...A Failed/Corrupt Criminal Justice System Management ABSTRACT Is the U.S. Justice system a failing system? Are policemen allowed to take the law into their own hands? Are crime labs paid to send innocent people to prison? In my brief research paper we will look at some of the injustices facing U.S. citizens in today’s society and we will discover solutions to some of these problems plaguing our society. A Failed/Corrupt Criminal Justice System The United States of America is well known for her justice system catering to the wealthy (ones who can afford the top lawyers) and no so much to the less fortunate. Those who cannot afford to be represented by their own lawyers are faced with a tough upward struggle proving their innocence in an arena that would label them guilty before any true defense begins. How far does this injustice go? Are innocent people being persecuted based on race, social standings and incentives for prosecution? Is there an issue with law enforcement carrying out their duties? Is there truly justice in our justice system? There has been, in recent months, an upheaval in the U.S. Justice system due to the procedures done by officers detaining criminals. The actions, which have been perceived by many to be infringement on civil rights, leave the lives and the law totally into the officer’s hand. It reminds me of one of my favorite movies growing up, Judge Dredd, where the police can also act as the jury, judge and executioner with no penalty to...
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...At the time of extension the colonisers’ colonial power, cultural colonialism happens at the same time. Cultural colonialism practices as an influence of one culture over another, which brings cultural injustice to the colonial society (Ballantyne 2010). In the history, when European invaders arrived in North America, the number of Indian aborigines dwindled drastically. The aggression made most of the natives to be killed, the people who survived were forced to disregard their traditional cultural practices, values and beliefs and accept the whites’ culture. To achieve the ‘peace’ of the settlement, the whites moved many tributes to the abandoned land and what the Indian leaves were destroyed. The behaviour devastated the tribes’ culture...
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...courts. Those courts are the Supreme courts, courts of appeal, and district courts. They all play a major role in the federal systems. However, the federal systems are different from our state courts structure. The courts of Wisconsin’s court system are the municipal, circuit, court of appeals, and the supreme courts. They both differentiate in various amounts of areas. In this assignment, the roles and functions of the law will be discussed and explained. Federal Courts Structure vs. Wisconsin Courts Structure The federal system of government in which power is shared between the federal government and the state governments. The federal structure starts with the lowest level, which is district courts. The district courts have no jurisdiction. The next level would courts of appeal, and the last level is supreme courts. The appellate court’s task is to determine whether or not the law was applied correctly in the trial court. The Supreme Court is the highest court in the United States. The Wisconsin courts structure starts with municipal courts, which has no jury trials. The next level would be circuit courts. Circuit courts may have jury trials in most cases. Federal courts and state courts are two parallel sets of court with different and sometimes overlapping jurisdiction. . Depending on the dispute or crime, some cases end up in the federal courts, and some end up in state courts. Concept of Judicial Review The concept of judicial review is to resolute the shape and...
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...On Thursday, September 21st, speaker Jim Bear Jacobs addressed members of the Loras and Dubuque community and sought to answer the question “Who is an American?”. Jacobs is a member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation which is located in central Wisconsin. His identity as a member of the Mohican Nation is extremely important to him, as well as being an associate pastor of Church of All Nations in the Twin Cities. Jim Bear Jacobs spoke about the importance of knowing how the United States was truly founded, not by Christopher Columbus, but by the Native Americans who were colonized and killed for many decades and centuries, and then addressed the important questions, “Who is an American?”. Much of what Jacobs spoke on could be related the notion of cultural competency. Cultural competency essentially the ability to speak, interact, and understanding individuals of different cultures. This skill is extremely important in the field of Social Work, as social workers are working with a wide range of...
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...of the domains of the legal studies, known as the critical legal studies. By the term “legal”, it is evident that the concerned domain is related to a theory or a movement, which is established upon law, official or accepted rules and regulations. The discipline of legal studies comprises of the decrees, which are formulated in order to maintain the regime in the country and eliminate the traces of injustice. However, the politicians to sustain their chain of command may also use them. The nitty-gritty of the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) movement was brought into being in the year 1960 on the occasion of the participation of individuals in the social policy that was meant to achieve goals through direct or militant action during the Vietnamese War. The erudite scholars of the following era had begun employing diversified theories to the field of law and made enormous contribution in reshaping the discipline of legal studies. However, the legitimate appearance of the legal studies movement was observed in the year 1977 at a conference being held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The CLS movements were on an increase during 1980s in the United States. However, the British or the European CLS did not succeed in gaining its aimed targets except for the Finnish international lawyer Martti Koskenniemi, who had played a significant role in the Critical Legal Studies campaigns. Some of the other remarkable scholars and theorists who contributed to a great extent towards...
