Criminal Justice Today : An Introductory Text for the 21st Century

by Schmalleger, Frank J.

• ISBN13: 9780132739818
• ISBN10: 013273981X
• Edition: 12th
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-02-23
• Publisher: Prentice Hall

Summary

Criminal Justice Today, 12/e, continues to lead as the gold-standard for criminal justice texts. Best-selling, student- and instructor-preferred, and time-tested-Schmalleger is the most current and popular text in the market. The text guides criminal justice students in the struggle to find a satisfying balance between freedom and security, and focuses on the crime picture in America and on the three traditional elements of the criminal justice system: police, courts, and corrections.

Author Biography

Frank Schmalleger, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. He holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame and Ohio State University, having earned both a master’s (1970) and a doctorate in sociology (1974) from Ohio State University with a special emphasis in criminology. From 1976 to 1994, he taught criminology and criminal justice courses at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. For the last 16 of those years, he chaired the university’s Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice. The university named him Distinguished Professor in 1991.

 

Schmalleger is also the Director of the Justice Research Association, a private consulting firm and think tank focusing on issues of crime and justice. The Justice Research Association (JRA) serves the needs of the nation’s civil and criminal justice planners and administrators through workshops, conferences, and grant-writing and program-evaluation support. JRA also sponsors the Criminal Justice Distance Learning Consortium, which resides on the Web at http://www.cjdlc.org.

 

Schmalleger has taught in the online graduate program of the New School for Social Research, helping to build the world’s first electronic classrooms in support of distance learning through computer telecommunications. As an adjunct professor with Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri, Schmalleger helped develop the university’s graduate program in security administration and loss prevention. He taught courses in that curriculum for more than a decade. An avid Web user and Website builder, Schmalleger is also the creator of a number of award-winning World Wide Web sites, including one that supports this textbook (http://www.cjtoday.com).

 

Frank Schmalleger is the author of numerous articles and more than 30 books, including the widely used Criminal Justice: A Brief Introduction (Pearson, 2012), Criminology Today (Pearson, 2012), and Criminal Law Today (Pearson, 2010).

 

Schmalleger is also founding editor of the journal Criminal Justice Studies. He has served as editor for the Prentice Hall series Criminal Justice in the Twenty-First Century and as imprint adviser for Greenwood Publishing Group’s criminal justice reference series.

 

Schmalleger’s philosophy of both teaching and writing can be summed up in these words: “In order to communicate knowledge we must first catch, then hold, a person’s interest—be it student, colleague, or policymaker. Our writing, our speaking, and our teaching must be relevant to the problems facing people today, and they must in some way help solve those problems.” Visit the author’s website at http://www.schmalleger.com.

Table of Contents

Part 1   CRIME IN AMERICA

Chapter 1        What Is Criminal Justice?

Chapter 2        The Crime Picture

Chapter 3        The Search for Causes

Chapter 4        Criminal Law

 

Part 2   POLICING

Chapter 5        Policing: History and Structure

Chapter 6        Policing: Purpose and Organization

Chapter 7        Policing: Legal Aspects

Chapter 8        Policing: Issues and Challenges 

 

Part 3   ADJUDICATION

Chapter 9        The Courts: Structure and Participants

Chapter 10      Pretrial Activities and the Criminal Trial

Chapter 11      Sentencing

 

Part 4   CORRECTIONS

Chapter 12      Probation, Parole, and Community Corrections

Chapter 13      Prisons and Jails

Chapter 14      Prison Life

 

Part 5   SPECIAL ISSUES

Chapter 15      Juvenile Justice

Chapter 16      Drugs and Crime

Chapter 17      Terrorism and Multinational Criminal Justice

Chapter 18      The Future of Criminal Justice