How did you come to the decision to write this book?

This project began with my students! After teaching criminal justice for more than twenty years using other textbooks, I noticed that after completing the reading assignments and paying attention in lecture, students still had many questions about the criminal justice system—questions that the textbooks were not answering. They were most interested when I talked about the details of the criminal justice system as it applied to their own lives. For example, most pre-law majors in my classes had no idea that they would be required to take a bar examination after graduating from law school.

Students were curious about a lot of things: Do the police and prosecutor ever talk to each other when deciding whether to charge a person with a crime? Why does a convicted person have to cooperate with his or her pre-sentence investigator, and why can’t they continue to claim the right of self-incrimination? Does my bachelor’s degree qualify me for the position of detective?

So, I began noticing that students were more interested in criminal justice when they could understand why the system works the way it does, not just how it works. Also, students were curious about career opportunities in the criminal justice system and were familiar only with the most well-known jobs—police officer, FBI agent, correctional officer, judge, or lawyer. Talking with students, I came to realize that their lack of knowledge came from a lack of appreciation of the complexity and number of criminal justice agencies and their operations. Students did not appreciate the differences in local, state, and federal criminal justice systems nor how the limited jurisdiction of the various agencies affects both employment in the system and interagency cooperation.

One of the largest and most influential areas of governmental responsibility and function—criminal justice—is not taught in high school. Many college freshmen have a good foundation in English, mathematics, history, and sciences. However, most of what these students know about the criminal justice system they obtained from the media, television or the movies. Some students think that the FBI is in charge of local and state police departments and that the CIA is a criminal justice agency. Few students know anything about the Native American Tribal police or the military criminal justice system.

Other introductory criminal justice textbooks seem to have overlooked such basic information. In my own criminal justice courses, I had grown tired of supplementing the textbook, and I thought other instructors might be in the same boat. I had built up a critical mass of supplementary materials and lecture notes and these became the start of Criminal Justice.

Describe what makes your introductory chapter unique.

Chapter 1 opens with a discussion of one of the central themes of this book—how the criminal justice system is shaped by social needs, values, and philosophy. After September 11th, it was clear that the significant social and political changes occurring in society would impact the criminal justice system.

Chapter 1 also introduces students to the criminal justice system in the context of how we balance law and order versus freedom and rights. One of the themes of Chapter 1 is how we try to construct a criminal justice system that allows us to feel safe as we go about our everyday business—safe both from harm and attack and from violation by the criminal justice system and government itself.

This is one of the most important questions in our society. It defines our idea of democracy and freedom. It gives flesh to our constitutional rights. Chapter 1 introduces the student to a problem rather than to a nice packaged solution, and the following chapters challenge the student to understand and appreciate why the American criminal justice system is organized the way it is and why it may seem to be "inefficient." It introduces them to the idea that the inefficiency of our criminal justice system is purposeful and serves as a check and balance against the abuse of power.

What impact did the events of September 11, 2001 have upon the criminal justice system, and how does your textbook reflect this impact?

I painstakingly kept up with all the news relating to September 11th so that I could present material as completely and accurately as possible. For example, the issue of the trial of the captured Taliban fighters in Afghanistan by military tribunals was rewritten several times as news releases and presidential executive orders provided new information on this topic. Even as this textbook went to press, legislation and court decisions were pending that would have potentially significant impacts on the criminal justice system. Chapter 1 was completely rewritten to focus on the challenges of 9/11 to the American criminal justice system. In addition, I wrote an entirely new section on the reorganization of the FBI that was incorporated at press time.

How is the textbook organized?

Criminal Justice retains a traditional organization with five major sections–introduction to crime causation and law, police, courts, corrections, and contemporary issues. Using the work of the various Presidential Commissions since the 1960s and 1970s, the textbook assumes that the criminal justice system encompasses a process that can be defined and delimited. The opening chapters provide the student with an overview of this process and a history and grounding in crime causation and criminal law. Only major criminological theories are briefly identified and discussed, with a focus on understanding how both law and theories of crime change to reflect changes in society and science.

The next three sections introduce the three major components in the criminal justice system: police, courts, and corrections. Care is taken to explain how a defendant moves from one component of the criminal justice system to the next from arrest to trial to a correctional placement. Often, this basic information is lacking in other books.

The last section of the book focuses on a few contemporary issues selected for their potential impact upon the future. These include fear of violent victimization, especially school violence and youthful offender violence; society’s use of the criminal justice system to respond to illegal drug use and abuse; physical and mental health challenges the offenders face, such as HIV-AIDS, communicable diseases, and mental illness; and how technology will impact all aspects of the criminal justice system and the process and outcome of justice.

Criminal Justice is designed to be used in the semester system but is flexible enough to work well in the quarter system or non-traditional delivery systems as well. I have tried to cover what I think are the essential topics necessary to introduce the student to the criminal justice system but at the same time to avoid the presumption that after reading this book there is nothing else left to learn about in the criminal justice system. This book will fit well as an introductory text without overlapping other classes in the curriculum so that students will not feel they are repeating information, but rather are gaining new knowledge and a broader perspective on criminal justice and its role in American government.

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