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Chapter 6: Deviance and Social Control – Police, Law Enforcement, the Court System

  • Page ID
    69525
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    Learning Objectives
    • Describe the structure of the justice system
    • Explain the criminal justice process
    • Identify roles of law enforcement and courts
    • Understand policy influences
    Key Terms
    • Criminal Justice System
    • Law Enforcement
    • Jurisdiction
    • Arrest
    • Probable Cause
    • Due Process
    • Case Law
    • Court Structure
    • Federal Courts
    • State Courts
    • Criminal Justice Process
    • Policy Development
    • Discretion

    Summary

    This chapter examines how the justice system operates. It outlines the roles of police, courts, and legal actors and explains how cases move through the system. It also highlights the influence of policy and legal constraints on decision-making.

    clipboard_e6fa0909c38ed58174c15bed467c8717a.png
    Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Photo courtesy of fiveable

    Most theories that attempt to discover the cause of crime focus on the individual or societal factors that influence them to commit crime (as discussed in chapter two and three). However, social control theories focus on the question “Why don’t people commit crime?” Since most of the society does not commit crimes, social control theories try to discover the reason people do not commit crime instead of trying to figure out why they do. The notion of social control relates to formal or informal factors and relationships that keep people within certain limits of what is socially acceptable because they do not want to harm those relationships. Social control theories focus on those factors and relationships. The theories covered in chapter two and three do not address why people stop committing crimes.


    This page titled Chapter 6: Deviance and Social Control – Police, Law Enforcement, the Court System was last modified on Sat, 26 Sep 2026 19:44:22 GMT and is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Antoniette Aizon.