Contemporary Issues in Criminal Justice

The criminal justice system is a group of institutions that work together to protect a society, prevent and control crime, and maintain justice; enforcing the laws regulated by society. As the years have gone by and society has evolved; so have the criminal justice system and its methods to accomplish its role in society. This short analysis will evaluate the main facts that have been affecting the criminal justice system for decades and have influenced the evolution the justice system is enduring in a changing society (Muraski, 2009). Amongst the changes in the system, we will discuss the effect the changes have had on the citizens and how their perceptions have evolved as well.

The criminal justice system has been proven to play a very important role in society. The criminal justice system is used to keep the citizens in check and to make sure that the laws that are made are being followed. It also is there to penalize anyone who disobeys the laws. In the criminal justice system, there are 3 main parts, law enforcement, adjudication, and corrections. Law enforcement is self-explainable. It consists of the law enforcers such as police officers and sheriffs. Adjudication is made up of people in the court house such as judges and lawyers. Corrections is made up of jailhouse matters such as prison officials. In these many components of the criminal justice system, there are all put in place to help correct people to do the right thing. There are punitive efforts and rehabilitative efforts. At time, the system may lean towards one category or more, which can be dangerous in terms of disciplinary action. The criminal justice system is more punitive than rehabilitative which makes the system ineffective.

The Justice System is a topic that has stirred up a lot of controversy throughout time. Is it fair or is it not? Throughout hundreds of years, people have been treated justly and unjustly by this system. In this paper, I will only be discussing my opinion on America’s justice system. However, there are many other Justice Systems that I will not get to discuss. America’s Justice System is made up of 3 parts. The Law Enforcement, the Adjudication, and the Correction. The Justice System was created to control crime and punish those who commit illegal actions. Without this system, our country would crumble and fall. Although it has been unfair on numerous occasions, we still should respect the law.

The criminal justice administration today faces various issues and problems thus needing serious reforms. In most cases, many nonviolent offenders go to jail because many prosecutors and district attorneys succumb to political pressure hence become tough on crime. The prisons are always populated and there are minimal resources to ensure there are significant improvements in the system. Some of the key issues facing Criminal justice department today include; wrongful convictions, gangs, racial injustices in the administration, excessive criminalization, socio economic considerations, and problems with

The American Criminal Justice System are sets of agencies and process made by the government to control crime and to penalize those who commit it. The justice system is different based one’s jurisdiction, meaning city, state, federal or tribal government or military installation. The Criminal System is divided into two main parts, the state and the federal. The state portion handles crimes within its state boundaries. The federal portion handles crime committed on Federal property or in two or more states (“Criminal Justice” 1). The American Criminal Justice System needs reform because of its emphasizes on incarceration punishment rather than Rehabilitation. Our justice system especially enforces punishment on blacks and Latinos resulting of overpopulation of prisons like Rikers Island for petty crimes. Also, another reform needed the juvenile cases. For example, juveniles who commit petty crimes shouldn’t be sent to adult prison and shouldn’t be near more dangerous and serious inmates.

The criminal justice system used today is to follow principles that protect and establish equality for all and while the United States criminal justice system may strive to follow these right of the people, but unfortunately, this is where the system falls short of fundamental American principles. Repeatedly the criminal justice system does the adverse of what it’s supposed to do. It does not protect the many liberties the people should have. Some may argue that the criminal justice system is indeed fair for

Chapter 9 focuses on special topics, which reviews the five present and controversial issue in the criminal justice system. Out of all 5 of these issues I think that the use of confidential informants in war on drug is the most harmful to our nation’s correctional system and should be eliminated. The reason I think that the use of confidential informants should be eliminated drug war on drugs is because the use of CI’s frequently have negative consequence on the war on drugs (Austin & Irwin, 2012). The first example, is that CI’s are not appropriately screened and supervised, which causes innocent individuals to be arrest. In my opinion, I think that if CI’s are going to be used then they should be supervised at all time because the lack

Chavis, Benjamin F., Jr. "U.S. Criminal Justice System Needs Urgent Reform." Washington Informer, Mar 2015, pp. 24-24,41, Global News stream; ProQuest Central, http://ezproxy.gsu.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.gsu.edu/docview/1669733723?accountid=11226.

For the past 50 years, America’s criminal justice system has encountered several significant changes dealing with courts and policing. According to Marion and Oliver (2006), the historical Supreme Court rulings like Mapp v. Ohio and Miranda v. Arizona mold the way courts and law enforcement handle individuals charged with committing crimes. This paper will discuss the evolution of courts and law enforcement reflects the diverse and changing need for today’s population which is first importance, the urgency for cooperation and communication among criminal justice agencies and law enforcement within the country. Individuals must

The past trends of the criminal justice system are how we evaluate the system as a whole, and how we strive to make it better. The present is full of ideas towards a better future involving those better ideas made in the past. With today’s society of highly educated individuals, we can only speculate on what the future of the criminal justice system will be, but we can be assured of one certainty, it will change. The value of the criminal justice system in a changing society will also play a factor in what will become of the criminal justice system itself.

Prison overcrowding is a major problem in our criminal justice system and it continues to be a hotly debated topic as to how we should address the problem. One of the main reasons our prison systems have a problem with overcrowding is drugs. More specifically, the "war on drugs" started by President Reagan in 1982 brought a dramatic increase to the number of people put behind bars for drug offences. Mandatory minimum sentencing and truth in sentencing are two policies which have sent drug offenders to prison and kept them there for longer periods of time. The continuing crusade against drugs has apprehended hundreds of thousands of suspects who spend millions on drugs but the cost to incarcerate these non-violent offenders exceeds billions of dollars and much of that money is coming from the taxpayers ' pockets. One way to address this problem is to reverse the current trend of putting first time, non-violent drug offenders in prison and instead sentence these offenders to boot camp and counselling combined with family support.

We live in a time that is obscenely tough on crime compared to years past. It is considered the “tough on crime era”. Most of the prisoners we have locked up in jail are drug offenders. Most people agree that people locked up because of drugs make up too much of our correctional system. Judges need to be able to have more discretion when it comes to these charges, so they can sentence these men and women more fairly, depending on the circumstances. A lot of these men become incarcerated for much too long, some even longer than violent offenses, which is outrageous. Many try to think of solutions to these problems but it is not an easy answer. Build a bigger facility or reduce the jails population is the question Oklahoma is facing right now.

The United States has the world's highest incarceration rate. With five percent of the world's population, our country houses nearly twenty-five percent of the world's reported prisoners. Currently there are approximately two million people in American prisons or jails. Since 1984 the prison population for drug offenders has risen from ten percent to now over thirty percent of the total prison population. Federal prisons were estimated to hold 179,204 sentenced inmates in 2007; 95,446 for drug offenses. State prisons held a total of 1,296,700 inmates in 2005; 253,300 for drug offenses. Sixty percent of the drug offenders in prisons are nonviolent and were purely in prison because of drug offenses (Drug War Facts). The question then arises,

The authors confirm that there exists evidence supporting the fact that many criminal justice processes are unfair and could be described as biased, subjective, inequitable, serving financial morals and grows out of the criminal law. They also conclude from the study that the myth on the criminal justice system being fair is not true from the law making department down to the correctional department.

The importance of criminal justice system in our society goes without verbally expressing. If you take a glance around without those systems in place crime rates would be at an all-time high. Applied to society, criminal justice is the system that guarantees fairness and equal treatment to any underneath its guidance. The agencies directly or indirectly associated with the criminal justice system have an effect on everything that transpires in our everyday lives. Law enforcement ascertains that laws are being obeyed; judges