Perspectives on Crime and Justice: 1998-1999 Lecture Series, Volume III

• NCJ Number: 178244
• Author(s): Mark A.R. Kleiman; Felton Earls; Sissela Bok; James B. Jacobs
• Date Published: November 1999
• Length: 99 pages
• Agencies: NIJ
• Publication Type: Conference Material

Annotation

Four lectures pertinent to perspectives on crime and justice address effective deterrence, the importance of the influence of men and fathers in preventing juvenile delinquency, the influence of the media on public perceptions of violence, and the dilemmas of controlling the corruption of public officials.

Abstract

The first lecture develops seven principles of crime control: First, ensure the certainty and swiftness of being arrested and convicted for a crime before focusing on punishment severity; second, communicate threats; third, impose some significant punishment for each conviction; fourth, add technology, authority, and resources to make community corrections effective punishment; fifth, target zero tolerance for specific public-order offenses keyed to particular neighborhoods; sixth, target zero tolerance for any offending that earns the offenders special attention; and seventh, make offenders compete to avoid enforcement attention. The second lecture characterizes the status of the American father in relation to the family and the larger society; places fatherhood in a wider context of manhood; and discusses both these issues as they relate to the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, a large-scale interdisciplinary study of youth development in an urban community. The third lecture considers how public perspectives on violent crime can skew and vitiate the administration and exercise of justice, as well as the media's role in influencing such perspectives. The fourth lecture identifies and discusses some of the dilemmas of crime controllers in attempting to suppress official corruption, including the absence of measures of corruption, an unclear definition of corruption, the development of anticorruption policy without sufficient information, and the costs of corruption controls. Notes and questions and answers accompany each lecture.