Crime Control Model

Crime Control

1.  Preventing crime is most important

2.  Public safety is essential to personal freedom

3.  Efficiency of process

4.  Presumption of guilt

5.  Ok to make mistakes

6.  Factual guilt

Due Process

1.  Prevent and eliminate mistakes

2.  Assumes CJS is error-prone

3.  Protects the truly innocent

4.  Legal guilty

5.  Treated as innocent until guilt is proven

SHARED:

1.  Accept constitutional values

2.  Hold to ex post facto prohibition

3.  Duty to enforce laws where violations have occurred

            The Crime Control Model and the Due Process Model both intend to serve a similar purpose:  To reduce crime and protect the public.  Both models accept constitutional values, including upholding the ex post facto laws.  There is a duty within the two models to enforce laws when violations have occurred but only when a law has actually been violated, not against improper behavior (Zalman, 2002).

 There are limits under the law to which governing officials or others in the capacity to uphold the law may act.  A person may not be arrested unless there is actual proof of a crime committed.  This is one limit that prevents a person from having his or her privacy invaded from unreasonable searches and seizures.  Also under the Crime Control and Due Process Models, a person suspected of crime is considered to be “an independent entity” (Zalman, 2002) and he or she is entitled to show proof to the courts any information contrary to the criminal charges.

            While the Crime Control Model and the Due Process Model have some similarities, the contrasts between both models are as different as night and day.  One of the features the Crime Control Model considers to be most important is the prevention of crime.  While this model proclaims it is permissible to make mistakes in the entire criminal justice system, it assumes guilt by fact and the person is guilt unless proven innocent.  This is one of the downfalls of the Crime Control Model.  The concern with this model is a quick and speedy conviction despite the innocence of the alleged criminal.  Many wrongful convictions have been overturned because of the proponents of the Crime Control Model.