Quantitative Article Reviews; Criminal Justice Articles

QUESTION

1. Include the full reference for the article using the writing style specific to your program on the title page.
2. Criminal Justice = APA
3. International Relations, National Security, Military Studies, and Intelligence Studies = Turabian.
4.  
5. State the main goal(s) of the study
6. Summarize the research design, and discuss the research method(s) used to answer the research question or assess the hypothesis.
7. Summarize the results of the study.
8. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the study’s research design.
9. Provide a discussion on how the study can be moved forward.  Include two well phrased research questions that could be used in follow-on studies to the one reviewed.

ANSWER

Criminal Justice Articles

Introduction

The system by which a criminal or a crime is identified, the criminal apprehended, taken through a judgment, and then punished is referred to as the criminal justice system (Pound, 2018). It is composed of three main parts:

1. Law enforcement: the regulation part of criminal justice, where a country’s laws are spelled out and adhered to.
2. Courts: the criminal justice section where the assessment of whether an individual suspected of a crime is guilty or not is undertaken.
3. Corrections: where an individual proved to be guilty is punished or corrected for the wrongs committed.

There are several issues that arise in criminal justice, all which need attention. We look at an example of an emerging trend in criminal justice below.

Temporal Changes in Racial Violence

The article (Parker et al, 2016) looks at how racial violence has been evolving over the years. It looks at homicides occurring between 1980 and 2006 among the white and black races. The trends are examined using a latent trajectory approach. The research was set up to analyze what information is known about the various trends in the white and black homicides through the years, by identifying the possibility of the latent trajectory approach to bring this information to light. The distinct trajectories were identified, which revealed that there was a hidden heterogeneity of the racial violence. Changes in the rates of homicides were evident, which then necessitated an estimation of which argument, between macro-structural conditions and crime control, could best explain these changes. In many cities, it was revealed that homicides were rate-specific.

The research compiled data on homicides that had occurred from 1980 to 2006, from the Uniform Crime Reports with the decennial census data of the United States and employed a latent trajectory approach to investigate trends (Parker et al, 2016). It also used a time series approach, over three time periods of the crimes. These methods are very informative and quite easy to undertake as long as adequate data is provided. Since the researchers had adequate data from the crime reports given, it was easy to create trajectories and analyze them to come up with results. The time series method of analysis was used to back the trajectory approach, and identify any trends that might escape it.

Three specific trends of cities based on the black and white rates of homicide were identified; a high temporal homicide trend, a medium one, and a low one. The time series approach showed a variation where certain characteristics resulted in a very distinct trend in racial homicides through a trajectory group. The two analysis methods both revealed a previously unidentified heterogeneity in the trends of homicides occurring in American cities. They also revealed that the homicides, and general violence and crimes, were distinct with respect to the two different races.

A deliberation about the differences in criminal activities in various locations and why various crimes are race-related ought to be fostered in the country. The various factors that contributed to an increase or decrease in the number of crimes over the years should be looked into, with a view of identifying what requires to be done to minimize violence in the American cities. The research could be continued so as to identify whether the trends identifies in the 1980-2006 period are still identifiable in the recent years, say from 2006 to 2017. This would help with measurement of the effect of crime control and the criminal justice system in the United States. Is the criminal justice system effective in reducing the homicide levels in American cities? Are the rapid economic development and urbanization contributing factors to violence surges in America? Why is violence distinct between the black and the white races?

References

Pound, R. (2018). Criminal justice in America. Routledge.

Parker, K. F., Stansfield, R., & McCall, P. L. (2016). Temporal changes in racial violence, 1980 to 2006: A latent trajectory approach. Journal of criminal justice, 47, 1-11.