Criminal Justice Assignment

There are three components for the criminal justice system is the police, the courts and then corrections. The police enforce the law by apprehending offenders, investigating crimes and also trying to prevent crimes among other things. The courts conduct fair and impartial trials; they determine criminal cases and decide if an offender is guilty or innocent along with many other things. Corrections carry out sentences that have been decided by the courts, they protect the public, and they rehabilitate; reform and reintegrate convicted offenders back into society (2011 CJi Interactive)..

As a whole, literature on the topic of mental illness in our country and specifically in our criminal justice system had a reoccurring theme. There are millions of individuals who suffer from mental illness but are improperly being handled through the criminal justice system. These individuals are deemed criminal just by their acts and their mental health state is not overly examine. Jails and prisons are being overcrowded. State prisons and jails are overpopulated anywhere from 15 to 32% (Spending Money in All the Wrong Places: Jails & Prisons).

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 shutdown of state mental hospitals and lack of available financial and institutional resources force mentally ill people to the United States Judicial System for mental health. Every year thousands of people are arrested for various crimes and they are sent to jail. Sixteen percent of these people have some type of mental health problem (Public Broadcasting System , 2001). When we consider that the United States has the largest incarcerated population in the world at 2.2 million, this number is staggering (Anasseril E. Daniel, 2007). This is about 1% of the entire population of the United States. There are many reasons as to why the situation has taken such a bad turn and when the history of the treatment of mental illness is examined one can see how the situation developed into the inhumane disaster it is today.

The recent increase in emergency 9-1-1 calls involving mentally ill persons has heightened the awareness of the Criminal Justice System. Across the nation, law enforcement encounters with mentally ill persons have become more frequent, and the use of deadly force against mentally ill persons has increased. Since the deinstitutionalization of the mental health system, law enforcement officials have been tasked with controlling deviant and sometimes criminal behavior of persons who suffer from mental illness. As a result, law enforcement agencies have implemented crisis intervention training (CIT) and diversion tactics due to the numerous challenges faced when serving the mentally ill. Major deficiencies in the mental health system and State legislations have hindered progressive efforts towards assisting mentally ill persons. With the dramatic consequences associated with untreated mental illness, it is certain that law enforcement officers will experience an encounter requiring knowledge, specialized training, and the ability to build collaborative partnerships.

The United States criminal justice system has been continuously increasing incarceration among individuals who suffer from a sever mental illness. As of 2007 individuals with severe mental illness were over twice as likely to be found in prisons than in society (National Commission of Correctional Health Care, 2002, as cited in Litschge &Vaughn, 2009). The offenses that lead to their commitment in a criminal facility, in the majority of cases, derive from symptoms of their mental illness instead of deviant behavior. Our criminal justice system is failing those who would benefit more from the care of a psychiatric rehabilitation facility or psychiatric hospital by placing them in correctional facilities or prisons.

One of the programs they review is the Multisystemic Therapy (MST) program. To prevent juveniles from repeating the same crimes they would keep them in the community instead of locking them away in jail. The juveniles would have family therapy, individual therapy, group therapy, and other types of support. As a result, “MST participants had a rate of recidivism of 22.1 percent…the individual therapy group which had a recidivism rate of 71.4 percent…those that participated only temporarily in the MST program also had a reduced recidivism rate of 46.6 percent compared to the control delinquent group MST participants had a significantly lower recidivism rate” (May, Osmond, and Billick 298). This programed showed that like the J RIP the delinquent juvenile who get help from their community are more likely to not go back to crime. The review also mentions, “one of the main goals of MST is to decrease the juvenile delinquents association with other delinquent youths, while facilitating familial support through communication and guided problem solving” (298). Because most criminals gain support from other criminals and learn new ways to commit crimes from them by keeping the influence away it shows the juveniles that that’s not the best route to

