The American Criminal Justice System is a well orchestrated and cooperative performance with the professional courtroom actors and others all playing their parts in the administration of justice. This paper will look at a very important group of individuals the courtroom work group. Each person acts as one of the cogs in the machine, all cooperating to reach a common goal. This paper will describe what a courtroom work group is, who is in a courtroom work group and what they each do. The role of the prosecutor will also be described and how they determine which cases to pursue, and what would happen if the criteria for the prosecution of cases were more lenient or stringent. Lastly, this paper will describe the effects of the criminal justice funnel and the backlog of cases on the American court systems and the courtroom work group. Are there any solutions to help eliminate the funnel and help reduce the backlog of cases? To get an answer to that question, a review of the how this important group works will have to be understood.…
Rousseau’s quotation, “Man is born free yet, everywhere he is in chains” implies that a person is gifted with great possibilities and potential. Unfortunately, the society surrounding that person is responsible for crushing that individual’s essence. Those who refuse to conform to such a society are judged negatively and consequently, feel alienated. Both Keating and Meursault are strangers in a society that wants to dictate their expected behaviour and actions. Society seeks to imprison their individual freedom. Meursault is indifferent and passive to this conventional life that is not worth living. He refuses to be anything but himself, regardless of the price he must pay. In contrast, Keating responds to such a society by actively and passionately trying to make a difference by nurturing each person to be free to reach his or her potential and essence. Society seeks to chain these two free individuals into conforming to ways that stifle their individuality and freedom, but the key lies in their choice of response in dealing with such a society, regardless of its negative judgement.…
Who knew that an uprising that occurred in the fall of 1971 at a New York correctional facility would help change the American penal system forever? It was the culmination of a storm that had been brewing for months. There was a tension between the guards and inmates that had not gone unnoticed. With little to no attention given to the circumstances of the inmates, they had had enough.…
two schools of criminology: the school of classics and the school of positivist. Simply put, the school of classics focused more on the crime and punishment of the criminal whereas the school of positivist focused on the criminal and how to typically “rehabilitate the criminal” in order to prevent the crime. Note that while there may be two distinct schools with differing ideas, there cannot be such a case that is so one sided that fits under that school exclusively, rather it must be a “combination of classical and positivist principles” (Kubrin 9). However,…
Philosopher John Locke once wrote that, “No man ...has a power to hand over their preservation...to the absolute will and arbitrary dominion of someone else”. He meant that the inviolable rights of a people are greater than the demands of a government and his words ring true today. In the modern era people can fight “arbitrary dominion” through democratic election, vocal condemnation, and most controversially civil disobedience. The practice of deliberate defiance has netted much criticism for its seeming disregard for a country’s rule of law. Yet, a free society is one in which people have the power to exercise their rights, and in choosing not to follow unjust laws, they only strengthen a country's institutions.…
It is important to find the equilibrium between the two elements since a pursuit of ultimate justice may impose pressure on social order. Unjust laws should be resisted and reformed so that no more social disadvantages will be imposed on the weak and vulnerable. It will be a gradual process requiring enormous effort in order to protect humanity from injustice. Just like what Martin Luther King, Jr. asserted in his letter, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” and all humanity should hold the responsibility to achieve greater sense of justice. Reconstruction of today’s U.S. prison system, following this movement, serves as an essential role fostering and restoring social…
In fact, being one of the most institutionalized and widely known forms of authority, there tends to be a great deal of pressure on the criminal justice system. If society does not view the justice system as legitimate, then there is little chance for other, less influential figures of authority to obtain a sense of legitimacy (Hoffman, 1977). Any lack of public cooperation could lead to a decline in structure, order, and compliance. For example, a repercussion to lack of legitimacy is the inclination that citizens have to disobey or even disregard police mandate (Skogan and Frydll, 2003) or court decisions (Tyler, 2003). However, it has been found that legitimacy of the law is more influential in determining offending behavior than the risk of punishment (Tyler, 1990). Essentially, the definition of legitimacy has found that the decision itself is not nearly as important as the discernment process or the means of rehabilitation (Franke, Bierie and MacKenzie,…
