Steven Briggs - Criminology For Dummies

At the arraignment, the defendant hears the charges against him and has the chance to apply for a court-appointed attorney. (Most defendants can’t afford to hire their own lawyers.) Thereafter, the prosecutor and the defense attorney engage in plea negotiations. The vast majority of criminal cases are resolved by negotiations and don’t go to trial. But if the lawyers can’t agree, they do go to trial, where a jury decides whether or not the defendant is guilty. (A defendant can choose to waive his right to a jury and let a judge decide the case.) I discuss the responsibilities of prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges in Chapter 19, and I walk you through all the steps of a typical criminal trial in Chapter 20.

If a defendant is convicted, the judge decides what punishment to impose, although many states have reduced a judge’s discretion by passing laws that require mandatory sentences for certain serious crimes. Low-level offenses often don’t result in any jail time. Rather, a defendant may just receive a fine, some community service, and probation. But serious offenses can result in lengthy sentences.

A person sentenced to do time can go to either a local jail, usually run by a county sheriff, or a prison, run by a state or the federal government. Jail is usually reserved for shorter sentences, and prison often involves sentences of a year or more.

After serving their time, convicted persons are often placed on probation or parole, which means they have to comply with certain conditions imposed by the judge or else be sent back to jail or prison. Here are some typical probation conditions:

Pay all court costs and fines

Complete community service

Attend all ordered treatment, such as drug treatment, anger management, or sex offender treatment

Obey all laws (of course!)

In Chapter 21, I talk about the U.S. corrections system, which is made up of the jails, prisons, and probation services that house convicted defendants and attempt to get them back on a law-abiding track.

What do you do with a kid who commits a crime? In the United States, the system for dealing with juvenile offenders is different from the one dealing with adults. The primary reason for having a separate system is that society recognizes that because kids aren’t yet mature, society shouldn’t hold them fully responsible for their misconduct. Recent science supports the idea that until children’s brains are fully developed (at around the age of 25), they’re more likely to be impulsive and exercise poor judgment. Thus, it’s no wonder that roughly a third of all crimes are committed by people 24 and under.

When a juvenile is arrested, he’s assigned a juvenile counselor who works closely with him to get him back on the law-abiding track, which means identifying problems at home, drug use, or other environmental factors that are causing difficulty.

Most juveniles are given the chance to avoid formal trials and, thus, avoid creating permanent records by handling their cases informally. In other words, they admit their conduct to the juvenile counselor and are given some form of light punishment, such as community service.

For more serious offenses, or for chronic offenders, the system may treat the juvenile formally. This means he has the right to an attorney and a trial before a judge. If he’s found responsible (kids aren’t found “guilty” ), the judge can sentence him to do some time in a local juvenile facility or even a state-run youth correctional facility — the equivalent of an adult state prison. However, recognizing that incarcerating kids is often counterproductive, there’s a strong bias against ordering kids to do time. Usually judges don’t incarcerate kids unless they repeatedly violate their probation.

For very serious offenses, such as murder or rape, all states have laws that allow judges to waive the kid into adult court. In other words, the kid is tried like an adult and, if found guilty, sentenced like an adult. So in most states, a 16-year-old murderer can be sentenced to life in prison. If you’re interested in more details about the juvenile justice system, turn to Chapter 22.

Chapter 2

IN THIS CHAPTER

Figuring out why some acts are illegal and others aren’t

Constructing a criminal law

Watching laws change as society changes

In Oregon, threatening to kill someone in the future is legal, but preventing a pregnant pig from lying down can be illegal. Seriously.

The good news is that if you choose to make a pregnant pig unhappy in Oregon, you’re breaking the law but not committing a crime. What?

For an activity to be criminal, it must carry the possibility of jail time, yet some illegal acts are only punished by a fine. (For example, messing with a pregnant pig won’t send you to jail — what a relief!)

In this chapter, I explain how laws are created and why they change over time. I also show you the essential elements of a criminal law, which are important to know because the way in which criminal laws are written largely determines whether they achieve their goals in the long run.

At the simplest level, you can divide criminal activity into two categories:

Acts that are inherently bad

Acts that aren’t bad but need to be regulated

Check out the following sections for more details on these categories.

When you think of criminal activity, you likely think first of violent acts, such as murder, rape, kidnapping, theft, and assault. Crimes like these are known as mala in se, which is Latin for “wrong by itself.” (A few lawyers, myself included, still like to throw around Latin phrases — it makes us sound smart, right?)

Mala in se crimes are bad acts that people instinctively know are crimes. A general consensus in society says that these acts should be illegal because they’re immoral. This consensus didn’t just spring up overnight — it has been developing as part of English and U.S. common law over the last 600 years.

The term common law refers to laws created by court decisions rather than by legislative bodies.

Today, legislatures in most states have passed laws making mala in se acts criminal, which means that the justice system no longer relies on the common law to convict someone of this type of crime. (However, common law continues to play an important role in appellate decisions — court decisions made during appeals after people are convicted of crimes. See Chapter 19for a detailed discussion of appellate courts.)

Although some acts are clearly wrong, many others aren’t naturally evil, but, nonetheless, they need to be regulated. These acts are known as malum in prohibita, meaning “wrong because prohibited.” Preventing a pregnant pig from lying down, for instance, clearly falls within this category. In fact, a large percentage of criminal laws today are malum in prohibita. Following are some other examples of malum in prohibita crimes: