Criminal Justice System: Article Analysis

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.

The Criminal Justice system, created by governments in order to make sure that no laws are being violated and to penalize individuals that violate the laws. In the United States there are many criminal justice systems. Each system works based on their jurisdiction. For example; city, county, federal or state. Every jurisdiction is different. They all have different ways of regulating certain processes. They also have their own laws. In the criminal justice system there are two main systems; state and federal. These two systems consists of five parts; corrections, courts, prosecution, law enforcement, and defense attorneys. Each of these five parts hold an extremely important role. Prosecutions consist of prosecutors who are lawyers the represent

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.

This skepticism is addressed when she recalls the way she reacted to first discovering mass incarceration with the same response that the reader would have. In the anecdote she recalls reading the words “THE DRUG WAR IS THE NEW JIM CROW” (3) and reacting in disbelief similarly to how the reader would at first sight. She recalls thinking that “…it really doesn’t help to make such an absurd comparison…” emphasizing how “…even to people, like me, who spent most of their waking hours fighting for justice…” (3) this system appeared almost invisible to her. Alexander is clearly much more educated in the functions of the criminal justice system and the problems that affect the black community. Therefore the emphasis on how this can even slip past a professional whose job it is to understand the system, shows the reader that it isn’t unreasonable to react this way towards her thesis. In essence she is telling the reader that it may seem far-fetched, but to give her the benefit of the doubt and let her explain. By appealing to our emotional reaction she doesn’t come off simply as someone with radical conspiracy theories, but as a fair evaluator who has come to a conclusion after being in the same position the reader

There are more people incarcerated in the United States of America than any other country in the world willing to count their inmates (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2016). How can this be? Foremost, the criminal justice system in the United States of America (which is made up of the police, the courts, and the corrections) is not working toward reducing mass incarceration the way it should be. The criminal justice system is set up strategically to accomplish two goals: to bring in money and to gain power. The byproducts of achieving these two goals are mass incarceration, ethnic and racial profiling, and minimal justice. The system needs to change its goals to: reducing crime and doing justice. The police, the courts, and the correctional system all feed off of one another and affect each other. Therefore, if real change is going to be made, it needs to happen in all three branches of the criminal justice system. A system that seems to be working well is in Norway. Norway’s criminal justice system does not look like America’s system. The criminal justice system in Norway has different philosophies concerning crime, justice, and the corrections. "We don 't look at our inmates as criminals, but rather as regular people who have committed a crime." (Skulberg, 2010, p. 73) This is a quote from a Norwegian prison guard giving an example of the ideology in Norway. In order for the United States to reduce crime and to have true justice, first, the policing model needs to change

Jane B. Spott who is part of the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology in Ryerson University and Anthony N. Dobb, who is part of the Centre of Criminology at the University of Toronto, collided to examine the gender treatment with in youths under the bail court system. Their examination consisted of 279 bail cases offered by a court in Toronto, through the extent of five years. After their study, they found that girls were significantly more likely than boys to be given the opportunity of attending a treatment program, especially if the offence was non-violent. This article offers a great perspective and information between the different treatments females and male youth encounter, when being held for bail. Some of the differences

“13th” is a documentary directed by Ava DuVernay. It is named after the 13th Amendment to the American Constitution which outlawed slavery unless you are being punished for a crime. The film focuses on racism in the United States’ criminal justice system. According to DuVernay, the part of the 13th Amendment that says “unless you are being punished for a crime” is a loophole that has been used to allow slavery to continue in the early days during reconstruction and even now. This loophole coupled with the criminalization of the black man has led to mass incarceration of minorities. The United States which has only five percent of the world’s population but has twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners. The prison population of the United States has exploded from 300, 000 in 1972 to 2.3 million now. Each component of the criminal justice system, law enforcement, the courts and corrections, has contributed to the perpetuation of slavery through its contribution to mass incarceration.

In the United States of America, there is a system referred to as the criminal justice system. This system assists in managing crime and helps to control society through rules and regulations. If these guidelines are disobeyed, there are consequences that follow. These consequences consist of being arrested by law enforcement, going to court to pay a fine or to be sentenced, and even going to jail or prison (Bohm & Haley, 2014).

