CRIMINAL JUSTICE ADMINISTRATION

Criminal Justice Administration



Criminal Justice Administration

Criminal Justice System

The system of criminal justice America uses to deal with those crimes it cannot prevent and those criminals it cannot deter is not a monolithic, or even a consistent, system. It was not designed or built in one piece at one time (EISENSTEIN, FLEMMING, and NARDULLI, 1988, 63-99). Its philosophic core is that a person may be punished by the Government if, and only if, it has been proved by an impartial and deliberate process that he has violated a specific law. Around that core layer upon layer of institutions and procedures, some carefully constructed and some improvised, some inspired by principle and some by expediency, have accumulated. Parts of the system magistrates' courts, trial by jury, bail are of great antiquity (FORST, and MANNING, 1999, 89-97).

Any criminal justice system is an apparatus society uses to enforce the standards of conduct necessary to protect individuals and the community. It operates by apprehending, prosecuting, convicting, and sentencing those members of the community who violate the basic rules of group existence. The action taken against lawbreakers is designed to serve three purposes beyond the immediately punitive one (FEELEY, 1979, 33-201). It removes dangerous people from the community; it deters others from criminal behavior; and it gives society an opportunity to attempt to transform lawbreakers into law-abiding citizens. What most significantly distinguish the system of one country from that of another is the extent and the form of the protection it offers individuals in the process of determining guilt and imposing punishment. Our system of justice deliberately sacrifices much in efficiency and even in effectiveness in order to preserve local autonomy and to protect the individual. Sometimes it may seem to sacrifice too much. For example, the American system was not designed with Cosa Nostra-type criminal organizations in mind, and it has been notably unsuccessful to date in preventing such organizations from preying on society (DEFRANCES, and STEADMAN, 1998, 65-77).

The criminal justice system has three separately organized parts the police, the courts, and corrections and each has distinct tasks (EISENSTEIN, FLEMMING, and NARDULLI, 1988, 63-99).

THE POLICE

At the very beginning of the process or, more properly, before the process begins at all something happens that is scarcely discussed in lawbooks and is seldom recognized by the public: law enforcement policy is made by the policeman. For policemen cannot and do not arrest all the offenders they encounter. It is doubtful that they arrest most of them. A criminal code, in practice, is not a set of specific instructions to policemen but a more or less rough map of the territory in which policemen work. How an individual policeman moves around that territory depends largely on his personal discretion (COLE, and SMITH, 1996, 23-45).

That a policeman's duties compel him to exercise personal discretion many times every day is evident. Crime does not look the same on the street as it does in a legislative chamber. How much noise or profanity makes conduct "disorderly" within the meaning ...