Category: Criminal Justice Essay Examples
See our collection of criminal justice essay examples. These examples are to help you understanding how to write essays on crime-related topics. Contemporary study of criminology and criminal justice is also increasingly interdisciplinary and thus features a broad variety of topics on the causes, effects, and responses to crime. Also, see our list of criminal justice essay topics to find the one that interests you.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was an 18th-century German Enlightenment philosopher. Kant is perhaps best known for his ethical theory of deontology. The term deontology is derived from two Greek root words: deos, meaning duty, and logos, meaning study. He was writing in response to the prevailing moral ethical philosophy …
Ordinarily, to be criminally culpable the actor must have volitionally committed the criminal act (actus reus), and must have done so with the requisite criminal state of mind (mens rea). In other words, the criminal law ordinarily does not criminally punish acts that are uncontrollable (such as an …
Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–87) was a Jewish American psychologist born in Bronxville, New York. Specializing in research on moral education and reasoning, he is best known for his theory about stages of moral development, which first appeared in his 1958 dissertation. Moral development focuses on the emergence, evolution, and …
Jacques Lacan (1901–81) was a French psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and philosopher who became an important figure in the history and development of the intellectual movements of poststructuralism and postmodernism with his theories of the subject. He is one of the major poststructuralist thinkers linked to postmodern theory, combining work …
Lawrence v. Texas (2003) was a case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in which a 6–3 majority held that a Texas statute criminalizing homosexual sodomy violated the “right to privacy” contained in the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The case overruled Supreme Court precedent and effectively …
Legitimacy is a concept most often considered in the context of political philosophy, where commentators examine the types, sources, and function of legitimacy. In most instances, political philosophers focus on institutions and governments that regulate conduct and make law. Legitimacy generally takes two forms: normative legitimacy and descriptive …
Emmanuel Levinas (1906–95) was a Jewish Lithuanian philosopher in the phenomenological tradition. That is, he followed Edmund Husserl in seeking truth not in transcendental realities or logical analytics, but in the lived experience of subjects. However, unlike other phenomenologists, who seek naïve and accurate descriptions of the phenomena …
Hate crimes are threats or acts of violence motivated by animus against a specific social group, targeting members of that group. Laws addressing hate crimes do not create new crimes; rather, they provide enhanced penalties for perpetrators of traditional crimes against persons and property whose motivation includes enmity …
Alasdair MacIntyre (1929 – ) is a Scottish philosopher with a long and distinguished record of publishing within philosophy. His most renowned work is After Virtue, which was first published in 1981. A revised second edition was published in 1985, which includes an additional postscript answering some of …
The Latin phrases mala in se and mala prohibita (malum in se and malum prohibitum in the singular) are used to distinguish between two categories of criminal actions. The term mala in se describes actions that are inherently immoral or literally “wrong in themselves.” Mala in se offenses …
Distinguishing among the three terms malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance can be perplexing. All three are important concepts in tort law, where the behavior in question may be improper, if not strictly illegal. Liability in medical cases may also be governed by one of these three concepts. Primarily, these …
Mandatory sentencing laws restrict judicial discretion in sentencing, ensuring that criminal sentences imposed in the courts reflect the punishments intended by the lawmakers who enacted the law. In this way, mandatory laws may reduce sentencing disparity. Mandatory sentencing laws can (and often do) set legal maximums (ceilings), but …
Karl Marx (1818–83) was a German philosopher and social activist. Along with Friedrich Engels (1820–95) he helped create the conflict school of criminology. Often when examining the conflict school of criminology the name “Marx” appears with no mention of his lifelong colleague and friend Engels. This is unfortunate …
The relationship between media and crime has been the subject of much research and debate throughout history. Relationships between crime and the media are many and complex, and interest in these relationships cut across a number of academic disciplines from criminology to sociology, and cultural and media studies, …
The United States is well known for courtroom broadcasts, usually of criminal cases. The trials of famed former football player O. J. Simpson, the Menendez brothers, and mother-cum-public-hate-figure Casey Anthony captivated audiences in America and beyond. In fact, the use of traditional media in courtrooms for the purpose …
The right to treatment or to refuse treatment falls under the purview of biomedical ethics. Bioethics is a branch of ethics that consists in the application of ethical reasoning to issues that arise in the delivery of health care. It had its beginnings with Hippocrates, who is credited …
The status and treatment of mentally ill offenders is one with many ethical concerns. The needs of this population are oftentimes unmet or unrealized. The closing of mental institutions and the decrease in government funding for mental health caused serious concerns for the mentally ill. Individuals who had …
Care-model ethical theories, in their appreciation for context and their insistence that others should be taken on their own terms, challenge so-called justice-model ethical theories that blindly apply rules or principles to facts without regard to the unique particularity of those facts, and without regard for the alterity …
Military courts are judicial bodies that are used to try members of the armed forces. These courts operate with a distinct set of rules and procedures from civilian courts. In the United States, there are two types of military courts. The first type, courts-martial, are used to try …
John Stuart Mill (1806–73) was a 19th-century English philosopher and statesman known for his writings on utilitarianism. Utilitarianism describes several political and social philosophies that begin with the following proposition: Actions are defined as morally right insofar as they promote happiness. The corollary to this proposition is that …
