Criminal Justice in Action

CAREER-ORIENTED APPROACH IS STRONGER THAN ANY OTHER CRIMINAL JUSTICE TEXT. This edition uses first-person accounts to introduce a wide range of rewarding careers in criminal justice. Students learn essential facts about each career choice, including job qualifications and salary ranges. "Social Media Career Tips" help students effectively navigate job searches and criminal justice careers in this age of interconnectedness. New "Getting LinkedIn" margin features give practical advice for using social media to explore opportunities in 15 CJ professional fields.

CHAPTER TITLE PAGES CLEARLY CORRESPOND WITH LEARNING OBJECTIVES TO GUIDE READING AND REVIEW. Each chapter begins with a title page that details the Learning Objectives that appear within the chapter's headings. Each chapter follows eight to ten Learning Objectives that appear within the margins to highlight key content. These Learning Objectives also form the basis for each chapter's summary. This effective, integrated system of Learning Objectives reinforces student understanding and aids in learning assessment.

"COMPARATIVE CRIMINAL JUSTICE" FEATURE OFFERS A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE. This comparative feature highlights the varied methods and approaches that countries other than the U.S. use to handle crime and law enforcement. Students also examine the courts and corrections processes across the globe. These glimpses into international methods help students put the American criminal justice system into perspective.

"MASTERING CONCEPTS" FEATURES DEMONSTRATE HOW THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM FIT TOGETHER. This meaningful feature clarifies and provides extra review of difficult-to-grasp topics while placing these topics into proper context. Discussions within this feature often compare and contrast concepts or specific aspects of the criminal justice system. These comparisons assist students in identifying both similarities and differences between related concepts.

"POLICY MATTERS" FEATURES PROVIDE AN IN-DEPTH EXAMINATION OF THOUGHT-PROVOKING ISSUES IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE. These features, at the end of each chapter, summarize topics with statements from observers representing each side of a policy. Two critical analysis questions review the chapter's main topics. A critical-thinking assignment also encourages students to further explore and formulate their own opinions. New topics highlight police use-of-force policies (Ch. 6), law enforcement’s use of facial-recognition software (Ch. 7) and the role of prosecutors in death penalty reform (Ch. 11).

NEW VIGNETTES OPEN EACH CHAPTER TO IGNITE INTEREST AND CLARIFY CONTENT THAT FOLLOWS. These new chapter opening vignette introduce topics ranging from the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis (Ch. 1) and criminal courts' response to the "#MeToo" movement (Ch. 8) to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on U.S. prison and jail inmate populations. A new exercise -- "Yes or No?" -- refers back to the opening vignette and challenges students to substantiate an opinion, based on the vignette. Students examine how their opinions possibly change after completing the chapter.

NEW "CYBERSECURITY AND CJ" FEATURE EXAMINES THE INTERCONNECTION OF CRIME AND CYBERSPACE. The feature adds to the book's extensive discussion of cyber crime, including a new introduction in Chapter 1 and references within each chapter. Features address topics such as cyberterrorism (Ch. 1), cellphone encryption and the Fourth Amendment (Ch. 7), jurisdictional challenges posed by cyber crime (Ch. 8) and varying paths of males and females in hacking (Ch. 15). Each feature ends with a critical analysis question that requires students to consider the topic from a different perspective.

NEW "DISCRETION IN ACTION" FEATURES PLACE READERS IN THE ROLE OF A CJ PROFESSIONAL. Readers review the facts and law for a specific situation and use their best judgment to resolve the problem presented in the feature. Corresponding content in Appendix B shows how a real practitioner reacted in a similar situation. New topics discuss the difficulty of determining "reasonable force" in self-defense cases (Ch. 4), free speech and Internet threats (Ch. 8), proper punishment for causing fraternity hazing deaths (Ch. 9) and the criminal justice ramifications of "suicide by text" (Ch. 11).