Criminal Justice Reform Essay

There are three significant issues concerning law enforcement, namely enacting the law, police discretion, and assessment of criminal behavior. Different entities create and enact laws that are specific for the societies those laws represent.

Hillary Clinton said, "We can do better. We cannot ignore the inequalities that persist in our justice system that undermine our most deeply held values of fairness and equality." She was correct in her statement, we need to reform our criminal justice system due to it highly lacking in fairness and equality. 2.38 million Americans are in prison, with another five million on probation or parole. 1 in 31 adults in the United States are in jail, prison, or on probation or parole. (Ferner) The populations of our prison are increasing, while trust in law enforcers is declining, and if we want to solve the inequalities we must reform parts of our criminal justice system. We should reform our criminal justice system to fix the inequalities of mandatory sentences, bail, and we should create reentry programs to assist released inmates stay crime free.

The problems surrounding the criminal justice system range from a variety of issues in different areas of the system. But i believe they are all connected back to a societal problem, that has to do with a outdated philosophical notion “redemptive violence”. I will break down each aspect, which i find most troubling. I will cover problems between policing and peacekeeping, corrections options, and the issue of redemptive violence which is a major issue in the philosophy of the criminal justice system. These issues represent problems that have always been key topics when discussing problems of ethics in criminal justice. Policing and Peacekeeping are roles that have long been debated in usefulness to stopping crime. Corrections comes with the reality of incarceration having little chance of success but more likely a higher rate of recidivism. I well also touch on briefly the issues of attorney discretion. While the issue of redemptive violence ties them all in, As i well show this philosophy is the “root of all evil” in the issues facing the criminal justice system.

The criminal justice system is composed of three parts – Police, Courts and Corrections – and all three work together to protect an individual’s rights and the rights of society to live without fear of being a victim of crime. According to merriam-webster.com, crime is defined as “an act that is forbidden or omission of a duty that is commanded by public law and that makes the offender liable to punishment by that law.” When all the three parts work together, it makes the criminal justice system function like a well tuned machine.

Hillary Clinton said, "We can do better. We can not ignore the inequalities that persist in our justice system that undermine our most deeply held values of fairness and equality." She was correct in her statement, we need to reform our criminal justice system because it is highly lacking in fairness and equality. 2.38 million Americans are in prison, with another five million on probation or parole. 1 in 31 adults in the United States are in jail, prison, or on probation or parole. (Ferner) The populations of our prison are increasing, while trust in law enforcers is declining, and if we want to solve the inequalities we must reform parts of our criminal justice system. We should reform our criminal justice system to fix the inequalities of mandatory sentences, bail, and we should create reentry programs to help released inmates stay crime free.

The United States incarcerates more people, per capita, than any other nation in the entire world. State and local prisons and jails account for about 80% of incarcerations. Although crime rates have decreased since the 1990s, incarceration rates have soared. According to a recent Prison Policy Initiative publication, approximately 2.3 million people are currently “locked up” in the United States. Of these 2.3 million people, 1 in 5 are locked up for a drug related offense. Statistics show that prisoners and felons imprisoned for drug related crimes are disproportionately Black and Hispanic. The mass incarceration issue in the United States derives from the many arrests associated with these “offenses” regarding drugs and the war on drugs.

Punishments are no longer as cruel, the death penalty has been lifted in multiple states, and prisoners are being treated in a more equal manner, but the system should continue to be improved even more to accomplish what needs to be done in order to make the streets safer. Crime has changed from what it once was in the past. Rates have gone up and people appear to be behaving in a more difficult manner. The government cannot afford to continue treating prisoners the way they once did in the past. Reform is not just for the prisoners. Reform is for the people in the communities of America. But there appears to be a few setbacks when it comes to reform, and one of those setbacks is cost. Though according to Gary C. Mohr, “Criminal justice systems can be people-oriented, evidence-based and cost-effective while remaining focused on the safety and well-being of those living in the different communities.” Therefore, cost should not be an excuse as to why the system cannot be reformed, especially when it comes to public safety. In fact, there should be no excuses when it comes to public safety. Prisons should do what must be

No matter how you look at it, the prison system within the US holds too many people without valid reason. The last decade has seen a lot of states cut down on crime while also cutting down on their prison populations. In the years between 1999 and 2012, for example, both New York and New Jersey cut their prison populations by 30%, and crime rates fell “faster than they did nationally.”

