1. What are the main components of the criminal justice system? How do they interrelate? How might they conflict?
2. What are the differences between the individual-rights perspective and the public-order perspective of the criminal justice system?
3. What are the two methods used to collect crime data identified in Chapter 2? What do data from those two sources tell us about crime in the United States today? How will data reported under the new NIBRS system differ from the crime statistics reported under the traditional UCR Program?
4. What is the rule of law? What is its importance in Western democracies? What does it mean to say that “nobody is above the law”?
5. Identify three of the six types of law discussed in Chapter 3? What purpose does each serve?
6. What are the three major levels of public law enforcement described in Chapter 4? Why do we have so many different types of enforcement agencies in the United States? What problems, if any, do you think are created by such a diversity of agencies?
7. How do the Bill of Rights and democratically inspired legal restraints on the police help ensure personal freedoms in our society? Give specific examples in case law and in the Bill of Rights that ensure due process of law.
8. What are the dangers of police work? What can be done to reduce those dangers?
