Voices from Criminal Justice Insider Perspectives, Outsider Experiences

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Thinking and Reflecting on Criminal Justice Issues

Heith Copes and Mark Pogrebin

1. Reinventing the Matron: The Continued Importance of Gendered Images and Division of Labor in Modern Policing

Don L. Kurtz, Travis Linnemann and L. Susan Williams

Kurtz, Linnemann, and Williams examine the historical role of the police matron and how the legacy continues to define women’s status in the current police and correctional workforce.

2. A Qualitative Assessment of Stress Perceptions among Members of Homicide Unit

Dean A. Dabney, Heith Copes, Richard Tewksbury and Shila R. Hawk-Tourtelot

Dabney and his co-authors conducted an ethnographic study of homicide investigations in a large urban police department and focused on those occupational factors that cause job related stress.

3. Racialized Policing: Officers’ Voices on Policing Latino and African American Neighborhoods

Vera Sanchez, Claudio & Dennis Rosenbaum

Vera Sanchez and Rosenbaum examine how police officers socially construct race within Latino and African American neighborhoods

4. Vice Isn’t Nice: A Look at the Effects of Working Undercover

Mark R. Pogrebin and Eric Poole

Pogrebin and Poole explore the consequences of working undercover for police officers. They show that working undercover has a significant impact on how police interact with informants, criminals, other officers, and their families.

5. Reflections of African American Women on their Careers in Urban Policing

Pogrebin, Chatman, and Dodge analyze the social-organizational relationships and interactions that relegate African-American police women as outsiders within their own police department.

1. Procedural Justice and Order Maintenance Policing

Jacinta Gau and Rod Brunson

Gau and Brunson explore the tension between procedural justice and order maintenance policing as it affects the self-reported experiences with police by young inner-city minority youth.

2. Urban Youth Encounters with Legitimately Oppressive Gang Enforcement

Robert Duran

Duran concentrates on the relationship between police and gangs in two cities where suspected gang members perceive being stopped by police as racial and ethnic profiling.

3. Sense-making and secondary victimization

Paul Stretesky, Tara O’Connor Shelley, Michael J. Hogan, and N. Prabha Unnithan

Stretesky, Shelley, Hogan, and Unnithan examine the perceptions of the families of cold-case homicide victims to determine their interactions and relationship with law enforcement detectives assigned to their case.

4. Victims’ Voices: Domestic Assault Victims’ Perceptions of Police Demeanor

Joyce Stephens and Peter G. Sinden

Stephens and Sinden present the voices of domestic assault victims by eliciting their perspectives about and experiences with the mandatory arrest policy and police demeanor.

5. We Trust You, But Not That Much: Examining Police-Black Clergy Partnerships to Reduce Youth Violence

Brunson and colleagues offer an understanding of the role police and black clergy play in formulation partnership in an attempt to improve community based crime prevention.

1. Representing the Underdog: The Righteous Development of Death Penalty Defense Attorneys

Sarah Goodrum, Mark Pogrebin, and Matthew W. Greife

Goodrum, Pogrebin and Greife explore the development and motivations of death penalty defense lawyers and the life experiences that lead them to this professional calling.

2. How can you Prosecute those People?

Butler, a former federal prosecutor discusses the debate about the ethics of defense work with that of prosecutor’s work and examines the problematic aspects of the prosecution role.

In this article, Rowen focuses on new types of plea-bargaining models as compared to the more traditional models in the past.

DioGuardi examines experienced capital judicial participants (defense lawyers, prosecutors and judges) thoughts concerning the existence and use of the death penalty.

In this article, Rosecrance argues that probation pre-sentence reports emphasize some offender characteristics more than others. He explains how a stereotyping process is used by officers who write these reports and how current offense and prior criminal history determine a pre-scripted sentencing recommendation.

1. Preparing to Testify: Rape Survivors Negotiating the Criminal Justice Process

Amanda Konradi

Konradi focuses on how victims of sexual assault prepare themselves for court appearances. She also discusses survivors’ views of the criminal justice process.

2. Expecting an Ally and Getting a Prosecutor

Sarah Goodrum

Goodrum explores, through an interactionist perspective, the families of homicide victims’ experiences with prosecutors and the criminal court system.

