CRIME AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

According to the University of Phoenix CJi Interactive activities (2014), the definition of a crime is “a conduct in violation of the criminal laws of the state, the federal government, or a local jurisdiction, for which there is no legally acceptable justification or excuse”. It is a complex and very difficult definition to agree upon because there are many points of view and controversies in defining what crime is. From a psychological standpoint, it suggest that the crime is a way of expressing the inability of an individual to follow the social norm. The psychological view does not care about the traditional elements of crime. When one individual doesn’t respond appropriately or effectively to the environmentally demands, then the individual is a criminal or maladaptive. The sociological standpoint, suggests that the concept of crime should include many behaviors that are not well defined by laws or the political process. From its sociological point of view, crime is an act that is antisocial and needs to be repressed to maintain society. There are two most common models most common models of how society determines which acts are criminal. One is the crime-control model, which is a perception that stresses the arrest and the conviction of a criminal offender. The other common model is the due process model, which is a