Official statistics provide us with some of our most important insights into crime and the criminal justice system. Sociologists, however, have generally not examined the institutions which produce these statistics. "Making Crime Count" addresses this lacuna through a study of the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS), which is Canada's sole source for national criminal justice statistics. To do so it employs a methodological combination of focused interviews, participant observation and documentary analysis. The availability of criminal justice statistics has fostered a distinctive approach to the governance of crime and criminal justice. A form of 'actuarial justice' has emerged whereby crime is increasingly understood as a statistical probability rather than a moral failing. At the same time, criminal justice statistics render criminal justice organizations amenable to governmental strategies that aim to manage the system. To examine the means by which the Centre has been able to produce its statistics, I draw from contemporary work in the sociology of science which emphasizes the role of complex knowledge networks in the production of scientific facts. Within the Centre's 'knowledge network' assorted elements and institutions must be aligned. We document the ways in which the CCJS is in continual negotiation with the police in order to secure data for the 'uniform crime report' survey. The Centre's controversial 1990 proposal to collect race/crime data is also explored as an example of the power and politics of official classifications. Although the Centre must maintain the appearance of being apolitical, they are occasionally engaged in micro- political negotiations in order to produce their statistics. We document the role that different jurisdictions play in shaping the Centre's knowledge production regime. Once their statistics are collected, there can be negotiations over how they should be publicized. The style of presentation employed by the CCJS is ultimately influenced by organizational constraints, audience considerations and epistemic concerns. The overall results of this research underline the importance for authors writing on 'governmentality' to consider the means through which governmental knowledge is produced. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (DTech. degree in Policing)--Tshwane University of Technology, 2011. / A qualitative research design, using the research technique of interviews with indirect observation, was adopted for this study. A total of twenty (20) crime prevention practitioners in the criminal justice structures of Nigeria and South Africa were interviewed for the purpose of data gathering. The interview questions were standardised but open-ended. The main findings are the following: At present, none of the criminal justice institutions in Nigeria and South Africa can prevent crime. Long term crime prevention is presently not possible in Nigeria and South Africa as the root causes of crime in the two countries lie outside the control of the criminal justice systems. The root causes of crime in the two countries were identified as being, among others, dysfunctional family settings, a history of violence, accessibility and availability of criminological commodities, real need and poverty, inequality among the population groups, greed on the part of those that have, and poor leadership. The main recommendation is as follows: The governments of Nigeria and South Africa need to focus their attention on the root causes of crime and not only on the criminal justice institutions.

published_or_final_version / Criminology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Social Sciences

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-103). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

During this study, an attempt was made to explore the opinions and attitudes of members of the South African Police Service (SAPS) towards issues of diversity before, immediately after and three months after participating in diversity training workshops presented by the SAPS Training Division during 1997 in Port Elizabeth. The aim of this thesis was not to assess the diversity training itself, but to discover if the training, as currently presented, in any way influenced the attitudes of participants. In order to meet this goal, literature and empirical studies were conducted. The literature study sets the theoretical foundation pertaining to the history of the SAPS and the attitudes and prejudices of and diversity among SAPS members. During the empirical research phase, a non-probability purposive sampling procedure was adopted. Four of a range of diversity workshops presented by the Training Division of the SAPS during 1997 were selected for the purpose of this study. An internal SAPS process was used to nominate members to attend the workshops. The researcher requested the participants in each of the four workshops to complete a self-administered questionnaire before as well as after the workshop concerned. Immediately after each of the four workshops, a short interview was held with each attendee. To explore the stability of any change evident from responses on the questionnaires completed after the workshops, the attendees were again requested to complete the same questionnaire three months later. To increase the validity of any conclusion that attitudinal change was related to the workshop, a control group was used. This study has revealed that a cross-spectrum of SAPS members of both sexes and diverse racial backgrounds believe that various forms of discrimination exist within the SAPS. It confirmed that the diversity training presented by the SAPS Training Division is a useful instrument to heighten members' awareness of the different norms and customs of other cultural/ethnic groups and of the necessity that the SAPS should be constituted of a cross-spectrum of racial groups reflecting the South African society. Finally, based on the research findings, recommendations were made involving management and its supportive services and diversity training.

Texas leads the nation in the number of executions carried out since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. Race was a key factor in the 1972 moratorium, and though the Supreme Court allowed for its return under new statutes, race continues to plague the capital punishment legal system. In this study, I examine the influence of race on case clearances in capital and non-capital homicides in Texas, using the extra-legal and non-discretionary theories from existing clearance literature. I find that race influences the probability of cases being cleared in non-capital cases but has no statistically significant effect in clearing capital cases.

There is growing demand for reforms to the U.S. criminal justice system. Nevertheless, there are significant questions and relatively few answers. This dissertation studies multiple U.S. criminal justice system issues using detailed administrative data from Cook County, Illinois: Does policing the police increase crime? Does the composition of a police officer's academy cohort influence their future outcomes? Is pretrial electronic monitoring an attractive alternative to pretrial release and detention? To answer these questions, I use administrative data from Chicago and Cook County, Illinois, on the Chicago Police Department, Cook County Jail, and Circuit Court of Cook County, and a range of econometric methods. In Chapter 1, I study the effect of pretrial electronic monitoring (EM) as an alternative to pretrial release and pretrial detention (jail) in Cook County, Illinois. EM often involves a defendant wearing an electronic ankle bracelet that tracks their movement and aims to deter pretrial misconduct. Using the quasi-random assignment of bond court judges, I estimate the effect of EM versus release and EM versus detention on pretrial misconduct, case outcomes, and future recidivism. I develop a novel method for the semiparametric estimation of marginal treatment effects in ordered choice environments, with which I construct relevant treatment effects. Relative to release, EM increases new cases pretrial due to bond violations while reducing new cases for low-level crimes and failures to appear in court. Relative to detention, EM increases low-level pretrial misconduct but improves defendant case outcomes and reduces cost-weighted future recidivism. Finally, I bound EM's pretrial crime reduction effect. I find that EM is likely an adequate substitute for pretrial detention. However, it is unclear that EM prevents enough high-cost crime to justify its use relative to release, particularly for defendants who are more likely to be released. Chapter 3, joint with Bocar Ba, studies and differentiates between the effects of oversight and outrage on policing. Previous studies estimating the impact of police oversight on crime rely on major policing scandals as shocks to examine the impact of oversight on crime. We argue that the simultaneous effect of public outrage on officer behavior and crime contaminates these results, and we provide a conceptual framework that distinguishes between oversight and outrage. We identify two events relating to unexpected court rulings in Chicago that increased oversight and caused a decline in reported misconduct but had virtually no public reaction. Despite the decrease in reported misconduct, crime and officer activity were unaffected. We contrast this with a major policing scandal, after which we find both a rise in crime rates without an equivalent increase in arrests and a decline in officer stops and use of force. Our results suggest that police oversight can reduce misconduct without increasing crime.