Rick Ruddell

Rather than providing students with "the answers," Making Sense of Criminal Justice: Policies and Practices, Third Edition, challenges them to think critically about how the criminal justice system deals with challenging situations--like the use of force by the police--and offers a framework for lively classroom discussions and debates.

This book addresses the causes of rising crime rates resulting from the rapid population growth and industrialization associated with natural resource extraction in rural communities. Ruddell describes the social problems emerging in these boomtowns, including increases in antisocial behavior, as well as property-related and violent crime, industrial mishaps and traffic collisions. Many of the victims of these crimes are already members of vulnerable or marginalized groups, including rural women, Indigenous populations, and young people. The quality of life in boomtowns also decreases due to environmental impacts, including air, water and noise pollution. Law enforcement agencies, courts, and correction facilities in boomtowns are often overwhelmed by the growing demand as these places are seldom able to manage the population growth. The key questions addressed here are: who should pay the costs of managing these booms, and how can we prepare communities to mitigate the worst effects of this growth and development and, ultimately, increase the quality of life for boomtown residents. An in-depth and timely study, this original work will be of great interest to scholars of violent crime, criminal justice, and corporate harm.

This book provides a fresh look at the way the United States is choosing to deal with some of the serious or persistent youth offenders: by transferring juvenile offenders to adult courts. For more than 20 years now, the attitude in some jurisdictions has been "if you're old enough to do the crime, you're old enough to do the time." After two decades of applying this increasingly punitive mindset to juvenile offenders, it is possible to see the actual consequences of transferring more and younger offenders to adult courts. In Do the Crime, Do the Time: Juvenile Criminals and Adult Justice in the American Court System, the authors apply their decades of experience, both in the practical world and from unique research perspectives, to shed light on the influence of public opinion and the political forces that shape juvenile justice policy in the United States. The book provides a fresh look at the way the United States is choosing to deal with some of the serious or persistent juvenile offenders, utilizing real-life examples and cases to draw connections between transfer policies and individual outcomes.