Allocca, Sean. "New Criminology Study: 'All Crimes Are Not Created Equal'" Forensic
Magazine. Forensic Magazine, 05 Apr. 2016. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.
Cambridge Criminology Director Lawrence Sherman has recently challenged the typical method of classifying crimes. He posed the idea of assigning punishment to crimes based off of the harm caused to others. He and his team set out to find the best way to categorize these crimes. What they developed was called the Crime Harm Index (CHI). They believe that classifying the crimes correctly leads to better responses and more accurate and fair incarceration \ rehabilitation.
This is an important development that needs to take hold here in America. The justice system has been under a lot of scrutiny in the wake of numerous possibly racially motivated deaths in America. Our incarceration rate is through the roof on crimes such as drug possession which are clearly only harming a select number of individuals (and in many cases just the user) and yet violent crimes are too frequently met with short sentences. The article also highlighted how these development allows police officers to target high crime areas and recognize and stop repeat offenders of violent crime. This is a move toward modernization and efficiency.
The article itself was well written and certainly compelling. It utilized important quotes and terminology without getting too wordy or bulky. It linked to the Cambridge research and gave a general overview of the key points. All in all it is an important topic and a compelling piece.
4 comments:
Allocca, Sean. "New Criminology Study: 'All Crimes Are Not Created Equal'" Forensic
Magazine. Forensic Magazine, 05 Apr. 2016. Web. 12 Apr. 2016
You grabbed my attention from the very beginning with Lawrence Sherman’s revolutionary proposal to take on punishing crime in a whole new way. Great choice of article. One thing I would have liked to know more about was how they created the CHI - Crime Harm Index. I think that information would give the reader a better grasp on how the process is meant to work. I loved that your article went into the flaws in our justice system today, I think that is a very relevant issue to include. Although, your review should be more focused on the scientific side of the process. The justice system remarks would have been better fitted in the reflection section of the review, and doing so would have added more substance and length to the piece. I think you had great criticism about the piece as well. This review definitely made me think about how we should handle crime punishment differently today, great job!
Without reading this current event, I would have never been introduced to Lawrence Shermans take on the criminal justice system. This article was greatly interesting to read. The relevancy of this issue makes the current event all that more interesting. If information from outside sources was added in order to leave no question unanswered, this piece would be flawless. Although this current event was intriguing, it seemed that it strayed a bit from the scientific side of our current event assignments. Overall I thought this was a fantastic current event.
I read Danny’s review of the article titled, “New Criminology Study: All Crimes Are Not Created Equal.” I think that Danny did a good job in the beginning of his review because he really caught my attention with his topic sentence on how the Cambridge Criminology Director Lawrence Sherman is challenging the typical method of classifying crimes. I thought that he also only stated the important information from the article, for instance the name of the new classifying method, the Crime Harm Index(CHI) and how it works. I liked how Danny went into detail on how the justice system is under fire for its handling of many recent cases especially the racially motivated deaths in America. From reading Danny’s review and the article, I was able to form an opinion on this current issue and agree with Danny’s statement that our incarceration rate is too high and that too many drug offenders are receiving too much time compared to the lack of incarceration time for violent offenders. I think that Danny could improve his review if he had a more in depth review of the article overall and stated the current use of the new Crime Harm Index. Lastly, I also think that it could have been improved if he discussed the level of research that is being done or has been done by Lawrence Sherman on completing this new crime classification index. Overall, I found that it was a great review of the article.
The article explains how a lab in Illinois has been making errors in their testing. More specifically, the article explains that a man hit a couple walking across the street claiming that the couple came out of nowhere however when the Illinois lab tested the driver they found him to be under the influence so the driver was therefore facing several years in federal prison. Later on when the driver’s lawyer examined the blood alcohol tests, however, he found them to be inaccurate. This called for a revision of the lab and their scientific methods and what they found out was that there had been multiple previous cases of inaccurate testing in the Illinois lab. After the driver’s lawyer showed these results to the prosecutor, he decided not to use the blood alcohol tests in the case and the driver was found innocent. The article also quotes the driver’s concern regarding the severity of the disorganization and mistakes made in the lab since he could have ended up in jail if the lawyer had not helped to prove that the tests were inaccurate. The article also explains what kind of errors had taken place in the lab: switched test samples, mislabeled specimen, mix up of results, improper calibrations of tests and samples that had been wrongly destroyed. According to “Ramsell” the biggest problem is that the lab has been lacking a procedure in which you extra check your results after conducting a test, which is a crucial component in a lab.
Something that shocked me about the article is that the state police was aware of the lack of validation for the scientific testing in the lab and they did not report it or do anything about it. I think that this article is relevant to most people because if you ever were to get arrested for something you didn’t do, you would want to be able to rely on that chemical testing in a lab would prove you innocent. I think it’s pretty scary that labs don’t take enough precautions in order to make sure that all testing is accurate and that there are no mix ups in the lab. I also think that if you take on the responsibility of working in a lab such as the state Illinois one, it is almost disrespectful to the people who are being tested if you are not organized.
Overall, I think that the lab did a good job explaining the incident however I would have liked to know more about what exactly it was that made the test inaccurate and if they ever did a retest or such. I also would have liked to know what the police meant by that their methods are widely accepted in the scientific field.
Goudie, Chuck, and Ann Pistone. "Forensic Failures at State Crime Labs May Jeopardize Cases." ABC7 Chicago. ABC 7, 23 Sept. 2015. Web. 24 Sept. 2015.
http://abc7chicago.com/news/forensic-failures-at-state-crime-labs-may-jeopardize-cases/998927/?
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