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Criminal Acts and Choices

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Criminal Justice System
Stephanie Rigby
CJA/204
March 11, 21013
Ray Cueller

Criminal Justice System * For the first assignment in this course – Introduction to Criminal Justice – as students we have been asked to define crime, its relationship to the law, and the two most common models of how society determines which acts are criminal. Further, it is required to describe our governments’ configuration as it applies to the criminal justice system, identify theories, and assumptions of the system and the criminal justice processes. Given this task, the description of justice system goals and my own thoughts if the criminal justice system is truly a system should be included. Following review of our text materials and subsequent research, there are some conclusions that can be approximated. The definition of crime would be any forbidden action that may be prosecuted by the state and is a punishable offense by law. As previously noted in discussion forums, crime cannot exist without laws. Without a law prohibiting a criminal act, or rather a forbidden activity, any act would be considered legal. Even in the Cji Interactive Multi-Media web link provided in the course materials, the media videos conclude that without law – an individual rule as part of a system – anything and everything would be legal. Due to morality, a system has been established that regulates communities by a regulatory authority. According to our text by Frank Schmalleger, this system has been created based on principles mostly in the form of legislation and policies that are established and enforced by the judicial system (2011). The goals of our criminal justice system are to monitor behavior through a government structure set by Constitution and Legislation. Our governments’ structure is based on the following: police, courts, and the corrections arena. Each is a

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