Who Goes to Jail - of those, 3 are sentenced to over a year...


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Who Goes to Jail? Robertson (1989:127-8) points out there are a variety of stages that an offender must go through before finally going to jail. Of all the crimes committed, most are not even reported to the police. For reported crimes, few lead to arrest. If an arrest occurs, the chance is less than 50 percent that a conviction will result. Finally, it is questionable that the convicted criminal will go to prison. Out of 1000 felonies, only 3 individuals serve more than a year in prison (see the chart below). Example: Who goes to Jail? Out of 1000 felonies committed . .. 540 are reported to the police of those, 65 lead to arrests of those arrests, 36 are convicted of those convicted, 17 are sentenced to custody
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Unformatted text preview: of those, 3 are sentenced to over a year in prison Source: (Kornblum, 1988:219) Selecting the Criminal Selecting the criminal explains why the prison population has the socio-demographic characteristics that it has. The prison population does not look like the population of people who commit crimes. The Political Process The definition of which behavior is considered as criminal begins in political bodies such as city councils, state legislatures, or Congress (see Reiman, 1998). These political bodies pass laws against certain kinds of behavior. Legislative bodies decide penalties for violating the laws they pass....
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This note was uploaded on 11/08/2011 for the course SCIE SYG2000 taught by Professor Bernhardt during the Fall '10 term at Broward College.

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