Tagged: criminal justice system
Chronic conditions are health conditions that have lasted or are expected to last twelve or more months and result in functional limitations and/or the need for continuous medical care (Hwang et al. 2001). In a recent study using data from the 2005 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, Paez, Zhao, and Hwang (2009) found that 43.8 percent of non-institutionalized civilians in the U.S. live with one or more chronic conditions. Among adults, it was found that hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes are the...
In May of 1985, 15-year-old Paula Cooper and three of her friends decided to steal some money. After drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, the group of teenage girls went to the home of Ruth Pelke in Gary, Indiana. At 78, Pelke was no match for the teens who gained entrance to the house after proclaiming their interest in receiving Bible lessons. Pelke was attacked and died after Cooper hit her with a vase, cut her legs and arms, and then...
A one-time mogul of cable television, John Rigas found himself sentenced to 12 years in federal prison following his convictions for bank fraud and securities fraud. His company, Adelphia Communications Corporation, had been the fifth largest cable company in the U.S. before it filed for bankruptcy in 2002 following allegations of internal corruption. The collapse of Adelphia and the subsequent conviction of its founder represented a monumental fall from grace. Rigas had started Adelphia in 1952 while he was still...
In a post from last July, I wrote about Patricia Spottedcrow. In January of 2010, when she was 24-years-old, Spottedcrow was arrested for selling $31 worth of marijuana to a police informant at her residence in Kingfisher County, Oklahoma. Although she had no prior criminal record and the amount of marijuana sold was small, Spottedcrow was sentenced to 12 years in prison and assessed approximately $2,740 in fines. Following public outcry, the governor approved the Pardon and Parole Board’s recommendation...
Over the past 400 years, the Western criminal justice system (CJS) has greatly evolved. Like virtually all social institutions, its evolution has been highly impacted by the wider social environment. Along with the arrival of new technologies, philosophies, and aspirations, the Western CJS has altered its policies and practices. One very important change that has taken place over the past few centuries has been the birth of the modern prison system. Strongly inspired by factors related to capitalism, the prison...
As explained by Walker (2013), modern restorative justice (RJ) began in the 1970s with the revitalization of the idea that victims and offenders need to come together and talk about what happened in an effort to achieve peace and (hopefully) restoration. While such a thought seems somewhat revolutionary in our day of overly punitive justice, RJ was the primary method used to handle offenses in pre-modern times. In fact, it was not until the Norman Conquest in 1066 that RJ...
On August 7th, 2012, the state of Texas executed 54-year-old Marvin Wilson. Wilson was sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering police informant Jerry Williams, 21, in 1992 in Beaumont, TX. The murder occurred several days after Wilson had been arrested for possession of cocaine. Free on bond and believing that Williams had told police about the drugs, Wilson and another man beat Williams outside of a convenience store before abducting and shooting him at close range. Williams’ body...
Starting in the 1950s, the United States began to engage in the deinstitutionalization of state mental institutions. This involved removing severely mentally ill patients from public psychiatric hospitals, diverting new mentally ill patients away from such hospitals, and implementing community-based services. Originally triggered by the introduction of the first effective antipsychotic medication, Chlorpromazine (AKA Thorazine), in 1955 and helped along by the enactment of federal Medicaid and Medicare in 1965, deinstitutionalization has brought about a huge reduction in the number...
by paulabowles For criminologists and sociologists, prison has for many decades provided a fertile environment for research. In recent decades, the focus has been on overcrowding, together with attempts to identify the composition of the prison population. As at 25 September 2009, Her Majesty’s Prisons contain some 84,382 incarcerated men and women. On the same date the BBC reported that as many as 8,500 of these prisoners are former veterans of the British army, navy and air force. Moreover, this...
by paulabowles The charity Barnardo’s has recently highlighted the issue of incarcerated young offenders, insisting that at any given time Britain has 400+ children aged between 12 and 14 locked up, a situation described by The Independent as ‘inhumane and, on all the evidence, counter-productive.’ In addition, Barnardo’s allege that at least 160 young people were wrongly imprisoned in 2007. They claim that this ‘tragedy’ is occurring because of a misinterpretation of the law. In essence ‘[t]he law specifically states...
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