preview

Criminal Justice Approach Vs Public Health Approach Essay

Decent Essays
Open Document

Criminal justice approach and public health approach are at best understanding violence coherently. They both share similarities and differences that complement each other’s. They viewed violence as a threat to human and share the main direction of protecting humans from violence and preventing violence. Moore (1995) created five dimensions to understand violence, namely, the problem, cause, intervention, resources, and key values. Criminal justice approach focuses on the individual loss resulted from the crime whereas public health approach views violence as a problem to the whole community. The victims are not limited to the person who suffered from the violent behavior, the violence will spread to the community (Moore, 1995). In addition, …show more content…

Public health approach relatively looks at violent acts from a society as a whole, rather than individual basis. The advantage of using criminal justice approach is that punishment defines what violates social rules. For individuals to In order to avoid legal punishment, they are supposed to behave according to the social norms. Compared to criminal justice approach with public health approach, criminal justice approach lacks the power of prevention. Many individuals who engaged in criminal violence are often at rage without rational thinking. The idea to avoid punishment in criminal justice approach system becomes less effective when the involvement of logical thinking is low, thus increase the chance of engaging illegal behavior. On the other hand, the public health approach is being introduced into reducing risk factors of violence as well as increasing protective factors. Given that violence is not only a problem between offenders and victims, this also related to the whole society that has the responsibility to reduce the probability of future crimes and restore social harmony. The disadvantage of public health approach is that this way of prevention program requires a certain period of time to effectively reduce violent

Get Access