The Criminal Justice System : An Introduction

The criminal trial process aims to provide justice for all those involved, while it succeeds in the majority of cases, it effectiveness is influenced and reduced by certain factors. These include the legal representation involved in a case and the availability of legal aid, the capacity of the jury assessing the trial, the credibility of scientific evidence and the impact of social media on the trial process. Due to such flaws the criminal trial process is not always an effective means of achieving justice.

Criminologists have long tried to fight crime and they have developed many theories along the way as tools to help them understand criminals. In the process of doing so, criminologist have realized that in order to really understand why criminals are criminals, they had to first understand the interrelationship between the law and society. A clear and thorough understanding of how they relatively connect with criminal behavior is necessary. Therefore, they then created three analytical perspectives which would help them tie the dots between social order and law, the consensus, the pluralist and the conflict perspectives. Each provides a significantly different view of society as relative to the law. However, while they all aim to the same

The criminal courts are responsible for determining the guilt or innocence of the person that is accused (Griffiths, 2015, p.147). As well as the courts are supposed to conclude the appropriate sentence while protecting their rights of the accused. The outcome that comes from the criminal courts is that the judgement is made to be fair, impartial and no political intrusion. Furthermore, the main focus of the courts is the find the fundamental problems, the interagency and interdisciplinary collaboration and the accountability to the community. (Griffiths, 2015, p.147). The court is supposing to keep the fairness and equality through the society.

Throughout this whole term we have learned numerous roles of the criminal justice profession. How on a macro level law enforcement has made points to serve and protect, all the way down to the micro level of society. Men and women risk their lives every day to make sure that the law is obeyed, and their community is still held together. In the following paper you will see how the criminal justice profession helps on an individual and societal level. But what does each level mean you may ask, well let’s break it down a little. Individual need is person to person with the law, where societal is in the community of the law enforcement. The first individual need are assaults in and around bars. "The proliferation of bars in many communities

Like the media, the criminal justice system and organisations in and around the criminal justice system play a major contribution in the construction of an ‘ideal victim’. As stated by ‘….Rock (2006), Institutional practices shape the public representations and private understandings of victims of crime’. For instance, in Australia there are many organisations that help victims and their families of serious crimes. Although on the other hand, there are limited or no services available to victims of minor crimes.

This paper is going to discuss different culture concerns, and what the influences are in today’s society within the criminal justice system. Also, this paper will talk about how to attend to different culture concerns, security administration, and how influences affect the criminal justice system. Some of the other points that are going to be touched up on are contemporary methods that are used in societies of assorted cultures, how these different influences and considerations related to and affect nondiscrimination practices within the criminal justice system. Last but not least, this paper is going to go over Sir Roberts Peel’s nine

In his book that was produced at least seven years ago and sought to look at the criminal justice process, Nicola Padfield

A factor that the public don’t take into consideration when judging the justice system is budget and staffing levels. The different arms, although part of the criminal justice system, work independently to serve the community but can be affected by budgeting, staffing levels and space restrictions, in turn affecting public perception. In 2007-2008 approximately 70% (majority of this being salaries) of the justice system expenditure was spent on the police force showing that the majority of the budget is being spent on the investigative arm (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2009). The corrective services sector made up 24% and the criminal courts administration took up a tiny 6% of the budget. There has been a dramatic increase in prisoners which shows that police are apprehending criminals and Judges are providing suitable sentences but prisons are chronically overcrowded (Martin, 2010). The Government listened and announced that new prisons will be constructed, but this would take

The perception of the Australian criminal justice system’s legitimacy is determined by the actions of three institutions, and the manner in which they address issues of justice within society. For the criminal justice system to be seen with integrity and valued for its role, it is vital that all members of the community see the appropriate rectification of injustices through the police, courts and corrections. However, particular groups within society encounter the illegitimacy and social inequity embedded within these institutions, diminishing the effectiveness to which they fulfill their role. For women in particular, the institutions of the criminal justice system are notably unethical in their treatment of both victims and perpetrators of crime. Despite many reforms and recommendations for change, the criminal justice system ultimately fails in achieving justice for women, with the courts demonstrating the most significant attempt to eliminate social inequality and victimisation.

The basic division in the structure of criminal courts is between the lower criminal courts – the local courts, Children’s court and Coroner’s court – and the higher criminal courts – the District Court and the Supreme Court. In observing proceedings at the Local, District and Supreme Courts over a period of three days a number of aspects of the criminal justice system were made apparent. The administration, processes and practices of the criminal trial are extremely varied dependent upon the level of criminal court being observed. The distinctions between the workings of the two courts revealed a number of the differences between summary proceedings and trial upon indictment. The cases observed served to

Outline and assess the role of the police in the social construction of crime (50 marks)

The Criminal Justice System, a system the British government set up to deal with the treatment of law-breakers, has three main goals to achieve social order, these are, (1) enforcing criminal law, (2) maintaining law and order in the society, and (3) helping victims. This may seem to be a well thought of system, but like any other organisation, there are flaws, and one of the major flaws is discrimination, and the bias that stems from discrimination.

Most people don’t know about the three major components of the criminal justice system, but, in this paper the reader will know what they are. The reader will also read about how the three components interrelate to one another, and also how the conflict one another. The

The causes of wrongful convictions are easy to identify: irregularities and incompetence at the investigatory, pre-trial, trial and appellate stages of the criminal justice system. More particularly, Kaiser identifies the following contributory factors, among others: false accusations, misleading police investigative work, inept defense counsel, misperceptions by Crown prosecutors of their role, factual assumption of an accuser’s guilt by actors in the criminal justice system, community pressure for a conviction, inadequate identification evidence, perjury, false confessions, inadequate or misinterpreted forensic evidence, judicial bias, poor presentation of an appellate case, and difficulty in having fresh evidence admitted at the appellate stage. Each instance of determined wrongful conviction illustrates a different combination of failures in the criminal justice system that has

Victims of crime, particularly those violent in nature, have their rights violated and experience exceedingly high level of trauma and stress (Appendix B, 2015). It is surprising then, that Criminal Justice Systems (CJS) around the world forgo many victims’ rights and provided limited space for them to interact with the system (Sarre, 1999). Rather systems are built around balancing the rights of offenders against the greater safety and need of the community whilst neglecting individual justice needs of the victims (Sarre, 1999). With limited rights and minimal involvement a victim often becomes a disposable utensil to the CJS (Clark, 2010). They are used by the courts to determine the ultimate truth so justice may be served, with no care for the damage that may be caused in the process and then disposed of the case is concluded (Braun, 2014). In 2011-2012 a victimisation survey revealed that 1.2 million Australians were victims of personal crimes, such as assault, robbery and sexual assault (Australian Institution of Criminology, 2013). Of these victims, only half of the crimes were reported to the police (Australian Institution of Criminology, 2013). Such low reporting rates have been contributed in part to this notion of imbalance offender VS victims’ rights (Braun, 2014). Due to the sensitive nature of sexual crimes, the limited available evidence and victim rights, these crimes tend to carry the lowest reporting rates (Braun, 2014). During the latest Australian