Criminal Justice
Criminal justice is defined as the study of the laws that regard the behavior of criminals or the applications of these laws. Those people who study it include the police, those that work in a judiciary capability, and the lawyers who also defend or act against those who are accused of a certain crime. Other people in the criminal justice system work as those who advocate for the possible changes to be made in their current system. And make decisions that should be used by the system and they do this as members of the ultimate courts. It is very important for criminal justice system to do their responsibilities or duties in a way that is just and that they should always remember to include the word justice in their system and mostly in the application of the laws that they are using since it should be done in a fair way.
Justice on the other hand is defined as anything that is meant to be right, suitable, deserved and fair. Justice is applicable when an act that has been done is not just and it is redressed in a way that the victim feels fairly treated again or justice simply means that an accused victim is made to be responsible for his or her evil behavior. The whole idea of justice can be retrieved from the biblical view of an eye for an eye which still enhances the implementation of justice in every possible way. Â Justice, in a practical form, is the thought that, inside the same importance of factors that affect human beings as far as justice is concerned be it ethical or moral factors that can violate human rights.
Those who are accused of committing a wrong in a given importance of system are entitled to get an equal action or a related action on the wrong that they have done. Yet in spite of the basic thought that most people have in the world on what justice is, it is very different in diverse circumstances for different people. Generally justice is meant to benefit the who society and not an individual since it makes the society feel that it is safe in the sense that if a victim is caught, justice is implanted by the whole society either in catching the victim, taking them to jail or punishing them in any possible way and this still makes an individual feel uncomfortable to commit any crime since they know that the society is watching them and this makes them feel insecure and thus decides to stop it before they are caught and removed from their street.
Justice does not refer only to as what citizens of most countries in the world call fair treatment towards a victim regarding the crime that he has committed but also the just revenge that has been done on a criminal like by seeing the person who has committed the offence being jailed because the next goal after this is always the criminal justice. All the people who are involved in punishing the offender like the one to arrest him, the one to prosecute him, the one to judge him or the one to defend him all aim at being fair before the court of law.
Nevertheless this goal can never be met by both the citizens and the criminal justice system because the laws that are always made get changed and the new ones after being changed in most cases tend to be unfair in how flexible the application of the laws are and the power of the judiciary to interpret them. In most cases when someone takes law as a field of his study then he has to touch on the study of criminal justice since they walk hand in hand and that even when a police takes his certification or just a mere police training then it is simply called criminal justice. Lawyers who have an interest in prosecuting criminals or in defending criminals may also decide to choose to study criminal justice in a higher level and major in it since having some knowledge on the laws, the rights and the privileges of the victims and the suspects is very essential in aiming at instilling justice both in the court of law and in any system that enhances the enforcement of the law.
For those who are interested in getting trained to become FBI’s or CIA’s still have to attain a degree in criminal justice and this makes them study and evaluate the law. There is a variety of subjects that tend to major in criminal justice in the university and these topics include psychology, the study of sociology, the study on ethics and also the study of illicit justice. For police officers to get trained, they usually train on the specified powers that they have over the suspects and powers which they do not posses on them because they administer illicit justice in their capability to enforce the law. In spite of training, criminal justice can never be just always because there are police officers who are just and there are those are never just, there are great judges and those who are very strict, terrible ones and too lenient ones. There are lawyers who are highly skilled and lawyers who are exceptional and there are those who are poorly organized.
Most people argue that laws in the United States of America are usually not just especially to populations that are minority because they do not have enough money to spend on the lawyers who are at the richest in the country. Systematically analyzing the importance of criminal justice system is very important because it helps in avoiding serious misinterpretation of the laws that can occur after comparing the functions of different sectors of the system across the chain of command.
Wider analysis of the system also reveals policies and ideologies that are very common are applied at very different stages in its process. Even though issues of illicit law, sentencing and illicit procedure is usually analyzed in a separate way, it is important to know the similar values attached to the rules that are legal in several areas in order to know the limitations of the state power especially their physical brutality, the value of the equal justice that is implemented, the concern for the crimes committed by the criminals and the importance of the critical defendant cooperation.
The police tend to measure their success by the number of arrests that they have made and the number of clearances even if they do not have any convictions have resulted and by the number of crimes that they have reported even when there are no crimes reported. Prosecutors also measure their success by the number of conviction rates even when the number of those cases is charged down. Analyzing criminal justice system completely is important since it helps to evaluate the advantages of the proposed reforms and also the demerits of the reforms that were being adopted previously.
One of the consistent problems that criminal justice system reform is facing is discretion that is not regulated or by greatly compensating the changes of other parts. This phenomenon can sometimes be referred to as squeezing because if one part of it is not functioning then it becomes useless. Other reforms of this system that tend to create new options such as supervising the victims strictly before they have been convicted or after they have been convicted also give another reason for this system to be evaluated carefully. Although most of reforms that work in this way are designed to minimize the use of more harsh options in the way they are practiced, they are likely to be applied for public and political reasons and therefore increase not decreasing the budget and other demerits. Evaluating the impact made on the lives of other people in the society by an offender is very important because through this when the criminal justice system will know on the way forward as far as punishing the offender is concerned because the system will have known the crime committed by the offender and the appropriate way of punishing them having put justice into consideration.
Another importance of evaluating the criminal justice system is to know its ability to point out the strong linkages between the existing practices which can stop the functions of another reform or to claim that it is not necessary. As we continue to learn more about the criminal justice system, we realize the system shares power in making some serious decisions on sentencing offenders. The legislature, the parole of board, the sentencing commission, the prosecutors, the courts and the defenders among all the members of the criminal justice system have to make a shared decision. Reforms that have mandatory sentencing that are at least tending to concentrate power on the legislature without the exception of the prosecution excessively.
There should also be a balance for the amount of funds for agencies such as the defense services and the courts tend to be ostracized and lag behind the funding that belongs to the police and the prosecution. As much as most people hate criminals, it is the responsibility of all citizens of a given country to help the criminals and not to reject them since they are returned back to the community after they have spend some few months in the custody or even those who are put in the custody for a very long time like several years. Even though most times political justice thinks that it can reduce crime by imprisoning the offenders for many years, it does not work out that way because this causes more harm to the society financially in the future since it is expensive and thus the benefits can be either negative or make a slight positive which cannot be felt by the society.
Everyone wants to be treated justly in the modern world and wants to see justice being done and this is usually looked at from the point of viewing how the criminal justice is enhancing justice. If the criminal justice system is corrupt then there is no way that it can be in a position to enhance justice and this is not what the society wants. As we have seen, punishing offenders is not necessarily enhancing justice since it can also be corrupt through having police officers who are too harsh and want to misuses their powers or by having judges and lawyers who wants to misuse law for their own benefits. The concepts that one can learn on the applications of the criminal justice system is very wide and very advantageous since it equips the learner with knowledge on the functions of the criminal justice system as a whole.
The contradictions of the functions of this system that has been evaluated will always be a challenge to those who aim at improving this system whether now or in the future. Maybe the greatest challenge will have to be the fact that there has not been any citizen who has put himself in a position to explain the functions of this system further or to show some expertise in this study since through this is where the society as a whole will be able to understand this system and appreciate its existence. Finally, the system should find a way to explain more about its functions and give the society a reason to appreciate its operations and know its value.