The Role Of Research In The Criminal Justice System

To the casual observer, it would be easy to confuse the two. As I read in the first chapter of our book, the two disciplines often affect each other, as criminology, based on scientific research, historically played a reforming role in relation to laws and the criminal justice system. “This term (Criminal Justice Specialists) suggests a separation between criminology and criminal justice. In fact, the two fields are closely interwoven. Scholars of both disciplines use the same scientific research methods, the same rigorous education, and pursue the same goals.”

Forensic science and law are often seen as two opposing disciplines; forensic science is often presumed to be factual and law can be interpreted in multiple ways. Science and law reach conclusions in different ways which is an issue. Due to these differences, miscommunication is often the cause for miscarriages of justice. In order to address this problem, people working in the criminal justice system should have more knowledge of forensic science. There are many factors that contribute to the lack of understanding between forensic science and the people involved in the court process. Firstly, the adversarial model will be discussed in relation to how these procedures prevent effective communication between forensic evidence and lawyers. Secondly, the role that expert witnesses play in the presentation of scientific evidence and how jurors play a role in interpreting their evidence, will be considered. Thirdly it will be argued that lawyers and judges lack adequate knowledge of forensic science that is needed to conduct accurate trials. Lastly, possible solutions to improve the communication between forensic science and the actors involved in the criminal justice system. Juries, lawyers and judges should be more educated in understanding forensic science.

|Nongraded Activities and |Refer to the Using MyStatsLab® supplement on the student website. | | |

By constructing theories or representations we can increase our understanding of criminal conduct. Through improving our understanding we can create effective, and operational strategies to handle crime issues. We must have a sufficient amount of accurate and documented research, and or experiments to prove the validity of our research. Research is attaining the information and data needed to generate a theory. We gather research by creating specific controlled experiments to reach a conclusion that will satisfy, or otherwise attest our theories.

My research as a student has started to prepare me to participate in my academic discourse community. I plan to use the information I have gained from my research to become a thoughtful and academically engaged member of my academic discourse community. I plan to learn the ways of thinking, communicating, and evaluating the ideas and concepts that are important to my community so I can successfully interact within it. As I take classes within my major, I expect the readings and writings of the criminal justice field to not only better prepare me for a career in law enforcement, but also assist me in my role as a member of the academic discourse community. I expect there will be quite a bit of practical reading and writing, but I also expect

The topic I decided to do my course project on is one that I believe will not only be interesting to research but also one that will help me get a better understanding of the differences faced in the criminal justice process. As we all are aware, education is the key to success. The more we educate ourselves with laws and government, the more we will understand what really goes on in our justice system.

My educational background serves as a great foundation and asset of knowledge to contribute to this position. I completed my Bachelors of Arts in Sociology at Morehouse College. As a part of our curriculum, I studied various concepts of Criminal Justice, Psychology, Deviant Behavior, Crime Trends, Demography, and Professional Communication to name a few. As a student, my research focused on cross-sectional studies of the disproportionately high rates of incarceration among

Part 1 Weisburd, D., Lum, C., Petrosino, A. (2001). Does Research Design Affect Study Outcomes in Criminal Justice? The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 578 (1): 50-70.

Maxfield and Babbie in their book “Research Methods for Criminal justice and Criminology” provide examples, applications, and study tools for students to learn how to conduct a research in criminal justice.

Justice is the next main debate that the couple discusses. There is some confusion about it that they try to clarify. Justice is what happens when someone does something wrong and they have to pay for what they did to someone else in a fair way (Barash 140). It is the price you pay from becoming the predator instead of the prey in today’s age. They argue that it is different from payback, but deals with punishment. That justice is, “payback with a purpose” (Barash 142). Punishment is deliberately inflicting pain (Barash 141). The victim in payback then could get punishment on a non-guilty person, which is wrong. On the other hand, justice is to obtain peace and have someone pay for a crime in a fair and equal way for their crime (Barash 142).

I became interested in the criminal justice system after taking a law course in high school. As a female within the context of my religious and cultural background; having career in the criminal justice system is considered a non-traditional role for women and is frowned upon. Nevertheless, I decided to enter the Honours Program in Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg. During my research field placement at the Winnipeg Police Service and my work as research assistant for Dr. Weinrath and Dr. Karen Harlos I developed an interest in conducting my own research. My honours thesis on white-collar crime generated a curiosity in investigating crime perceptions and provided the background for my proposed project topic.

What is the criminal justice system composed of? The criminal justice system is composed of law enforcement, courts, and corrections. Law enforcement is in charge of enforcing the laws set by the legislature. Courts determine if a law has been broken and punish the person who has broken the law. Corrections make sure the penalty the person gets is enforced.

Criminology, as defined by the book Criminal Justice: A Brief Introduction, written by the author Dr. Frank Schmalleger, Ph.D., is “the scientific study of the causes and prevention of crime and the rehabilitation and punishment of offenders” (Schmalleger, 2006, p. 20). Criminology, in itself, has a wide variety of function in treating crime and providing punishment to those who commit the crimes here in the U.S. Since crime increases with the population growth, more policies are being given to law makers, which changes the perspective in how the Criminal Justice system works. Due to the increase in crimes, new laws are made to help reduce the crimes in order to minimize the threat of increasing the crimes that are being committed. The Criminal Justice system offers a wide area of responsibilities that houses different types of functions which helps in the fulfillment of accomplishing the tasks needed for a better, well organized running of the Criminal Justice system.

The first courtroom I attended was at the Provincial Offences Court in Whitby, Ontario. Many of the accused, except for one individual, had their trial’s adjourned or plead guilty to amended charges in lieu of continuing with a trial. Despite of this, I was still able to witness first hand how the credibility of an accused can affect the decision of the Justice of the Peace regarding suspended sentences and amended charges. When evaluating the credibility of an individual, you “form an opinion about whether a person has been honest and told the truth” (Arcaro, 2009, p. 301). During my field observation of POA court, I witnessed the Justice of the Peace “analyzing the reported circumstances and making a conclusion about [an accused] reliability”

The motivation behind the present article is to react to inquiries in regards to research methods in the field of criminal justice. The essay will address three principle questions. The first relates to the way of a true experiment and the design that would need to be utilized by researchers within a particular case study. The second relates to the ethical guidelines that must be met by experiments as a rule and the particular experiment under consideration inside of the given case study. The third relates to the part of the Institutional Review Board, and whether the researchers in the given case study could utilize an alternate research design in order to meet the pertinent moral criteria.