Do You Agree With 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.

In the United States incarceration is inevitable for most americans, this dilemma has created mass incarceration throughout the country. "Almost 30 years ago there were over

Does the criminal justice system work? This is a very interesting question indeed? Many proponents of system believe it to be a deterrent to manner would be criminals across the United States. However, many pundits point to high profile cases of Trayvon Martin or Emmett Till to show the inequities inherent within the criminal justice system (Crowe, 2012). Proponents for the criminal justice system believe that it is a deterrent for others who are thinking about committing egregious crimes in the future. They also believe it provides closure for those who have been innocently wronged by the death of a loved one. These individuals usually believe in the principle of, "An eye for an eye," in regards to life. The general principle that is fundamental to the argument for the criminal justice system is retribution. The belief is that all guilty individuals must be punished. The punishment should correspond to the severity of the crime in all instances irrespective of the circumstances that govern the act. In the case of murder, the individual should be punished with the death penalty. This argument states that real justice requires people to suffer for their wrongdoing, and to suffer in a way appropriate for the crime (Gardner 1978). These supporters believe is ethical as the crime and the punishment correspond with each other based on severity.

Mass incarceration has been an issue in the United States since the start of the War on Drugs, because of the political agenda attached to the “tough on crime” regimen thousands of people have suffered as a consequence. The solution to this is one that can only be possibly solved by approaching through several angles. The ten steps presented by Michael Tonry, are an innovative and have merit to some extent. However, mass incarceration results from more than unjust sentencing laws, which is his main focus. If ever we are to resolve the issue, society and the criminal justice system must come together to completely reevaluate what we consider to be “tough on crime” and redefine the purpose of prisons, strictly punishment or rehabilitation. The focus has to shift from harsh sentencing, stigma, racial discrimination to a basic form of rehabilitation and reduction of the prison system in general. The criminal justice system has to do what they are actually meant to do and focus on rehabilitation measures, and when possible completely stop interaction with the prison system all together.

In, “The Caging of America”, by Adam Gopnik explains the problems in the in the American criminal justice system focusing more on the prison system. Some of the struggles that Gopnik states in his article are mass incarceration, crime rate, and judges giving long inappropriate sentencings to those with minor crimes. He demonstrates that inmates are getting treated poorly than helping them learn from their actions. Using facts and statistics, Gopnik makes his audience realize that there is an urgent need of change in the American prison system. The main idea of Gopnik’s article is that the prison system needs to improve its sentencing laws because prisons are getting over crowed. Gopnik’s argument is valid because there is a problem in the sentencing laws that has caused a malfunction in the prison system as a whole.

People in The United States have been affected by the prison system, it has saved many lives, but on the other hand, people have prosecuted for minor crimes, to end up spending a lot of time in jail, which breaks apart families for far too long, it also creates a big rift between the people of this fine nation and their distrust of the law. Back in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan has issued a law that has cut funding for the mental institutions in the United states as called the deinstitutionalization of mental health, and to show ways of how we can bring our mental health system into place. Also in the same era laws have been put in place to put harsher laws on drug offenders called mandatory minimum sentencing, some people like non-violent, first-time drug offender are being treated the same way as a drug lord, and a way that we can fix that is push laws in congress to loosen minimum sentencing. Not to forget to mention the death penalty, how tax payers are wasting our money on keep prisoners on death row. Having a poor mental health system, strict mandatory minimum sentencing, racial bias in our prisons, and death penalty laws has led people to enter our prison system wrongfully. By fixing those rules we can help our society grow, and achieve greatness by doing right to our prison system.

Prison should change just like how modern society changed throughout the years to better it. Inmates are supposed to be put into these systems in other to go through rehabilitation.

Mass incarceration is a serious topic within out country. The main issue to be addressed in this paper is the mass incarceration and it’s effect on the individual, as well as their families and communities. The United States has the largest number of men and women behind bars than any other country. Also, because of the excessive incarceration rate, many prisons are over populated and lack resources and support to help the inmates.

Mass incarceration is a problem around the world, but nowhere else is it more plague than the United States of America, which has one-fourth of its population locked up behind bars. The cause for this problem in the U.S. can be blamed on many things, the "war on drug", private prison facility, tough laws, and mandatory sentencing. However, there are programs that are in place to help reduce the number of individuals in prison, like the "Texas experiment (Justice reinvestment)", and other rehabilitation programs. But those efforts alone cant fix the problem. To decrease the mass incarceration in the U.S. a new approach must be taken, such as; eliminate prison time for low-level crimes, "the three-strike law”, expand parole and probation, and reform private prison.

The United States is home to five percent of the world population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoner. There must be a change to the current prison system which is doing more harm than good in American society and must be reformed. Reasons for this claim are that American prisons are too overcrowded with inmates, which creates a dangerous and unhuman environment. The cost to run a prison has gotten too expensive for tax payer pockets, and lastly the prison system is more as a punishment instead of rehabilitation with about sixteen percent of inmates most serious offence being drug charges. Prisons fall short of reforming criminals and the government is obligated to completely reform the prison systems in the United States.

Over the past few decades, the United States has witnessed a huge surge in the number of individuals in jail and in prison. Evidence suggests the mass imprisonment policy from the last 40 years was a horrible catastrophe. Putting more people in prison not only ruined lives, it disrupted families, prevented ex-prisoners to find housing, to get an education, or even a good job. Regrettably, the United States has a higher percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is increasing exponentially. The expense produced by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. Although people are incarcerated for a number of reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. By researching mass incarceration, I hope to get society to understand that incarcerating an individual not only effects the family, but we will look at the long term consequences on society and how the United States can remain safe and, at the same time, undo much of the damage that results from large-scale imprisonment.

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.

Mass Incarceration is a predicament in the U.S. because in the land of the free, there are more than two million people in prison. Prisons are homes to the majority of twenty-two percent of the U.S. population. The U.S. has a massive incarceration rate, seven hundred and sixteen per every one hundred thousand. The U.S. makes five percent of the world’s population and the third country in which most people live in but number one incarcerating humans.

However, the U.S. criminal justice system has already reduced crime; the system works so a reform is not truly needed. If it is not broken, then why fix it? The current system of imprisoning a large number of

The nations prison system must be changed because of major problems with the system such as overcrowding and the fact that early release programs do not work. Building more jails is expensive and does not solve anything. These problems can be solved by giving prisoners no chance for parole