The purpose of this research paper is to choose which of these models of justice: retributive, utilitarian, restorative or parallel, is appropriate for the Jonathan Nathaniel Ramsey case. We need justice to be delivered efficiently, effectively in order to make sure the offenders are held accountable and the victims receive assistance. Each crime that is committed needs to be addressed properly. When the crimes are not then that leads to the unrest in the community and to the victims. This process will ensure that each offender receives the proper punishment and that the community is satisfied with the decision.
In the United States of America, there are many systems throughout the government. There is the Department of Health, Department of education, and many more to be listed. One system that often causes controversy is the Department of Correction, this department always raises the question; does our jail/correction system work? The correctional system has flaws and gives some result, however, there are more cases than not that prove the correctional system needs a great deal of improvement. Due to the living conditions and the activity inside of the United States prisons the prison system is looked at as dysfunctional. However, the United States has one of the best rehabilitation techniques and facilities in the world. Rehabilitation is the aspect of the United States correctional system that keeps it from being completely looked down on.
Being just in the American criminal justice system is a topic that is highly debated. Some believe the system is just, while others believe it is a flawed. The truth however, is that humans are not always right. God is the only who can practice justice in complete perfection, because humans are not perfect. Although many people in the American criminal justice system have good intentions, sadly that does not necessarily mean they are always just. The American criminal justice system tries to be truly just and has been before, but humans are not perfect and cannot always be truly just.
Canada and the United States have a very similar criminal justice system. Both systems have the same players: the criminal, the police, a prosecutor, and a judge. They also have similar steps in prosecuting a criminal, except with slightly different names. The basic steps in the United States criminal justice system are arrest, preliminary hearing to determine bail, preliminary arraignment to determine what crime was committed within jurisdiction in the court, arraignment to determine if the defendant will plead guilty or not guilty, trial to determine if the defendant is guilty, and sentencing by the judge to determine the punishment for the crime.
Within the judicial and criminal justice systems, restorative justice is seen as a forward moving process in regards to the way in which the sentencing of offenders is handled (Britto & Reimund, 2013). Restorative justice works to focus on the needs of both the victim and the offender but incorporates the community as well as those who support both the victim and offender (Britto & Reimund, 2013). The approach of restorative justice in not simply a means by which society responds to and reduces crime but instead, provides an equivalently valuable social response to crime (Dancig-Rosenberg and Galt, 2013). Furthermore, the restorative approach places emphasis on the personal and relational harms which were caused by the crime while creating space for dialogue concerning the actual damage, whether directly or
Cole, an adolescent delinquent, adopts a fallacious tenet that fuels his anger: life, the people and actions around him, is a facade. To begin with, Cole commits a lot of crimes throughout his teenage years. His most recent crime, punishing Peter, a natural target for bullies, resulted in indelible damage to both Peter’s brain physically, and Cole’s personality mentally. “Cole jumped on him again and started smashing his skull against the sidewalk… It took six other students to pull him away finally. By then Peter was cowering on the blood-smeared sidewalk, sobbing. Cole laughed and one at him even as he was held back. Nobody crossed Cole Matthews and got away with it.” (7). Blinded because of his mentality, vengeance is just one action that Cole portrays of his unbridled animosity towards the world. By finding himself in trouble, Cole seizes opportunities to manipulate his milieu to tell the world that he was no fool to their masquerade. After Peter’s family filed a custody, Cole decides to use the Circle of Justice to his advantage to get out of jail. “ ‘Usually the jail sentence, if there is one, is reduced under Circle Justice.’
Circle of justice is a Native American form of justice. That is when people gather around in a circle and ask for forgiveness, trust, and healing. Forgiveness is when Cole Matthews asked for forgiveness for himself because he has all this anger built up inside of him and he gets it out on people who don’t deserve it. Trust because Cole has changed and he wants to be trusted. Healing because Cole hurt a lot of people and he wants to heal his anger.
similar justice system, there are vast differences, specifically in the rights of the defense, most
Today our justice system has a multitude of options when dealing with those who are convicted of offenses. However, many argue that retributive justice is the only real justice there is. This is mainly because its advantage is that it gives criminals the appropriate punishment that they deserve. The goals of this approach are clear and direct. In his book The Little Book of Restorative Justice, Zehr Howard (2002), illustrates that the central focus of retributive justice is offenders getting what they deserve (p. 30). This reflection paper will first address the advantages of using retributive justice approach in three court-cases. Second, it will discuss the disadvantages of using retributive justice approaches by analyzing the three court-cases listed above. Third, it will elaborate on ways that the system could have used restorative justice processes in the cases, as well as present potential outcomes that could have been reached if restoration justice was taken into consideration.
The Criminal justice system is a system that was made to control crime and make punishments to whoever break a law or rule.The beginning of the criminal justice system of the United States goes all the way back when the United States still belonged to the Great Britain.Americans were under Great Britain laws and rules and most of the laws were unfair.After the Revolutionary War and the United States became independent and they needed to create their own types of system to run their country. Today the criminal justice system functions upon the police,the courts, and the corrections, but back then in the beginning of criminal justice people didn’t have this type of structure.They shaped their structure using religion before laws and rules were established in the United States.Population started to increase and soon people had to make laws to uphold values of mortality because religion became less frequent.Due to this change more laws and violations were made.
Through the decades, crime and crime control have been analyzed in an attempt to find the causes of crime and decide how to combat them. The United States showed an increase in their prison population in the 1970s when the country turned towards a more punitive justice system. Referred to as just deserts theory of crime, the aim is to inflict as much pain on the offender through harsh prison sentences, in hopes to cause as much pain as the crime they committed. The worse the crime is, the worse the punishment the criminal will endure. The issue surrounding just deserts theory is the vast amount of offenders who return to prison after being released, also known as the recidivism rate. Although just deserts theory does not seek to lower the rate
There are three components that make up the criminal justice system – the police, courts, and correctional facilities – they all work together in order to protect individuals and their rights as a citizen of society to live without the fear of becoming the victim of a crime. Crime, simply put is when a person violates criminal law; the criminal justice system is society’s way of implementing social control. When all three components of the criminal justice work together, it functions almost perfectly.
In the criminal justice system, there are three major components. They are the police, the courts, and the corrections. Each one of the components has a role to play in the system. The police are in charge of arresting and investigating crimes. The courts are charged with the responsibility of punishing offenders while the corrections implement the court rulings. Out of the three the courts are the most harmful to the criminal justice systems. Once the police have done their investigations and arrested all offenders involved it will be up to the court to decide whether the person is guilty or not. This is where the problem comes in.
The central idea behind Jean Hampton's Moral Education Theory of Punishment (MET) is that it is best to educate criminals on their wrongdoings without handing down any physical punishments or ramifications. Hampton believes that excessive harm is not a moral response to a crime committed by a person. Rather, she argues that the point of basic punishment is to teach the wrongdoer that the action they did or wanted to do is forbidden, on the basis that it is morally wrong according to society. Therefore, according to Hampton, it is much healthier to educate criminals rather than handing down difficult physical punishments, which simply hurts the criminal and can be unproductive. To elaborate, Hampton proposes that any form of punishment is justified
Batley (2005) stated that restorative justice is about restoring, healing and re- integrating victims, offenders, as well as the society and also preventing further harm. In this assignment, I will be discussing approaches to restorative justice and illustrating their advantages and disadvantages to offending. I will also provide the applications of these five approaches of restorative justice which are retributive approach, utilitarian deterrence approach, rehabilitation approach, restitution approach and restorative approach in the given case study. I will then explain my preferred approach to justice through identifying a personal belief or value that underpins my choice.