Police Pursuing Justice: Reframing Law Enforcement for the Twenty-First Century

Samantha L. Bennett; Jonathon A. Cooper

doi:10.5771/9781666911060

Summary

Using the commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a case-study, along with two other states as controls, this book examines how BARJ legislation “trickles down” to the law enforcement level through Pennsylvania’s Juvenile Justice System Enhancement Strategy (PJJSES) and the Juvenile Justice Act (JJA). This legislation is a direct application of the BARJ model to law enforcement, essentially directing police discretion in the direction of informal dispositions. The decision to dispose formal action (such as, a referral to either juvenile court/probation, criminal court, or adult criminal court) or informal action (for instance, handling the situation within the department and/or releasing the juveniles to parents with a warning), play an integral role in determining which juveniles contact the justice system. To this end, while the overall focus of our volume and research is specifically on the impact of the PJJSES and its 2012 amendments on the number of formal dispositions of juvenile suspects by law enforcement officers, it speaks more broadly to the ability of the BARJ model to affect police officer behavior through influencing their decision-making processes.

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Bibliographic data

Edition: 1/2023
Copyright Year: 2023
ISBN-Print: 978-1-6669-1105-3
ISBN-Online: 978-1-6669-1106-0
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 108
Product Type: Monograph

1. Contents No access
2. Acknowledgments No access
3. Introduction No access
A Primer on the Historical Development of Juvenile Justice No access Pages 1 - 14
Balanced and Restorative Justice No access Pages 15 - 26
Police and Discretion No access Pages 27 - 38
Our Questions and How We Answered Them No access Pages 39 - 48
BARJ and the Police in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Minnesota No access Pages 49 - 56
Does Legislation Matter? What It All Means No access Pages 57 - 70
Policy and Behavior No access Pages 71 - 80
Appendix A No access Pages 81 - 84
Appendix B No access Pages 85 - 88
References No access Pages 89 - 100
Index No access Pages 101 - 106
About the Authors No access Pages 107 - 108