Feeley investigates the expensive routine that lower criminal court defendants face on their way to adjudication on a daily basis. Feeley examined the records from the lower criminal courts in New Haven, Connecticut through informal interviews with defendants waiting for their cases. Suspects detained in custody anywhere from a couple of hours to multiple days until their disposition are automatically at a disadvantage. Research has shown that if one is unable to come up with the financial resources to post their bond they are more likely to be convicted (30 percent to 49 percent) than those already out of custody (Feeley, Malcolm 205 1979). Many of these delayed releases are due to police imposed mandates during the charging process. A large
The thought that the mood of the bail commissioner determines whether a person’s bail is set high or low is mind boggling, as well as reflects the lack of proper education in professionalism and ethics. Bail commissioners should understand that the pretrial detention has a negative impact not only on the defendants, but as well as their families. Additionally, high bails for low income defendants drain the system by using tax payer dollars, as well as overcrowding jails.
Gonnerman appeals to the logic of the reader by following Browder’s anecdotes with supportive statistics and investigative findings from reputable sources. She uses the citation of evidence to give weight and help expand on the context of Browder’s experiences. This includes the excerpts of statistical information from studies, such as “in 2011 seventy-four percent of felony cases in the Bronx were older than six months”, which reinforces Browder’s personal experience with the Bronx court system and also clearly indicates that Browder’s circumstance is not an uncommon one. This also includes the citation of the court index card’s text, reading the list of the preposterous amount of delays requested by the prosecutor, which provides tangible and explicit evidence to the reader of the dysfunctionality of the Bronx’s court system, and also helps the reader empathize with Browder’s frustration.
Forcelli explains his displeasure of our broken criminal justice system when he states, “The sad part is that getting an innocent man out of jail is way, way, way harder than putting a guilty man in jail.” When detectives are constantly pressured to close cases and produce high conviction rates it can cause in accuracies in convictions. Garry’s case is a perfect example of how a case with minimal evidence can result in an innocent getting placed in prison. Garry has sat in prison for over 20 years waiting to appeal his case and plead his innocence. The ease of convicting an innocent man should be consistent with difficulty of exonerating an innocent man. In Garry’s case he awaits a decision from a judge where the judge has three options, to exonerate him, grant a retrial, or
The criminal justice field faces the challenges of getting criminals off the streets, and prosecuting them, while using limited funds and manpower. Citizens expect results, and want to feel safe when they are in their own neighborhood. On the other hand, citizens in our democratic country expect people to be treated fairly, and feel the need to make sure that no innocent people are wrongly sent to jail. It is a balancing act of keeping the community safe on one hand, and on the other, making sure that no one’s rights are violated. It is like being told to do a job, but then having all these rules and obstacles you have to navigate around in order to do your job. The following paper is a study of the differences between due
Mass Incarceration is a growing dilemma in the United States that populates our prisons at an alarming rate. Michelle Alexander is a professor at Ohio State University and a graduate of Stanford law school. She states in her award winning book, The new Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness “In less than thirty years, the U.S. penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million” (Alexander, 6). These young men and women are unable to afford a decent lawyer because they come from such a poverty-stricken background. Men and women are at a financial disadvantage in our justice system. Lawyers and attorneys cost a fortune and most people can just simply not afford them. Others plead to their charges because
Corrections are an important part of the criminal justice system and they work in concert with law enforcement and the courts. Citizens in the United States expect criminals to be monitored, with some in secured facilities, so they will not fear of becoming continual victim of crime. To illustrate this expectation further, there are 2.5 million individuals on probation or parole and 1 million individuals in jails or prisons (Morris & Tonry, 2013, p. 370). However, does every individual confined in jails and prisons still need to be there or is there a better way to deal with certain special prison populations? Due to the large number of prisoners within the correctional system, certain special populations of inmates do not receive the rehabilitation or care needed to successfully reintegrate back into society. Additionally, these special populations create an undue burden on the correctional system in terms of financial costs associated with their confinement. There are changes that can be made to the criminal justice system to accommodate special populations of inmates. This paper will explore the alternative
