General systems theory and criminal justice

Criminal justice agencies are organized sequentially — “output” from one agency is “input” to the next — but most scholars argue that criminal justice is not a system in a theoretical sense. In this article, it is argued that general systems theory (GST) reveals important insights into criminal justice structures and functions. Specifically, it is argued that the criminal justice system processes “cases” rather than people, and that the common goal of criminal justice processing is to “close cases so that they stay closed.” It also is argued that processing capacity progressively declines, in that at each system point the subsequent agency cannot input as many cases as the previous agency can output. Each agency therefore experiences “backward pressure” to close cases in order to reduce input to the next agency. Overall, this article highlights that criminal justice agents and agencies are best understood as operating in the context of the larger whole, thus it is concluded that criminal justice is a system in the sense of general systems theory.     

WASHINGTON,DU BOIS AND PLESSY V. FERGUSON

Law and Philosophy -     

Luke May of Seattle--"America's Sherlock Holmes".

This paper provides a brief biography of Luke S. May (1886-1965), whose pioneering work in forensic science in the United States has not received full recognition. May began as a private detective in Salt Lake City, Utah, shortly after the turn of the century and later established his own agency, the Revelare International Secret Service, which he moved to Seattle, Washington, in 1919. Although basically self-taught in scientific matters, May built a solid reputation among police agencies and attorneys in the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada as a serious and effective scientific investigator in the era before public crime laboratories. This reputation as "America's Sherlock Holmes" also led to his being consulted on the establishment of the first American crime laboratory at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, and on a laboratory for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at Regina, in Saskatchewan, Canada. He contributed to a landmark case of court acceptance of toolmark identification, invented specialized instruments, and founded an institute to teach scientific criminal investigation to police officers. His earliest associates were John L. Harris and J. Clark Sellers, both of whom became recognized document examiners on the West Coast and were followed by a second and a third generation of practitioners.     

The race may be close but my horse is going to win: Wish fulfillment in the 1980 presidential election

Using data from the 1980 U.S. presidential election, we investigate the extent to which voter expectations about candidate electoral success and margin of victory are subject to systematic biases. In particular, we examine the extent to which candidate supporters overestimate their choice's likelihood of success. After finding a rather dramatic bias in the direction of wishful thinking, we review alternative explanations of this phenomenon, including a model based on nonrandom contact networks and one based on preference-related differences in expectations about exogenous variables that could affect the election outcome.     

Doctors under the knife

With Bill Clinton's new reforms only a month away, the health-care system is on the operating table--and the doctors are under the knife. Americans have a love-hate relationship with physicians: they like the care that doctors provide but hold them to blame for the nation's health-care mess. NEWSWEEK looks at how the culture of medicine may change, assesses doctors' fears--and examines the brave new world of HMOs.