Chapter 1 Crime and Justice in the United States Overview The chapter begins by discussing crime in the United States. It briefly describes several famous criminal cases in recent history. Criminal justice is examined as a system. That system includes the police, the courts, and corrections. The police deal with crime, crime control, arrests, and bookings. The prosecution deals with charging the defendants. The prosecution also determines if the suspect has committed a misdemeanor, an ordinance violation, or a felony. It may file an information or an indictment. An arrest warrant may be issued by the court so that the police may arrest a suspect. There are a variety of stages in a court that defendants may experience. They may have an initial appearance, an arraignment, and a bail set; a preliminary hearing may occur. Defendants may have a bench trial or a jury trial. They may participate in plea bargaining or simply plead guilty and receive their sentence. Convicted defendants then become part of the correctional system, where they may receive probation, intermediate punishments, or incarceration. After serving a portion of their sentence, they may be paroled. Next, the chapter discusses how the criminal justice system is sometimes viewed as a nonsystem because of the differences among different jurisdictions of independent agencies within the United States and the conflict and confusion among them. The chapter then presents the two models of the criminal justice system. The first, the crime control model, reflects traditional conservative political values. In this model, the control of criminal behavior is the most important function of criminal justice. The second, the due process model, embodies traditional liberal political values. In this model, the principal goal of criminal justice is at least as much to protect the innocent as it is to convict the guilty.