevailing myth assumes that bad theory and good practical results are possible in criminal justice. On the contrary, good practice and good theory are basically intertwined. The speaker notes that he has learned not to place confidence in the amount and incidence of crime because the whole criminal justice system probably serves more as a deterrent backdrop than as a forceful influence. Another myth states that more effective prediction techniques will allow influences of crime to be predicted accurately. While this probably will not occur in the near future, more cohort studies should be encouraged. The myth that rehabilitation has marginal effects and should be dropped entirely is mindless. A final myth asserts that determining the cause of crime is not really important because of the inherent complexity in analyzing the meaning of, for instance, a 10 to 1 black/white prison ratio. Liberals will use the ratio to prove racial discrimination; conservatives will prove blacks commit more crime. Rejecting both interpretations leads one to perceive that the basic problems of housing, employment-unemployment, and other issues have not really been analyzed, although these logically are related to crime. Questions and answers conclude the discussion.