Victims Of The Criminal Justice System Essay

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.

Prisons where essentially build to accommodate a number of prisoners but over the years it has reach over capacity. Today in the United States there are approximately 193,468 federal inmates that consisting of the Bureau of Prisons Custody, private managed facilities and other facilities. The inmates ages range from 18- 65 with the median age being in their late 30’s. This number is counting both male and female population with male being 93.3% of inmates and females being 6.7%. The number of inmates has steadily increase since 1980 with only having approximately less than 50,000 but today the number has gone more up. Drug offenses are the highest number for inmate’s imprisonment, the next highest offense would be weapons, explosives and arson; immigration and miscellaneous fall next in lines. The number for the other offenses such as robbery, extortion, fraud, bribery, burglary, larceny, property offenses and other offenses are lower. Overcrowding prison has become problematic as the prison population continue to increase leading to proper care and attention for prisoners.

The criminal justice system plays an important role in this society, it is meant to protect and serve. This “system” is also meant to maintain the peace and enforce the laws set by the government. However, the criminal justice system is not even close to perfect. It has many flaws, some of which are: police brutality, death penalty, mass incarceration, gun violence, and especially wrongful convictions. A majority of the flaws that the system has can be easily fixed and can be set straight. For example, the issue of wrongful convictions has been relevant for quite some time and has the potential to decrease its probability of occurring by focusing on the importance of scientific evidence, rid of faulty witness testimonies, and make sure that the lack of evidence and/or government misconduct, if applicable, does not determine the outcome of the case.

The problems surrounding the criminal justice system range from a variety of issues in different areas of the system. But i believe they are all connected back to a societal problem, that has to do with a outdated philosophical notion “redemptive violence”. I will break down each aspect, which i find most troubling. I will cover problems between policing and peacekeeping, corrections options, and the issue of redemptive violence which is a major issue in the philosophy of the criminal justice system. These issues represent problems that have always been key topics when discussing problems of ethics in criminal justice. Policing and Peacekeeping are roles that have long been debated in usefulness to stopping crime. Corrections comes with the reality of incarceration having little chance of success but more likely a higher rate of recidivism. I well also touch on briefly the issues of attorney discretion. While the issue of redemptive violence ties them all in, As i well show this philosophy is the “root of all evil” in the issues facing 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.

Laws, policies, rules, and standards have been put in place to regulate the behaviors of all individuals and keep everyone safe. When those laws or policies are not followed, people’s safety become jeopardized, peoples’ rights get violated, and individuals become victims and criminals. Every state has its own laws concerning different types of crimes. Each state has a different sentencing system in place for people who break the laws. Aside from state laws, there are also federal laws that can deal with criminals that break the laws on a federal level. There are many resources available to victims that can help them with physical, emotional, and psychological issues that may arise after being victimized.

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.

In response to this movement, more support services were established for victims and measures were provided allowing victims greater involvement in the criminal justice process through a variety of means. This increased the need for research into the effects of crime on victims and how best their needs can be met.

In order to keep a safe society, it is important to establish a nation with

This essay intends to address the role that state agencies, both within the Criminal Justice System (CJS) and more broadly the institutions of education, employment and health, play in supporting and implementing diversionary programs for offenders with mental health problems. Mental health is clearly one of the most critical issues facing the Australian and New South Wales (NSW) CJS with research indicating that offenders with mental health problems constitute the majority of those within the prison system. The current strategies for diversion will be critically evaluated in order to determine their effectiveness with regard to the delivery and production of justice, cultural sensitivity for Indigenous Australians will also be considered.

This research paper discusses the issues of people who suffer from mental illness being placed in jails instead of receiving the necessary treatment they need. The number of inmates serving time in jail or prison who suffer from mental illness continues to rise. In 2015 the Bureau of Justice reported that sixty five percent of state prisoners and fourth five percent of federal prisoners suffered from mental conditions such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Individuals who suffer from these problems require special mental health treatment for their needs to be met. Many of our prisons and jails lack the necessary resources to care for these inmates and because of that inmates who do not receive the treatment they need are at a higher risk of becoming a repeat offender. Despite the research and findings that show that the criminal justice system is unable to deal with issues dealing with the mentally ill there has been limited solutions put in place. Given the challenges the criminal justice system faces it is important to address the problem and come up with better solutions. This research paper will discuss the various techniques and solutions that scholars have propped and their effect on the issue of mentally ill criminals and how the criminal justice system should approach the problem.

I’m double majoring in Criminal Justice and Psychology because further down the road in my life I would love to be a Criminal Psychologist. I choose these fields because I love being able to understand why people do what they do. I want to understand why people do things a certain way, just looking at it in a psychological kind of way. Especially with criminals, what led them to murder that guy or rape that girl? What pursued them and what part of them thought that it would be acceptable?

The traditional criminal justice system is criticized for its neglect of victim importance and needs, for example (Symonds, 1980) acknowledges, that the criminal justice system is concerned about looking back at the event rather than focusing on how to rehabilitate and as a consequence making victims be in a ‘secondary victimization’ effect. This is the attitudes, behaviors and the beliefs of the people in the criminal

Introduction: In today's societies, the government and criminal justice systems very much related to ethics because they both establish and carry out definite rights and duties. They also attempt to prevent and/or hold anyone accountable that deviates from these standards. (Wright 2012)

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