Supporting social conflict theory, which was created by Carl Marx, helps to us better understand police and citizen interact. In a Study conducted by Holmes et. al, (2008) Holmes and his colleagues realized that race and class together determines how police and citizen interacts. In the same way, Lersch’s (1998) analysis of citizens' complaints showed that people in lower income societies (miniorites) were more likely to file complaints of police misconduct and to “experience more serious acts of misconduct” than those with more power and resources (Lersch, 1998, par. 38). The main function of the police is to keep the status quo of inequality and to assist the powerful (police and/or Whites) to exploit the powerless (Blacks and minorities)…
The American judicial system 's need for an effective strategy to combat crime has been a continuously debated issue. While employing the adversarial models of crime control and due process, America struggles to find balance on a pendulum between individual rights and social order. In this window of opportunity, crime control and due process are examined and reflected into the eyes of society.…
During the mass mobilization of consciousness raising in the late 1960’s, the fight for democracy roared the elites to manifest into power through a global project which not only implemented policies to sustain global capitalism, but advocated for various systems that work to control society, as well as the future reality of certain communities. According to research done by the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, “Throughout American history, politicians and public officials have exploited public anxieties about crime and disorder for political gain” (Gottschalk). This includes the war on drugs and war on terrorism, which has sustained a movement of mass criminalization, in the name of public safety. However this safety has been a way to suppress those trying to challenge the status quo and reveal the true underlying which sparked the rise of mass incarceration.…
Everyday 2,220,300 inmates live their lives in prisons throughout the United States. That’s 0.91% of the adult population, or 1 in 110 (Glaze 2013). What if you were next? The thought would scare anyone and the flaws in the system pose a threat to low income individuals and minorities. The sole purpose of the Justice System is to deliver justice for all, by only convicting and sentencing the guilty, while preventing offenders from reoffending. The system was designed to protect the innocent. What if that was not the case? In fact, Out of the 733,000 people held in local jails at this time, 2/3 of them have not been convicted and many are there simply…
The Criminal Justice System is the system of law enforcement that is directly involved in apprehending, prosecuting, defending, sentencing and punishes those who is suspected or convicted of criminal offenses. The two main systems are the State and Federal: The state criminal justice systems handles crime committed within their state boundaries while the Federal criminal justice system handles crimes committed on federal property or in several states; Federal crimes compared to state crimes are more severe and the jail times are longer. The Jury plays a central role in the justice system,in a trial the jury hears evidence, testimonies, and determines whether it satisfies the crime. (Burns, Ronald G. The Criminal Justice System. Upper Saddle…
Throughout our readings, it became clear that police are forced to deal with the burdens of our society’s inequalities, while politicians often ignore them. The politics of criminal justice are put in place in order to fix society and reduce crime, yet we are constantly seeing legislation, such as legislation to do with the War on Drugs or the War on Poverty, that seems to increase crime and even worsen racial and class divides, while the intention was the exact opposite. With the legislation still in place, police are forced to deal with the burdens created by this legislation. These burdens sometimes go on to reinforce society’s inequalities. Meanwhile, politicians often ignore these new or reoccurring problems, because in the eyes of the…
“Criminal procedure is the branch of American constitutional law concerned with the state’s power to maintain an orderly society and the rights of citizens and residents to live in freedom from undue government interference with their liberty” (Zalman, 2008, p. 4). The Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth amendments are significant in studying criminal procedure. In criminal justice, the criminal procedure is important because it deals with the conflict between order and liberty directly. To understand the friction between order and liberty, Herbert Packer studied the competing values that underlie the constitutional order through the Due Process Model and Crime Control model. Both of these models have similarities as well as differences on shaping criminal procedure policy. Herbert Packer states, “One is not “good” and the other “bad”; both models embrace constitutional values that are necessary to the kind of society in which we wish to live” (Zalman, 2008, p. 5).…
Despite initial appearances, state-based and community-based justice systems have some similarities in common. For example, both systems, regardless of their methods, are in pursuit of greater justice (Forsyth, 2007). These systems attempt to right some wrongs by balancing the scales of justice and resolve disputes through either mechanisms of retribution or restitution. Also, at the same time, many individuals are skeptical about the use of these systems as a means of punishing the offender and restoring social harmony. Moreover, in both systems, crime is seen as a violation of something integral to the functioning of the respective systems; violation of law for state-based justice systems and violation of relationships for community-based…