From the article titled “The Punishment Imperative : The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America” by Todd Clear, and Natasha Frost, it goes into full detail on why the incarceration rate is failing. America incarcerates way more people that far exceeds the rate of our top allies. “With just under ten million people incarcerated in prisons and jails worldwide, America incarcerated more than one-fifth of the world’s total prison population.” (The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America, Page 17) The United States now is in the lead in the world of incarceration, that beats countries like Russia, Rwanda, St. Kitts & Nevis, and Cuba, and the country has four times the rate of European nations. Maintaining the prisons came with a staggering price. In 2006, jurisdictions would spend around $68 billion on correctional supervision. They went from spending from $9 billion in 1982 to an 660 percent increase of $68 billion in 2006. Around the same time period, direct judicial expenditures has increased by 503 percent and the policing expenditures increased by 420 percent. The huge majority of the correctional dollars, with was around 90 percent, went to stabilize mass incarceration. “With a national average annual price tag of almost $29,000 per person per year of incarceration, it cost taxpayers at least ten times more to incarcerate a person than it would have cost to maintain him or her under supervision in the community.” (The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America, Page 21) In general, this is an issue because the taxpayers are forced to pay a lot of money to maintain a person in prison. Locking up a serious violent offender is justified, however, for thousands of lower-level inmates, it costs taxpayers more than preventing

Laws like three strikes, mandatory minimum sentencing, powder and crack cocaine disparities, and others, must be eradicated. The prisons are overfilled with non-violent, victimless offenders living environments that are overcrowded, in poor condition, and exploitive of prisoners’ lack of basic rights. This is neither conducive to the betterment of prisoners, nor the improvement of their life trajectories once they leave. Additionally, most drug laws produce racially disparate outcomes, furthering stereotypes and the inherent criminalization of men of color. In the long run, America must move toward alternative sentencing programs for low-level and non-violent offenders that issue penalties that are actually proportionate with real public safety

The mandatory minimum sentencing laws were passed as an effort to combat the war on drugs, with the anticipation that it would lock away high-level drug lords and discourage others from dealing drugs. However, the law requires judges to issue unwarranted, lengthy sentences without regard to the facts of the case. As a result, the law has overpopulated our prisons with nonviolent, low-level drug offenders, while the high-level drug lords are still free. This is because of the practice that one’s sentence can be reduced if they testify against others, and the high-level drug offenders have more to offer than those on the lower level. The Smarter Sentencing

Jacoby claims that America uses too many crimes for someone to go to prison, “Commit murder; go to prison. Sell cocaine; go to prison. Kite checks; go to prison.” (Jacoby, 1997, P. 1) There is a lot more people, with misdemeanor cases, that does not need to be in prison and that it cost a lot of money for prisons to tend for an inmate. In 1997 Jacoby states that, “the price of keeping criminals in cages is appalling -- a common estimate is $30,000 per inmate per year.”

The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration. It spends more resources on its prison system than any other nation and has the largest prison population in the world. Between 1980 and 2016, the number of inmates in U.S. state and federal prisons increased from 320,000 to more than 1.5 million. This corresponds to a change in the incarceration rate from 139 to 450 prisoners per 100,000 residents. Most lawmakers tend to believe that incarceration is a necessary construct needed to reform criminals to properly incorporate them into society. They insist imprisonment reduces crime rates through incapacitation and deterrence. Thus, it is not surprising that expenditures on corrections increased as states built new prisons,

From the Oval Office to the campaign trail to the streets of Chicago, Baltimore, and cities across the country, criminal justice reform was a prominent topic of discussion in 2015. But will all of that talk result in any action in 2016?

During the mid-1980’s an epidemic of cocaine and crack swept the nation leaving many wondering what could be done to eliminate this problem that reached everywhere from small town middle America to the larger metropolitan areas. It has always been the common acceptance that by putting more offenders in jail, crime statistics will decrease. This belief led congress to enact the anti-drug abuse act of 1986. At first, it was believed that this seemed to work, due to there being a “5% drop in crime in the 1990’s” (Chettiar). While according to various newer statistics that have tracked these changes since the early 1980’s, these mandatory minimums may have no bearing on the decline in crime. In fact, there are many theories on this ranging from the “Abortion filter” to the trendiest: “The lead hypothesis “ (Goldstein). There is no argument about whether or not offenders get punished if you break the law; it has become an argument of how offenders are sentenced. First time nonviolent offenders should be penalized by some means, although it ought to be proportionate to the crime. “Jailing nonviolent offenders as the first option actually is counterproductive in many cases and can lead to more serious crime” (Levin). There are many alternatives to jail or prison for a nonviolent offender, prosecutors must get past their internment ratio, and have more confidence on the other options to jail such as drug rehabilitation, work programs, and