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...TEACHING THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS IN WISCONSIN: BACKGROUND AND CONTEXTS INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW Vinay Dharwadker Kerala and India are woven into the fabric of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. The novel assumes that its reader is familiar with many basic facts about these two places, especially their history and geography, society and culture, economy and politics. Roy grew up in Kerala, where her mother’s family had a home in the village of Aymanam, located on the outskirts of the town of Kottayam, on the other side of the River Minachil. Most of the action of The God of Small Things takes place in a village called “Ayemenem,” set near a river called “Meenachal.” Roy’s fictionalized village and river strongly resemble the real-life Aymanam and Minachil, and her narrative contains numerous references to the actual landscape of south-central Kerala, its people and their common customs, their music and dance, their religions and social organization, and their economic and political activities. The narrative also mixes its fictional elements with factual elements on a larger scale. Some of the novel’s “imaginary” episodes occur in the real town of Kottayam (about 2 miles from Ayemenem/ Aymanam, across the river) and in the historic port-city of Cochin (now Kochi, about 50 miles away to the northwest). The novel’s political discussion frequently blends fictional characters and organizations with real politicians and political parties: Comrade Pillai, for example, is an...
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...Ohio State University law professor and civil rights activist Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," reports there are more African American men in prison and jail, or on probation and parole, than were slaves before the start of the Civil War. Statistics reported in 2006, by the U.S .Department of Justice, Bureau of Statistics support this claim, which show that Blacks made up 41 percent of the nation’s 2 million prison and jail inmates, while Non-Hispanic whites made up 37 percent and Hispanics made up 19 percent. The disproportionate ratio of blacks to whites who are incarcerated is especially great in Iowa, Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and South Dakota – greater than 10-to-1 (USJB, 2006). Why this structural inequality towards African Americans is happening, why it matters, and suggestions to rectify this, are issues that are discussed in this paper. Why is this happening? Since 1970, the U.S. has experienced a large and rapid increase in the rate at which people, regardless of race, are housed in federal and state correctional facilities (Snyder, 2011). This rapid growth in the prison population has been attributed in a large part to the rate at which individuals are incarcerated for drug offenses, especially minorities (Snyder, 2011). Between1995 and 2003, the number of people in state and federal prisons incarcerated for drug offenses increased by 21 percent, from 280,182 to 337...
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...Jackie Robinson so he can assist in getting rid of Paul Robeson from his function as a black leader. Using a relative analysis of both Robinson and Robeson early lives, Author Ronald Smith affirms that they spearheaded change from different paths. Smith illustrates how Jackie Robinson was willing to cooperate with white society for the purpose of positive racial goals and Paul Robeson wanted improvement own his own terms, not necessarily those suggested by white society. Nonetheless, Smith insists both Robinson and Robeson fought for equal rights in their respected ways. In this informative and well written essay, The Paul Robeson-Jackie Robinson Saga and Political Collision, Ronald A. Smith (following his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, he spent 28 years at Penn State teaching sport history and researching intercollegiate athletics) illustrates how a collision arose between Robinson and Robeson, Significantly because of Robinson’s desegregation of baseball under white terms and Robeson’s stand for human rights under free political terms. This essay takes us through a clashing journey of two outstanding and prominent African American men, who shared core values and beliefs of equality from a different ideology and spectrum. This essay is...
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...intimate partner during adulthood. African Americans experience domestic violence at a high rate in comparison to their numerical representation in the population. Although domestic and sexual violence occurs in all socioeconomic classes, socioeconomic disadvantages do increase the risk of the incidence of violent crimes. In intimate partner violence cases of spousal assault, power balance is an important risk factor. Among domestic violence cases, husbands who have (or feel that they have) less power than their wives are more physically abusive toward them, because of the perceived lack of power in other areas of their lives. Although there are different sociological theories about the process through which a society recognizes and addresses social problems, the constructionist theory (also known as interactionist theory or collective behavior theory) provides a useful framework for understanding this process (Blumer, 1971). The term domestic violence has had many meanings over the past 20 years. It is commonly associated with wife beating or spousal...