3. Female Recidivists Speak about their Experience in Drug Courts while Engaging in Appreciative Inquiry

Michael Fischer, Brenda Geiger, and Mary Ellen Hughes

Fischer, Geiger, and Hughes study woman drug-court program participants’ perceptions and evaluations of their current and past experiences while in the program.

4. Jurors’ Views of Civil Lawyers: Implications for Courtroom Communication

Valerie P. Hans and Krista Sweigert

Hans and Sweigert’s focus on the decision-making process of jurors serving on civil court trials and their opinions of trial lawyers’ courtroom behavior and communication skills.

5. Engaging with Criminal Prosecution: The Victim’s Perspective

These authors examine the barriers women who are victims of intimate partner violence face when participating with the prosecution as the most important witness in the court in their case.

1. Accounts of Prison Work

Stan Stojkovic

In his field study of prison correctional officers and their working environments, Stojkovic explores the accounts provided by officers when discussing their relations with prisoners, administrators and their officer peers.

2. Sense-making in Prison: Inmate Identity as a Working Understanding

John Riley

Riley’s study observes the ways correctional officers in a maximum security prison formulate, communicate, and justify a shared understanding of the identity of inmates under their supervision.

3. Gender and Occupational Culture Conflict: A Study of Women Jail Officers

Eric Poole and Mark R. Pogrebin

Poole and Pogrebin offer a female perspective of sheriffs’ deputy corrections work in county jails. They discuss the various work-related issues that woman jailers face in their occupational role in a male dominated organization.

4. Criers, Liars, and Manipulators: Probation Officers’ Views of Girls

Emily Gaarder, Nancy Rodriguez & Marjorie S. Zatz

In this study, the authors analyze the perceptions on female juveniles held by professionals involved in the juvenile court decision-making process.

5. Construction of Meaning During Training for Probation and Parole

Crank examines the ideological changes in the training environment of probation and parole officers when a more punitive model of treatment for offenders was instituted in a peace officer training program in one state.

1. Denial of Parole: An Inmate Perspective

Mary West-Smith, Mark R. Pogrebin and Eric D. Poole

West-Smith, Pogrebin, and Poole examine parole decision-making from the point of view of those inmates who have been denied an early release by the parole board.

2. How Registered Sex Offenders View Registries

Richard Tewksbury

Tewksbury assess the perceptions of sex offender registrants regarding the value of having these registries as a method of deterring future sex offense and maintaining public safety.

3. Keeping Families Together: The Importance of Maintaining Mother-Child Contact for Incarcerated Women

Zoann K. Snyder

Snyder’s research examines incarcerated mothers’ attempts at maintaining relationships with their children through a visitation program.

4. Employment Isn’t Enough: Financial Obstacles Experienced by Ex-Prisoners During the Reentry Process

Mark R. Pogrebin, Mary West-Smith, Alexandra Walker, and N. Prabha Unnithan

Once released to the community ex-prisoners face monetary debts incurred prior to their incarceration together with their mandated fees required by parole, which place them in an untenable financial situation.

　

5. Navigating the Job Search after Incarceration: The Experiences of Work-Release Participants

Cantora examines women who are residing in a community corrections facility and focused her observation on the difficulties they experience during their job search.

Biography

Mark Pogrebin, Heith Copes

What better way to introduce today's students and tomorrow's criminal justice practitioners to the world of criminal justice administration than through a set of well-constructed ethnographic reports detailing the lived experiences of the participants in the process? This is a welcome addition to the field. — Malcom M. Feeley, Professor of Jurisprudence and Sociology, University of California at Berkeley

Voices represents a robust effort to understand the lived experience of criminal justice system participants. The ethnographic selections are engaging, readable, and expose students to the broad array of players. The book's unique insider/outsider perspective provides probing and incisive accounts of key issues facing the field today. — Bruce Jacobs, Professor of Criminology, University of Texas, Dallas

The book brings various practitioners in the criminal justice system to life through ethnographic research. The collection puts a human face on the system and will draw students to the subject. It will also remind academics why they entered the field. — Ralph Weisheit, Distinguished Professor of Criminology, Illinois State University