Minority representation among local police
officers increased from 14.6 percent in 1987
to 23.6 percent in 2003. Women’s represen-
tation increased from 9 percent in 1990 to
11.6 percent in 2005 (National Center for
Women and Policing, 2002; U.S. Department
of Justice, 2005).Courts
The court system is an important arena of the
criminal justice system. In criminal court, the
district attorney’s office prosecutes those
arrested by the police for criminal offenses;
the accused are defended in adversarial
proceedings by a defense attorney. Thus,
criminal proceedings pit the government (its
agents, the police, lawyers, and the like)
against a defendant, unlike civil courts in
which the court is an arbiter of arguments
between two individuals or groups. While the
criminal courtroom drama is a staple of American movies and television, over 90 per-
cent of criminal cases never go to trial. Instead, most are resolved by plea bargaining
or pleading guilty to a lesser crime.
In the early 1990s, mandatory sentencing rules were enacted across the United
States. These laws applied to about 64,000 defendants a year and required certain sen-
tences for certain crimes, allowing no room for discretion. The laws were supposed to
be tough on crime and eliminate bias in prosecutions and sentencing. However, the main
result has been an explosion in the prison population. Bias remains in both arrests and
prosecutions. Only under mandatory sentencing judges couldn’t take circumstances—
which could help the poor, minorities, mentally unstable, the sick or addicted—into
account. In early 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that federal judges no longer must
abide by the guidelines, saying they violated a defendant’s right to a fair trial.Punishment and Corrections
Today the United States has 2.2 million people in jail or prison, 7.1 per 1,000 peo-
ple, many more than any country in the world (Figure 6.6). Russia is in second place,
with 5.8. The United States has four times more prisoners than the world average,
four to seven times more than other Western nations such as France, Germany, Italy,
and the United Kingdom, and up to 32 times more than nations with the lowest rates,
Nepal, Nigeria, and India (National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 2006). We
imprison three times more people per capita than Iran, five times more than Tanza-
nia, and seven times more than Germany. We also imprison at least three times more
women than any other nation in the world (Hartney, 2006). And it’s not because the
United States has higher crime rates; with the single exception of incarceration rates
in Russia for robbery, we lock up more people per incident than any other country in
the world (National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 2006).
When we add the 4.8 million people on probation or parole, we come up with an
amazing statistic: 3.2 percent of the adult American population is currently immersed
somewhere in the criminal justice system. And the numbers are increasing dramatically
(Figure 6.7). Since 1995, the number of people in jail has increased by an average of194 CHAPTER 6DEVIANCE AND CRIMESource:©The New Yorker Collection 2000. David Sipress from cartoonbank.com. All Rights
Reserved. Reprinted by permission.