ABSTRACT

The criminal justice system is designed to detect, apprehend, punish, and rehabilitate criminal offenders. Precisely how effective the criminal justice system is at achieving these goals is not entirely known. The current study sought to add to this gap in the knowledge base by examining the connection between self-reported crime and delinquency and the probability of being arrested, convicted, sentenced to probation, and incarcerated. To do so, male and female respondents drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) were analyzed. The results revealed that respondents who were relatively more involved in acts of nonviolent crime and delinquency, as well as violent crime and delinquency, were significantly more likely to be processed through the criminal justice than were those who were less involved in such behaviors. These findings indicate that being processed through the criminal justice system is a function of criminal involvement. We conclude by calling for additional research to determine whether the effectiveness of the criminal justice system could be improved.

摘要

刑事司法系统旨在侦查、逮捕、惩罚和改造犯罪者。刑事司法系统在实现这些目标方面究竟有多有效尚不完全清楚。目前的研究试图通过检查自我报告的犯罪和犯罪与被捕、定罪、缓刑和监禁的可能性之间的联系来填补知识库中的这一空白。为此，对来自全国青少年到成人健康纵向研究（Add Health）的男性和女性受访者进行了分析。结果显示，相对更多地参与非暴力犯罪和违法行为以及暴力犯罪和违法行为的受访者，与那些较少参与此类行为的人相比，他们更有可能通过刑事司法处理。这些调查结果表明，通过刑事司法系统进行处理是犯罪参与的一项功能。最后，我们呼吁进行更多研究，以确定是否可以提高刑事司法系统的有效性。