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... African American and Hispanic offenders were more likely than whites to be sentenced to prison, especially if they were male, young and unemployed, S. Spohn (2000). Even though there may be a high rate of minority crimes being committed, I believe the reason for having so many minorities in prison is due to the current judicial system stereo typing. In the article Rethinking Drug Courts: Restorative Justice as a Response to Racial Injustice, it talks about the rate of drug crimes committed by minority and longer sentences imposed to blacks and Hispanics. Drug court offers offenders the opportunity to not do time in prison and get court supervised treatment instead. This is beneficial to the families of minorities so they can keep working and providing for their family which in turn reduces the poverty rate and the crime rate along with possibly avoiding imprisonment of their children. The minority prison rate is most high among black males disadvantaged versus middle class minority. The article also talks about blacks in Wisconsin are forty two times more likely than whites to receive a prison term for a drug conviction-the highest such...
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...toward people’s life. Neither any individual nor any group of people, which included a country and a society, has the right to decide if a person should live or die. The death penalty, with no doubt, is an action that disregards this most fundamental right of human beings. It is wrong enough for criminals to commit homicides; it makes even less sense to kill criminals for the killings. It can not bring back the lives of those who already died. The only thing it does is to destroy one more life and make more people- the families of the criminals- suffer the pain from the strategy. The essential nature of the relationship between a country and its citizens does not justify death penalty. If we take a look at the famous political work “the Social Contract” written by Franco- Swiss Philosopher Rousseau, we can see that, as individuals, citizens grant a country the privilege of organizing and running a society, and punishing, when it is necessary, those...
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...Early positive psychology centered around three concerns: character strengths or virtues, positive experiences, and positive social institutions. Interestingly, only a few short years ago in 2006 the first dedicated journal, The Journal of Positive Psychology was published. Since then, various other positive psychology sources have developed. For example, colleges around the world offer courses, which are specifically designed towards the theory of positive psychology. Interestingly enough, The University of Wisconsin Milwaukee is offering their first positive psychology course for the Spring2015 semester. Although positive psychology is one of the newer psychology views, it is rapidly becoming popular in both the academic life and in the ‘everyday’ life of people around the...
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...Summary The play is set in a New York City Court of Law jury room in 1957. The play opens to the empty jury room, and the Judge’s voice is heard, giving a set of final instructions to the jurors. We learn that this is a murder case and that, if found guilty, the mandatory sentence for the accused is the death penalty. After these instructions, the jurors enter. The men file in and decide to take a short break before deliberating. They complain that the room is hot and without air-conditioning; even the fan doesn’t work. All the jurors presume the obvious guilt of the defendant, whom we learn has been accused of killing his father. Eventually, the twelve sit down and a vote is taken. All of the jurors vote “guilty,” except for the 8th Juror, who votes “not guilty,” which, due to the requirement of a unanimous jury, forces them to discuss the case. The jurors react violently against this dissenting vote. Ultimately, they decide to go around the table, explaining why they believe the boy to be guilty, in hopes of convincing 8th Juror. Through this discussion we learn the following facts about the case: an old man living beneath the boy and his father testified that he heard upstairs a fight, the boy shouting, “I’m gonna kill you,” a body hitting the ground, and then he saw the boy running down the stairs. The boy claimed he had been at the movies while his father was murdered, but couldn’t remember the name of the movies or who was in them. A woman living across the street...
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...as other citizens. I refute disenfranchisement because it is not a novel practice. Its roots are historic. There have been numerous legal challenges to disenfranchisement laws, and courts have found the practice to be unconstitutional. In these legal challenges, one argument, which courts have never fully examined, however, is that disenfranchisement is linked to recidivism. Consistent with theories of labeling and shaming, one potential consequence of disenfranchisement is to create a permanent criminal underclass of outcasts, which is unable to fully rejoin society after their prison sentence is served. The outcome of this effect could, in turn, lead to an increase in criminal activity. Not only is disenfranchisement a poor social policy, it is...
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...Helping Women Climb the Ladder: How Corporations can Profit from Gender Diversity The need to make a commitment to encouraging diversity is paramount in today's business world. Executive women leadership can help corporations at the board level with success, find creative ways for face challenges, and spot talent within and outside the corporation while making the boardroom more innovative. Unfortunately, business women do not possess equal access to leadership. They face complexities not encountered by business men because of continuing uncertainties about their ability to lead. Requiring a diverse boardroom is a smart and practical way of bringing a different perspective and most assuredly value to the workplace. If every corporate board had at least one female board director, imagine the creativity and respect that would transpire. Women are working longer hours and the days of the "typical" stay at home mom are now becoming the stay at home dad. Business women have their sights on achieving an executive leadership position at the top of any corporation. Businesses must realize that there is something missing with boards being presided, managed and directed by all white males. In today's society, the word is inclusion, not exclusion, and it is robbing companies and society of talent and perspective that would benefit any firm by having the other half of the working population in the room. An integrated and diverse network of employees is a smart and practical way...
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