There are many references in Alexander’s book concerned with being “tough on crime” this is what makes her argument meaningful. The three references that most struck me most are political in nature. The first is the southern strategy used by Nixon which was purposely aimed at racists and low-income Caucasians. African Americans were painted as the undeserving poor or the “Welfare Queens”. The second would be Regan administration and his war on drugs which was in place before crack cocaine hit the streets. I think it is funny because you never see anyone with a boat in the hood which begs the question, how was did that begin. Third, the Clinton administration, with the execution of Ricky Ray Rector (this made me sick) as well as allowing public housing to turn away anyone with a criminal history.

This research paper discusses the issues of people who suffer from mental illness being placed in jails instead of receiving the necessary treatment they need. The number of inmates serving time in jail or prison who suffer from mental illness continues to rise. In 2015 the Bureau of Justice reported that sixty five percent of state prisoners and fourth five percent of federal prisoners suffered from mental conditions such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Individuals who suffer from these problems require special mental health treatment for their needs to be met. Many of our prisons and jails lack the necessary resources to care for these inmates and because of that inmates who do not receive the treatment they need are at a higher risk of becoming a repeat offender. Despite the research and findings that show that the criminal justice system is unable to deal with issues dealing with the mentally ill there has been limited solutions put in place. Given the challenges the criminal justice system faces it is important to address the problem and come up with better solutions. This research paper will discuss the various techniques and solutions that scholars have propped and their effect on the issue of mentally ill criminals and how the criminal justice system should approach the problem.

Chapter 11 Article 1 The Supreme Court could soon deliver a crushing blow to the Sixth Amendment

Garland (2001), view on “the criminal justice system in America was created to keep communities safe, to respect and restore victims, and to return offenders who leave prison to be self-sufficient and law-abiding. Treatment simply did not work either by therapy or broader social programs and became is a monumental failure that our states and nation can no longer afford” (p.61)

The official statistics are particularly useful in that they have been collected since 1857 and so provide us with an excellent historical overview of changing trends over time. They also give us a completely accurate view of the way that the criminal justice system processes offenders through arrests, trials and punishments. However, official statistics cannot be taken simply at their face value. They only show crimes which are reported to and recorded by official agencies such as the police. They account for only those crimes which are recognised as such by victims and those detected by the police. Sociologists have argued that there exists a ‘dark figure’ of unrecorded crime. This may be due to social agencies ignoring crimes committed by the ruling class such as white-collar and corporate crime and their views and stereotypes that they have against certain individuals, such as the working-class and ethnic minorities. Arguably, another reason why police recorded may be seem as inaccurate is due to the increased problem of reporting issues. There is evidence that a number of individuals choose not to report a crime on the basis that they have little faith in social agencies or that they feel that the crime may not be serious enough. Positivists favour the official statistics as they believe that they are functional for society, whereas interactionists and Marxists go against the police the statistics as they argue that they are bias. In this essay, I will discuss the

The criminal justice system divides into three major components. They divide into law enforcement, the courts, and the corrections. The law enforcement consists of local and state enforcement while courts are the state and federal with corrections using probation and community corrections. All three might divide separately but equally balance out the criminal justice system. The three main goals of the criminal justice system are to control the crime, to prevent crime, and to provide and maintain justice.

The criminal justice system is a complex and often uncoordinated system that operates by enforcing the law and seeking justice across countless jurisdictions. It is comprised of many separate agencies including agencies at the federal, state, and local level. Each agency has its own function and goals while operating at different levels of government. The agencies also represent different concerns and values of the public, creating a fragmented system rather than a monolithic, unified system. A monolithic system would deny the reality that justice in a rural area might not be justice in an urban area. To create a unified system would require our complex society to determine a common set of values and goals (Wright, 1981). It is seemingly impossible that a common set of goals or values would ever be agreed upon by the entire society. Therefore a range of goals and values are represented throughout the separate yet intertwined agencies that comprise the criminal justice system.