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Title overview

For introductory courses in criminal justice.

An introduction to criminal justice through the lens of freedom and security

Criminal Justice Today guides students to a satisfying balance between freedom and security. Focusing on the crime picture in the US, the authors present comprehensive coverage of the three traditional elements of the criminal justice system: police, courts and corrections. Built around the theme of tension between individual rights and public order, the text challenges students to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the American justice system.

The 16th Edition reflects current issues and offers an expanded selection of Freedom or Safety boxes.

Hallmark features of this title

Thinking critically about complex issues

  • Freedom OR Safety? YOU Decide boxes pose critical-thinking questions assessing whether and how the criminal justice system balances individual rights and public safety.
  • CJ Issues boxes throughout the text showcase select issues in the field of criminal justice, including topics related to multiculturalism, diversity and technology.

Real-world context

  • CJ News boxes in each chapter present case stories from the media. These bring a true-to-life dimension to the study of criminal justice and allow insight into the everyday workings of the justice system.
  • CJ Careers boxes describe a variety of criminal justice careers in a Q&A format. They introduce students to an assortment of career options and help them choose a path.

New and updated features of this title

New discussions of hot-button issues

  • NEW: Key issues have been added to the chapter on The Crime Picture (Ch. 2). Topics include underreported/unreported crime and the Parkland High School shooting in Florida.
  • NEW: Discussion of the 2017 report of the President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis has been added to the chapter on drugs and crime (Ch. 16).
  • NEW: The bail reform movement, currently underway in the US, is now covered in the chapter on pretrial activities and the criminal trial (Ch. 10).
  • NEW: Recent examples of high-tech crimes are now discussed in Chapter 18. These include familial DNA searching, federal laws relevant to human cloning and gene editing, and the NYPD's ground-breaking use of drones to patrol the skies above New Year's revelers in Times Square.

New cases and statistics

  • NEW: Several U.S. Supreme Court decisions are discussed in the chapter on the legal aspects of policing (Ch. 7). These include the Court's distinction between three types of Fourth Amendment police-citizen interaction, the case of Carpenter v. U.S. involving police access to cell phone records, and a case dealing with rental vehicles.
  • UPDATED: Statistics and key terms have been updated throughout the text.

Table of contents

PART I: CRIME IN AMERICA

  1. What Is Criminal Justice?
  2. The Crime Picture
  3. The Search for Causes
  4. Criminal Law

PART II: POLICING

  1. Policing: History and Structure
  2. Policing: Purpose and Organization
  3. Policing: Legal Aspects
  4. Policing: Issues and Challenges

PART III: ADJUDICATION

  1. The Courts: Structure and Participants
  2. Pretrial Activities and the Criminal Trial
  3. Sentencing

PART IV: CORRECTIONS

  1. Probation, Parole, and Reentry
  2. Prisons and Jails
  3. Prison Life

PART V: SPECIAL ISSUES

  1. Juvenile Justice
  2. Drugs and Crime
  3. Terrorism, Multinational Criminal Justice, and Global Issues
  4. High-Technology Crimes

Author bios

About our author

Frank Schmalleger, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. He holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame and The Ohio State University, having earned both a master’s (1970) and a doctorate in sociology (1974) from The Ohio State University with a special emphasis in criminology. From 1976 to 1994, he taught criminology and criminal justice courses at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. For the last 16 of those years, he chaired the university’s Department of Sociology, Social Work and Criminal Justice. The university named him Distinguished Professor in 1991. Schmalleger has taught in the online graduate program of the New School for Social Research, helping build the world’s first electronic classrooms in support of distance learning on the internet. As an adjunct professor with Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri, Schmalleger helped develop the university’s graduate program in security administration and loss prevention. He taught courses in that curriculum for over a decade.

An avid Web user and website builder, Schmalleger is also the creator of award-winning websites, including some that support this textbook. Frank Schmalleger is the author of numerous articles and more than 40 books, including the widely used Criminal Justice: A Brief Introduction (Pearson, 2020), Criminology Today (Pearson, 2020) and Criminal Law Today (Pearson, 2016). Schmalleger is also founding editor of the journal Criminal Justice Studies. He has served as editor for the Pearson series Criminal Justice in the Twenty-First Century and as imprint adviser for Greenwood Publishing Group’s criminal justice reference series. Schmalleger’s philosophy of both teaching and writing can be summed up in these words: “In order to communicate knowledge we must first catch, then hold, a person’s interest, be it student, colleague, or policymaker. Our writing, our speaking and our teaching must be relevant to the problems facing people today, and they must in some way help solve those problems.” Visit the author’s website and follow his Tweets @schmalleger.

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