Mental health courts are a resource given to prisoners who would normally be put in prison if they had not decided to join this special program. Mental health court is a court run program by the district attorney’s office in some counties. This program is based off of traditional court room structure but is also paired with community services. Mental health courts solve a lot of different problems within our criminal justice system. The first problem it solves is the

Wood discusses how this program is still successful without using too much money in three different points. She begins with the first point that many of the costs that would normally be payed for through state and local governments are no longer going to be payed for that way. Instead, Medicaid will be paying for it and covering all expenses of the program. Second, Wood claims, “recidivism reductions should allow jurisdictions to be confident in planning that they will reduce their justice system costs by adopting this approach.” Wood believes that the evidence of reduction in low level offenses and the financial aid they must be receiving from not having to pay for many offenders is enough to make up for the expenses of this new approach. Third, Wood believes that the attention this program will be getting from its amazing abilities to help the lives of so many struggling individuals will allow it to get even more funding. She stated, “Local jurisdictions may be willing to invest in this approach as a better strategy for improving public order and community health than the status quo offers.” Wood considers the probability of LEAD being even more funded because of proof that it has done so in the past. The city of Seattle, in response to high criminal rates on the streets, has already funded the expansion of LEAD. With that

Fred is drunk and driving his dad’s car. Fred is a 21 year old student at Columbia College. Fred rams into a parked car at 10th and Rogers. Thinking no one saw him; Fred moves his car and parks it on an adjacent lot. He sprints to his dorm room in Miller Hall. A neighbor saw the wreck and Fred running to the dorm. Police are called and they arrive ten minutes after the wreck. The officers see several empty beer cans and a bottle of tequila (half full) in the front seat. The tags are traced to Fred’s dad, who is called by police. Dad says that Fred is a student at Columbia College. Police run Fred's record and determine that he has two prior DWIs within the past five years. The third DWI in 10 years is a felony. Police contact

We are aware that many people find themselves in jail for crimes they did not commit. Beyond this, we believe that everyone deserves a fair right of hearing before justice is served. Our view of our service extends beyond our client to their loved ones. We know the stigma, trauma and pain that can come on anyone when their loved ones are incarcerated. We keep things well worked to ensure that their rights of freedom are upheld.

Jails have been described as “de facto mental hospitals” because they have filled the void created when state psychiatric hospitals began closing in the early 1960s through a process known as deinstitutionalization. Supporters of deinstitutionalization thought the process would help individuals suffering from a mental illness live more self-reliantly while being treated by community mental health programs. However, the federal government did not provide the necessary funding to meet the mounting demand for these programs, leaving numerous untreated. Individuals with serious mental illnesses are often poor or homeless and are likely to have substance abuse problems. Therefore, when they are left untreated, they are more likely to commit minor crimes that have been the focus of law enforcement in recent years (H. Richard Lamb and Linda Weinberger).

“Conspiracy is a crime involving an agreement and a target offense”. (Russo, 2009, p. 1)

For a start, this article introduces a reactive intervention by further investigating the penal system and attempts to explain/correlate the overrepresentation of individuals diagnosed with mental health/illness throughout the criminal justice systems in the United States. The article focuses on the comprehensive criminal justice continuum, ranging from all the criminal justice settings, for example, police, courts, and incarceration, to a variety of community-based settings and/or supervision, such as, probation, parole, and reentry to name a few. The article further goes into explaining the person-in-environment theory and suggest that the underlying problem(s) stem not only from a mental health/illness diagnosis, but can be further intensified

Because Newark Community Solution has an in and outpatient counseling and treatment center, our challenge is to found the safest choice to a therapeutic environment. Certain contextual elements are required to figure out the best options. This trial like most shows the that the courts and justice system do not have a set requirement to help mental patients. All too often, those individual are released to the street, without the proper treatment, many found themselves back in courts repeating the same crimes. It is like a triangle, the mental illness defendant fails to receive help, the courts fail to deploy treatment and resources that are effective and the community fails to acknowledge the seriousness of mental