Criminal Justice
The United States has fifty-one separate criminal justice systems—each of the 50 states and of the federal government. Criminal laws vary substantially across these different jurisdictions. Perhaps the most significant example is the variation in the death penalty, in which 38 states and the federal government have statutes allowing for executions and 12 states do not. Thus, a person convicted of first-degree murder in Florida, in Pennsylvania, or in federal court, for example, may be put to death, while someone convicted of the same crime in West Virginia or Iowa cannot.
Other differences between states, and between the states and the federal government, are less dramatic but nonetheless important. For example, some states allow for the use of marijuana to treat certain medical conditions while other states and the federal government prohibit its use entirely. There is also substantial variation in the manner in which sanctions are imposed and in the length of incarceration for similar crimes. The federal government and some states, for example, operate under sentencing guidelines that require judges to impose a sentence within a narrow range established by statute. In other states, judges are given wide latitude in determining sentencing outcomes. Similarly, the federal government generally imposes longer sentences for gun and drug offenses than many state governments.
For most of the country’s history, criminal justice was almost exclusively the province of state and local governments. State governments created criminal laws, and local police and prosecutors executed those laws. In the early years of the republic, the federal government handled primarily cases that were uniquely federal concerns, such as piracy, counterfeiting, and smuggling.
Several developments in the twentieth century contributed to the creation of new federal crimes, as well as the growth of federal jurisdiction over what had traditionally been state crimes. The invention of the automobile, for example, resulted in the National Motor Vehicle Act in 1919 (also known as the Dyer Act), which prohibited driving stolen cars across state lines. Moral crusades led to the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, also known as the Volstead Act or Prohibition, which outlawed the production and sale of alcohol (the amendment was later repealed with the adoption of the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933).
In the latter half of the twentieth century, the lines between federal and state criminal jurisdiction have further blurred as Congress has made gun and drug possession, carjacking, and fraud federal offenses. There is now little distinction between state and federal criminal jurisdiction in terms of substantive laws.
However, federal authority to prosecute criminals far surpasses the resources provided to federal investigative agencies and prosecutors. Thus, the vast majority of criminal defendants are still arrested, charged, and sentenced in state courts.
| BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Lawrence M. Friedman, Crime and Punishment in American History (New York: Basic Books, 1993); Herbert Jacob, Justice in America: Courts, Lawyers and the Judicial Process (Boston: Little, Brown 1984); and Daniel Richman, “The Changing Boundaries Between Federal and Local Law Enforcement,” in Boundary Changes in Criminal Justice, vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Office of Justice Programs, 2000). |
Lisa L. Miller
Last updated: 2006
SEE ALSO: State Courts; USA PATRIOT Act of 2001