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Cjs2904 Unit 1

Decent Essays

Charlotte Buckhold Unit 1 Individual Project June 10, 2015 CJUS290-1503A-04

The United States government operates under a federalist system meaning that there are two or more governments who share the same power over one geographic region. In this case it would be the state and federal governments. The 10th amendment of the U.S. Constitution summarizes the idea of federalism, stating that “The powers not delegated to the US by the Constitution, nor prohibited by the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people” (U.S. Constitution). This means that the federal government, whose jurisdiction is very limited, has jurisdiction over some thing while the state government has jurisdiction over …show more content…

One example being that there are federal crimes such as counterfeiting, racketeering and tax crimes fall under jurisdiction of the federal courts, and state crimes such as homicide, aggravated assault and robbery which fall under the jurisdiction of state courts. The federal court does reign supreme over the state courts; they can review state convictions to determine whether or not the constitution was violated. The United States criminal justice system has three main components: law enforcement, courts (both civil and criminal) and corrections. The law enforcement component is made up of agencies whose task it is to prevent, detect and investigate crimes. The job of the courts is to hear cases and decide whether the defendant is guilty or innocent and to give out proper punishments. The corrections system (or penal system) refers to agencies such as prisons and probation that enforce the courts punishments. These three components dependent upon each other, the law enforcement enforces the laws interpreted by the courts. Courts hear cases brought to them by law enforcement, and the corrections system enforces punishment doled out by the courts, they are independent from each other as well. Once a certain component has completed its job (apprehended criminals, heard court cases etc.) they leave the next step of the process to the next component in

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