Criminal Justice vs. Community Justice Essay

Restorative Justice, according to Google, is a system of criminal justice that focuses on the rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with victims and the community at large. It does not have a place in our society for several reasons. It is ineffective because it doesn’t punish people, doesn’t change them, and makes the situation even worse in most cases.

Restorative Justice will not make the basic prejudices on our society worse than what they are, however restorative justice should restore synchronization within the community or society as a whole through based on discussion of the offender’s underlying problems and not to reoffend against the victim in particular nor any member of society, and what charges the offender may face if he re-offends “Restorative justice is deliberative justice; it is about people deliberating over the consequences of crimes, and how to deal with them and prevent their recurrence” (Braithwaite, 1998, p. 438).

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.

Today our world is filled with crime. The people committing these crimes must have a consequence for their illegal actions. The system in place to keeping everything fair and safe is called the criminal justice system. This was put in place to ensure there is fairness and justice served to people who break the laws set up by the government.

The criminal justice system is a used to protect our society from those who try to harm it. Departments such as courts, and police officers study the behavior of criminals; they want our communities to be safe. When a crime is committed these departments work together to protect the rights of our society and our own. As stated in the textbook, a crime is the “Conduct in violation of the criminal laws of a state, the federal government, or a local jurisdiction for which there is no legally acceptable justification or excuse” (Schmalleger). Our system is a balanced system, there are times where have to think about our own rights as one person, but there are also times where we have to include other people. We must think of our society and

Restorative justice is rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with victims and the community. Restorative justice programs are conferences held to enable offenders, victims and community members to meet face to face to discuss the crime that was done and determine the best way to repair the harm. Usually when offenders hear their victims describe the effect the crime had on them, they often feel sympathy and express remorse. Restorative justice conferences give the victims and community member’s justice and satisfaction. I believe the system is good because it gives criminals time to try and better themselves and try to change, and also gives justice and closure to the victims.

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.

Community justice broadly refers to different aspects of crime prevention and justice activities that include the quality of life as a goal for the community. Recent initiatives include community crime prevention, community policing, community defense, community prosecution, community courts, and restorative justice sanctioning systems. Community justice prioritizes different types of offenders to determine the sanctioning for the victims and to ensure the offender is ready to enter back into their community in good standing with no problems. In other words, they do not want them back in the community if they feel they have not learned their lesson or have been rehabilitated. Community justice’s main focus is to promote public safety and like I had said earlier to ensure that the quality of life of the community is in good standing. Community justice includes different ways of interpreting information about police, courts, and corrections that highlights problem-solving techniques. There is a strategy behind community justice such as including restorative justice practices and processes. They also include both adult and juvenile offenders to create a safer community rather than doing things for the offenders or actually to them. Community justice wants to prevent victimization to help establish public safety. It also places a high priority on the wants,

Its most commonly known definition was provided by Marshall in 1996, that describes restorative justice as a process where both parties; victims and offenders, work together to restore, resolve and deal with the after effects of the offence and future ramifications (as cited in Van Camp & Wemmers, 2013). The concept of restorative justice originally derived from various indigenous and pre-industrial western justice practices, however, in the 1970's it begun to appear in modern times and was then developed as a reference to describe victim-offender programs that were developed in North America (Strang, 2001). Restorative Justice approaches spread across the world in the 1990's, where many countries such as Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, began introducing these approaches as alternatives in their criminal justice systems (Braithwaite, 1999). The concept of restorative justice usually involves victim and offender direct participation and is conducted in the form of conferences or mediation. This is where both parties; the victims and offenders, come together fact-to-face in one location, alongside a facilitator, police and support people, and work out together the consequences of the offenders actions and the

Criminal justice is defined as the system of law enforcement that is directly involved in apprehending, prosecuting, defending, sentencing, and punishing those who are suspected or convicted of Committing a crime. Jews and Christians consider to be a product of divine inspiration and a record of the relationship between GOD and humans. Criminal justice is a process, involving a series of steps beginning with a person committing an alleged crime, a criminal investigation and ending with the release of a convicted offender from correctional supervision. Rules and decision making are at the center of the process.

Restorative justice is based on the principle that criminal behavior injures not only the victim but also the community and the offender, and any effort to resolve these problems caused by criminal behavior should involve all of these parties. Common restorative justice initiatives are victim-offender mediation, circle sentencing, community holistic healing programs, and family group conferences. A key to all these responses to criminal behavior is to address not only the offender, but all parties involved including the victim and their families, offender's family, community citizens, and even the police officers themselves.

Restorative justice is a system of criminal justice that focuses on the rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with victims and the community at large. Understanding the definition may be really hard to understand, however when we put it in a different form that many can understand it comes down to repair, encounter and transformation. Our book describes restorative justice in three parts as accountability, community protection and competency development (Sieh, 2006).

The current conventional criminal justice process takes a more punitive, ‘retributive’ view of criminal justice. The retributive approach has become grounded into our current system of justice whereby it intends to establish blame on offenders and make them repay their debt to society by inflicting a form of punishment (Ball, 2000). The general stance in relation to the ‘retributive system’ is that its more offender-oriented and its focus is the past rather than the future (Griffiths, 1999). In addition to establishing blame, it tends to give less attention to future-oriented concerns such as how to repair the damages caused by the crime and how future recurrences can be prevented (Young, M, 1999). It has been argued that the existing ‘retributive system’ places excessive emphasis on the past whilst being less constructive towards victims, offenders and the society, as a result youths tend to get labelled as criminal from an early age leading in some cases to a life delinquent offending behaviour (Braithwaite, 1989). At present a crime is viewed as a social conflict within society, and so a crime is perceived an offense against society rather

This paper will describe my understanding of the text and of the lectures provided in the class. Unlike most classes, where I understood only my view of the text, this class was geared so each student would understand each other’s view. 3 An organization is a collective that has some boundary and internal structure that engages in activities related to some complex set of goals. Members of organizations attempt to meet their psychological, ego and emotional needs within the organization. Criminal justice organizations are particularly unique compared to other public or private sector organizations because of the governmental granted authority. Management within these organizations can be defined as the process by

Restorative or Community Justice is a fairly new concept. It is aimed more at repairing damages caused by the crime to the victim(s) and the community involved. In this method the victim lays out conditions for the offender and what is necessary to help repair any losses. The community provides assistance to help restore the offender to the community. Some say that this method can be dangerous and bypasses certain safeguards.