For the past 50 years, America’s criminal justice system has encountered several significant changes dealing with courts and policing. According to Marion and Oliver (2006), the historical Supreme Court rulings like Mapp v. Ohio and Miranda v. Arizona mold the way courts and law enforcement handle individuals charged with committing crimes. This paper will discuss the evolution of courts and law enforcement reflects the diverse and changing need for today’s population which is first importance, the urgency for cooperation and communication among criminal justice agencies and law enforcement within the country. Individuals must
Mandatory sentencing has been a big driver in the large population of incarcerated individuals in the United States. District attorneys are more aggressive in how they file charges against the arrestee. While the country has seen a decline in crime, new
people in there are people waiting for their trial. The average delay between arrest and
One of the causes of prison overcrowding comes about because of the expansion rate of arrest and more noteworthy utilization of detainment. The criminal justice system is detaining more individuals to prison for a more drawn out period than the prison limit permits. The prison populace relies on upon the quantity of admissions and the quantity of release in a watched period. As indicated by admission and release information, drifts in the length of sentencing can be watched. Therefore, the reason behind the expansion in prison populace can be distinguished by breaking down each of the three patterns, the quantity of admissions, the quantity of releases, and the length of prison sentences (Novak, 2009). A large proportion of the prison populace is comprised of past convicts with new wrongdoing after they are discharged just to end up detained again. The offenders also may have committed a new crime that was recently established by the penal code while serving on parole. The expansion of criminal offenses to the penal code implies that offenders can
There is no question that mass incarceration is a worldwide epidemic that needs to be discussed and addressed. America has five percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prison population (Just Leadership USA, 2017) Various policies dated back centuries helped to create this problem of mass incarceration (Just Leadership USA, 2017). Today there are 2.3 million Americans incarcerated throughout the state, local, and federal jails (Just Leadership USA, 2017). New York City (NYC) houses approximately 10,000 inmates per year; 43.7% of these inmates are diagnosed with having a mental health disability (New York City Department of Corrections, 2017). 54% of the inmates on Rikers Island are arrested for a minor offense and should be able to fight their cases from home; however, in many instances the family members are of low socio-economic status and unable to post bail (New York City Department of Corrections, 2017). Minor offenses include loitering, jumping the turnstiles, unnecessary Parole / Probation violations, and trespassing. In many instances, it is the mentally ill and homeless individuals who are arrested for trespassing as they elect to sleep in the subways instead of taking residency in a shelter. Moreover, many of these offenses does not have to result in an arrest. Police officers have the autonym to let some of these individuals go with a warning, desk ticket, and/or summons.
“Did the entire Brooklyn got arrested today?” said Pinto in his article titled, “The Bail Trap” (page 6). Why do we arrest so many people daily? 365,000 people got arrested in New York City in 2013. The overburdened justice system cannot handle the large number of people that gets arrested daily. However, plea bargain is the way that the system deals with this issue of arresting over a thousand people daily for low offense charges. Ninety-seven percent of the people that are arrested plead guilty. The U.S. is at the highest incarceration rate in the world, therefore, we need a reform to get rid of bail and to prevent police officers from arresting so many people.
In America, crime rates are going up and prisoners are being released from prison with a wrong sense of direction resulting in their finding themselves back behind bars within a short period of time after being released for an action that could have been prevented if the proper precautions had been taken. Prisons need to put forth the effort to resolve these issues and make America’s streets secure again. The criminal justice system in prisons is a rising concern in this country that is affecting many and it is time it was improved by reforming the inside of prisons, providing prisoners with more when released, and keeping them under surveillance after release to help ensure they will not return to prison, thus keeping crime at a lower rate.
Ever since the first prison opened in the United States in 1790, incarceration has been the center of the nations criminal justice system. Over this 200 year period many creative alternatives to incarceration have been tried, and many at a much lower cost than imprisonment. It wasn’t until the late 1980’s when our criminal justice systems across the country began experiencing a problem with overcrowding of facilities. This problem forced lawmakers to develop new options for sentencing criminal offenders.
The juvenile justice system is a foundation in society that is granted certain powers and responsibilities. It faces several different tasks, among the most important is maintaining order and preserving constitutional rights. When a juvenile is arrested and charged with committing a crime there are many different factors that will come in to play during the course of his arrest, trial, conviction, sentencing, and rehabilitation process. This paper examines the Juvenile Justice System’s court process in the State of New Jersey and the State of California.