Criminal Justice Obstacles

The correctional system plays a vital role in the country. The system is made of several government agencies that are charged with the authorities of safeguarding the populace from dangerous individuals. Generally, this is accomplished through a number of methods, such as imprisonment and probation. In addition, the correctional system is designed to make society a safer place by keeping the criminals behind bars.

There are many subjects in the book “The Essentials of Criminal Justice.” Through the fourteen chapters, the chapter I will be discussing is chapter eleven. Chapter eleven talks about the history of correctional institutions, jails, prisons, and alternate correctional institutions. In this paper, I will be discussing only part of chapter eleven. It will be discussing the history of the correctional Institutions which includes the following: the history of the correctional institutions, the origin of corrections in the United States, the development of prisons, the New York and Pennsylvania systems, and the comparisons of the 19th and 20th century correction systems.

The topic of this paper is the South Carolina Department of Corrections. This agency was selected due to the authors’ current major of Criminal Justice. While attending classes at Tri-County Technical College I have covered many aspect of the criminal justice system as a whole along with the area of corrections. Although I am familiar with the topic, this will be in depth to the South Carolina Department of Corrections and how this agency interacts within the state government. The goal will be to apply an insight to corrections as a whole, how these state departments functions, and provide research on the details for this agency.

The conflict and consensus models reflect two opposite systems in criminal justice. In the conflict model, which works to protect individual rights, “justice is more of a product of conflicts among agencies where the component parts function primarily to serve their own interests”(Cronkhite, 2013, p. 202). Laws in this model reflect the beliefs of the interest groups with the most power and are “used primarily to control the behavior of the defective, dependent, and delinquent, the dangerous classes” (Hagan, 2009, p. 11). Many in this country see this is how the criminal justice systems are today.

A strong link of the criminal justice process is that the system tries to keep it fair for everyone. Every defendant has the right to an attorney so they can be defended properly and fairly and “Only judges who are adequately informed about a case can effectively control the proceedings and examine evidence” (Tochilovsky, 2002) It is also important for the criminal justice system that those involved show discretion and although this is not always the case, discretion by the judges, police, etc. further ensure proper treatment of the

Another perspective surrounding the American criminal justice system is that people only criticize the system because the results they wanted did not occur. Some people go as far as to say, “THE criminal justice system doesn 't work” (Haberman). But why do people have these strong feelings against the American criminal justice system? Haberman’s interesting viewpoint answers that question when he says, “It seems to be a popular pastime: trashing the system when it does not produce the results you want.” From this quotation one can consider that some people disparage the system so heavily because they disagree with the rulings, not because the judgements are wrong, but simply because they do not like them. This could be a reason why people believe the system is so heavily criticized, when in reality people only criticize it because they disagree, not because the system is actually unjust. This idea shows that maybe the American criminal justice is not as an unjust as people make it

The criminal justice system may be more corrupt than the people who fill our prisons. It is amazing to see the many ways that certain parts of society actually benefit from the current system we support. This book,The Rich Get Richer and The Poor Get Prison, by authors Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton, has open my eyes to a very corrupt idealism. They are very precise in their supporting examples as well by walking the reader through each step and analogy.

The fact is that considerable similarity exists between the juvenile and adult justice system. Both consist of three basic subsystems and interrelated agencies. The flow of justice in both is supposed to be from law violation to police apprehension, judicial process, judicial disposition, and rehabilitation in correctional agencies. The basic vocabulary is the same in the juvenile and adult systems, and even when the vocabulary differs, the intent remains the

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.

Let us break down what justice is; justice is behaviour that is just or fair. So the justice system is the system that enforces the law which involves apprehending the accused, prosecuting the accused, defending the accused, sentencing and punishing the guilty. The justice system makes sure that every citizen is heard for and is helped according to what has happened to them.

As I went out and conducted concrete evidence of the juvenile justice system. I was able to talk to a San Francisco Public Defender that works at the Juvenile Division Center. Christina Powers, describes the mission of the Public Defender office is “supposed to be rehabilitating. They really try to work within the system that the individual operates in. That means working with the family, and school.” She also mentions that they work from a “Holistic model of Defense, in which they try address all the needs of the child and not just their offense.” Instead, they dig deeper into the reasons behind the offense and how they are able to help them. The Juvenile Division is filled with a team of advocates specifically for their children in order to address their needs in school. They also have social workers, and court advocates that represent on their behalf in order to provide assistance for the child. If a student is having problems within the school, Powers says they work “collaboratively” with the school and the student in order to address any critical issues: violence within the school, Individual Education Plan (IEP), Probation, family therapy, “also by working with the needs of the family and not just the needs of the child is very important”. Ms. Powers recognizes the underlying factors that leads to delinquency in juveniles may be due to

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.

Although, the justice system impacts many lives, especially within the African American community many individuals are unaware of the effects that the Criminal Justice system can have on offender while incarcerated and even after incarceration. The reading is intended for anyone willing to learn about how are society uses Mass Incarceration as a method to hinder individuals of the African American community from being successful in our society. The author’s writing style is very informative. Michelle Alexander uses clarity and factual information to explain to the reader the many issues that are within our Criminal Justice system. Further, Michelle Alexander is very detailed with the information that she shares within the text. She uses many examples to ensure that the reader has an accurate understanding of the topics that is discussed within the printed work.  Prior to reading the text, I had a strong belief that the Justice System is in operation so it can Rehabilitate offenders and provide them with a means to better themselves if fortunate

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.

Crime is a blemish in almost every society. Criminals and law breakers have been around since biblical times and still haunt societies today. The American Criminal Justice System is in place to attempt to help control criminals. The idea is not to create a perfect society where no crime will be committed, but to contain the crime. Predicting crime is not an easy task, criminal justice officials take many steps to prevent crime from happening. Environmental Design is a key aspect of helping prevent crimes Crime prevention through environmental design is a problem-solving approach to crime prevention.