The Criminal Justice Process

 1.  Legislative Phase -- 

2.  Crime Scene phase --

3.  Pretrial phase -- 

4.  Trial Phase -- 

5.  Sentencing hearing -- 

6.  Sentence served --  

Four entities that have power over the sentencing process:   Legislator, Judges, Governor, and Prosecutor

Two parts of Trial:

The trial phase

The sentencing phase

Sanction

Factors that force us to “economize” when sentencing

Objectives of the sentencing process (2):

Entities that have power over sentencing (4):

Felony crimes

Misdemeanor crimes

Determinate sentence        (Punishment)

Indeterminate sentence (Rehabilitate)

Plea bargain agreement

Quid Pro Quo between offender and prosecutor

The Correctional Filter 2020: Approximately 3,621,299 arrests

(1,050,177) violent-crime arrests      29% 

(2,571,122) property-crime arrests   71%

Scaling to 100,000 arrests

Arrests                                                               Running Balance

     100,000   Violent and property-crime arrests              100,000

        19,000   juveniles                                                   19%      81,000 

29,000   dismissed flimsy evidence                    29%  52,000 

14,000   plead guilty misdemeanor probation 14%  38,000

        33,000   plead guilty felony probation            33%     5,000

          2,000   Found Innocent - released                       2%         3,000 

          3,000   Found guilty – prison                             3%       -0-

Only 108,638 go to prison out of 3.6 million = 3% of arrestees get prison sentences