Courtroom Work Group

COURTROOM WORK GROUP

RUBEN LOPEZ

UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIX

CJA/204 - INTRODUCTION TO CRIMINAL JUSTICE

ON13BCJ05

JUDGE MICHAEL SACHS

JULY 14, 2013

Courtroom Work Group

According to Schmalleger (2011), trials involve many participants, each of whom has a different role to fill. ("Chapter 9: The Courts: Structure and Participants"). Schmalleger goes on to state that a trial is much like a play on a stage, with many participants who each have their own roles. The difference between a play and a trail is that the "play" being carried out in court is based on real life events and the impact of the trail's outcome can be far reaching to the lives of all the participants. These "role players" or participants are who make up the courtroom work group. These participants are divided into two categories; professional and outsiders.

Professional Courtroom Participants

The participants who are considered The NIBRS program was created in order to make a more detailed report of the UCR. Under NIBRS, it expands the list of crimes on the data that is collected. "Despite the more detailed crime data that the NIBRS can provide, nationwide implementation of the program has been slow, for a variety of reasons, including cost considerations." (James, 2008)

Stated on www2.fbi.gov website, in 1973, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) provides a detailed picture of crime incidents, victims, and trends. ("The Nation's Two Crime Measures", 2010). The NCVS allows persons whom have been victimized, but not reported, to give an account for their incidents. The survey focuses on incidents such as rape and sexual assault, robbery, simple and aggravated assault, purse snatching/pick pocketing, burglary, theft, or motor vehicle theft. Besides numbers of annual victimizations, data gathered is also detailed of each victimization incident. To do this, the survey collects data on: month, time, and location; relationship between the victim and the offender; characteristics of the offender; self-protective actions taken by the victim during the incident and results of those actions; consequences of the victimization, including any injury or property loss; whether the crime was reported to the police and the reason for reporting or not reporting; offender use of weapons, drugs, and alcohol. (James, 2008). NCVS can be challenging to researchers for accurate counts due to unofficial reports given of personal experiences.

According to Criminal Justice Interactive, Uniform Crime Reports and National Crime Victimization Survey are the major crime reporting systems. The major Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) are the FBI Uniform Crime Report, state-specific UCR, and the National Crime Victimization Survey. According to data collected from surveys, The National Crime Victimization Survey is more accurate than the FBI's UCR. In 1929, the idea for the FBI's UCR was born; in 1930 the idea was set into action and the FBI UCR was founded material ("FBI - Uniform Crime Reporting"). The FBI's UCR data is received from law enforcement agencies while the National Crime Victimization Survey's data is received from surveying individuals who are interviewed.

One purpose of the crime reporting programs is to present a picture of how many crimes take place. Also, the UCRs are areas where interested individuals or agencies are able to reference to get a picture of how many crimes and also what types of crimes are being committed. By reviewing the UCRs one would be able to find out certain information such as how many crimes are reported as well as how many crimes of certain types are reported.

Crime rates are the rates at which crimes are reported to authorities based on the population size. According from the data collected from the UCR the rate for violent crimes are 403.6 per 100,000 and the rates for property crimes are 2941.9 per 100,000 across the United States in the year of 2010 ("Bureau Of Justice Statistics ", 2010). Similar to crime rates are arrests rates which are the arrests in correlation with the population. The overall percentage for arrests 2010 was about 81%, which is roughly comprised of 10,607,999 reported arrests and 13,122,113 estimated arrests in total (Snyder, 2010). Clearance rates are the rates in which cases are solved, there are more ways to determine if a case has been cleared however this is the main basis for clearance. The three highest clearance rates are murder and non-negligent manslaughter 64%, violent crimes 56.4% and arrests at 42 % ("Criminal Justice Information Service Division", 2010). From reports, arrests to clearances the last statistic that is important to view is the rate at which people are reconvicted of crimes. For recidivism, our group narrowed the search to young males between the ages of 21-25 with any arrest history. From this group the results within one year were re-arrest 43.2%, re-adjusticated 25.8%, reconvicted 20.1%, re-incarcerated 15.6% and re-imprisoned 11.4% ("Bureau Of Justice Statistics ", 2010). It may seem like crime rates and such are going up, but over a 10 year span, the rates of all these areas have improved from where they used to be, meaning as we continue to progress and refine, these percentages will continue to become better in every aspect.

According to the "Criminal Justice