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Crime Prevention Law Enforcement and Public Opinions About Crime - City, County, And State Law Enforcement, Federal Law Enforcement, Crime Prevention, The Fear Of Crime - THE DEATH PENALTY
percent found system perpetrators
After a crime has been committed, the justice system of the United States goes into action. The system has three major components that work together:
- Law enforcement agencies gather evidence and capture suspected perpetrators.
- The judicial system tries perpetrators in a court of law and, if they are found guilty, sentences them to a period of incarceration or some other form of punishment, restitution, and/or treatment.
- Correction agencies house convicted criminals in prisons, jails, treatment centers, or other places of confinement.
THE DEATH PENALTY
A Gallup Poll found that although a majority of Americans still favored the death penalty in 2001, the percentage of those supporting the death penalty was 67 percent, down from a high of 75 percent in 1997. In 2003 a Gallup Poll found that 60 percent believed the death penalty was applied fairly, with 65 percent of whites
stating this view as compared to 26 percent of blacks. (See Table 9.15.)
Additional Topics
In 2002 the United States had 13,981 city, county, and state police agencies and nine major federal law enforcement agencies. As of October 31, 2002, there were 957,502 full-time law enforcement employees. Of the total, 665,555 were sworn police officers and civilian employees accounted for 291,947. Almost 90 percent of police
officers were male, while 62.1 percent of civilian employees were femal…
According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) survey, in June of 2002 federal agencies employed more than 93,000 full-time officers authorized to make arrests and carry guns. This figure reflects an almost 6 percent increase from June of 2000. Of the major federal employers in 2002, the Immigration and Naturalization
Service (INS) employed the most officers (19,407), almost half of whom were B…
Crime prevention programs implemented by state and local agencies receive over $3.2 billion in U.S. Department of Justice grant funds each year. In 1996 the United States Congress issued a mandate to the Attorney General to authorize an evaluation of the effectiveness of these programs. The University of Maryland's Department
of Criminology and Criminal Justice was selected to conduct the e…
The fear of becoming a victim of crime can undermine community relationships. People may withdraw physically and emotionally, losing contact with their neighbors and weakening the social fabric of their lives and communities. In a 2003 Gallup Poll, 2 percent of those polled named crime and violence as the most important
problem facing the country. This percentage was down significantly from 37 per…
Each year the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan conducts the Monitoring the Future survey of students and young adults. Primarily, the survey asks questions about social behaviors, such as sexual activity, drug use, violence, and crime. In 2002, 75.5 percent of high school seniors said that they often
or sometimes worried about crime and violence. Female students (83.1 pe…
Each year the Gallup Organization, Inc., asks the American people about their confidence in the major institutions of society. Twenty-nine percent of those polled in 2003 said that they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the criminal justice system, with 45 percent reporting some confidence. (See Table 9.16.)
Those with less education and lower income levels had the least confidence …
In the 2003 Gallup Poll, Americans expressed much more confidence in the police than they did in the criminal justice system. Sixty-one percent stated they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the police, and 29 percent said they had some confidence. Only 10 percent claimed to have little or no confidence in the
police. (See Table 9.17.) Blacks (43 percent) were significantly less like…
In 2002, 41 percent of Americans told the Gallup Poll they had guns in their homes, up from 40 percent in 2001. The proportion of gun ownership stayed relatively stable the last four decades of the twentieth century, ranging from a low of 36 percent in 1999 to a high of 51 percent in October 1993. (See Table 9.18.) In 2002 the
most likely people to own guns were male, with some college, aged 50 to…
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