...Criminal Justice System CJA-204 June 01, 2015 Criminal Justice System Crime is “any act or omission in violation of penal law, committed without defense or justification, and made punishable by the state in a judicial proceeding” (Schmalleger, Hall, Dolatowski, 2010, p. 4). Laws are principles and regulations that are established to keep the people in some form of order. If the people stray from these regulations and principles, they may actually be committing a crime. Government Structure The criminal justice system is made up of agencies from the local, state, and federal levels. There are also three branches of government. These three branches of government include the Legislature, Judicial, and Executive branches. The legislative branch is responsible for making the laws. The judicial branch is responsible for determining if laws are constitutional and can also overturn prior rulings by other judges. The executive branch is responsible for signing and vetoing laws. A president is elected, by the people, to be the head of the executive branch every four years. Choice Theories Choice theories are explanations as to why crime is committed. These theories come in the form of eight general categories. These categories include classical, biological, psychological, psychobiological, sociological, social process, conflict, and emergent. Classical theory involves the individual’s exercise of his or her free will. Biological theory refers to genes that cause...
Words: 904 - Pages: 4
...Criminal Justice System Criminal Justice System Crime is defined in different ways by different sources. I will show two different sources that define crime but ultimately they mean the same thing just worded differently. The definition of crime in The Merriam-Webster dictionary is defined as an act or the commission of an act that is forbidden or the omission of a duty that is commanded by a public law and that makes the offender liable to punishment by that law; especially : a gross violation of law. Crime defined in the criminal justice field is defined as conduct in violation of the criminal laws of a state, the federal government, or local jurisdiction for which there is no legally acceptable justification or excuse. There is a very unique relationship between crime and the law. If there are no laws then what constitutes a crime? There would be no crime because there would be no violations that would be punishable. This would cause mass chaos among the people. People would take matters into their own hands. Each individual would become their own judge, juror, and executioner. This is something that society could not handle and this is why there is a need for order by making laws and enforcing them. The two most common models that society deems what and which acts are criminal are the Consensus model and the Conflict model. The Consensus model is a perspective from the criminal justice field that it is assumed that all the components work together consistently to...
Words: 1214 - Pages: 5
...Criminal Justice System The definition of crime can be a conduct in violation of the criminal laws of the state, the federal government, or a local jurisdiction, for which there is no legally acceptable justification or excuse. A type of crime can differ in each state and will not always be persecuted the same way. Marijuana is an example, because in most states it is a crime to smoke marijuana, it is legal in some other states. The criminal justice system has three components, police, courts, and corrections. Each three of them have to work together to ensure the system is performed correctly and fairly. The police enforce the law, investigate crimes and apprehend the offenders. In the counts the jury and judge determinate if the defended is either guilty or innocent. If defended is found guilty, he or she may be incarcerated in correction facilities. These corrections not only help to protect the community from criminals but also rehabilitate criminals. * The criminal justice goals are deterrence, incapacitation, retribution, rehabilitation and restoration. Deterrence seeks to prevent criminal events by creating fear in criminals’ minds through punishments. Incapacitation is to take the offender’s ability to commit a crime; incarceration is one way of incapacitation. When a criminal is punished or pays victim compensation is called retribution. We normally believe that justice prevails only when an offender is punished. Rehabilitation is an important goal in the criminal...
Words: 656 - Pages: 3
...The Criminal Justice System in Modern Day Society According to Schmalleger (2015) the American experience with crime during the last half century has been especially influential in shaping the criminal justice system of today. Crime is defined as “conduct in violation of the criminal laws of the state, the federal government, or a local jurisdiction, for which there is no legally acceptable justification or excuse,” (Schmalleger, 2015). Therefore, what constitutes a crime is regulated by local, state and federal laws. Moreover, what is deemed a crime in one state may not be a crime in another state; this is because each unit of government is charged with defining what is classified as a crime within that particular jurisdiction. Likewise, each governmental agency is responsible for the detection and subsequent prosecution of crimes that are committed. Society determines which acts are criminal by using two models known respectively as the consensus model and the conflict model. Schmalleger (2015) suggest that the consensus model is based on majority of the people within a society sharing the same values and beliefs. This group of people determined what is considered right and what is considered wrong. If a member of the groups acts in opposition of the agreed upon norms, and the act threatens the safety of well being of the group, the act is considered illegal and therefore is subject to reprimand. The conflict model seems to suggest that criminal acts are...
Words: 894 - Pages: 4
...Criminal Justice System Jean H. Blanc CRJ 100 04/30/2013 Prof. McCarty Abstract According to Shae Irving, the word “criminal” is describe as “the society’s belief that certain act are unacceptable and that any perpetrator should be punish” [ (Irving, 2008) ]. Enter the American Criminal Justice System. This paper will give a brief description of the Criminal Justice System and its purpose, and describe the key component of this system. It will also discuss the purpose and function of each component and their main responsibilities. Criminal Justice System Definition and goal. As described by author Frank Schmalleger, the criminal justice system is “the aggregate of all operating and administrative or technical support agencies that perform criminal justice function” [ (Schmalleger, 2011) ]. For lack of a better term, it is the collective institutions through which an accused offender passes until the accusation have been lifted or the assessed punishment concluded. The criminal Justice system serves two purposes. According to Professor Kathleen Daly of Griffith University, the state is responsible to respond to crimes to secure benefits to the wider society, such as crime prevention and reduction. Professor Daly continued on to point out, that the state also has the responsibility to redress imbalances caused by those people who take illegal advantage of another or diminish their human dignity [ (Daly, 2012) ]. To sum it up, the criminal justice system’s purpose...
Words: 996 - Pages: 4
...Criminal Justice System Paper CJA/204 8/2/2011 Criminal Justice System Criminal Justice is known as a system of rules and institutions of governments focused on upholding social control, deterring or reducing crime, or dealing with subjects who violate laws with penalties and rehabilitation efforts. In order to have a system in place to counter crime and those who commit it, we must first understand what crime is. According to Eagle Systems Home Security (July 10, 2006), “A crime is an act that violates law of any person or social grouping. It is a violation of criminal law, which is the standard of bad behavior”. Subjects accused of crimes have certain protections against abuse of power during investigation and prosecution. The United States Criminal Justice System is broken down into three sections; Police, Courts, and Corrections. Each component is critical in achieving the goal of protecting individuals constitutional rights through enforcement of standards of conduct. The first component in the Criminal Justice System is Policing. The Police are at the tip of the spear in the system. Police are the first entity in the criminal justice system that an offender will come into contact with. Officers will conduct an investigation into suspected wrong-doing and make an arrest of the suspected offender. Police Officers in America are tasked with a wide-ranging mission that grows increasingly more dangerous. Never before in the history of the United...
Words: 909 - Pages: 4
...Criminal Justice System Kristi (Michelle) Flemig CJS/200 November 18, 2012 Tracy Walker Townsend Criminal Justice System The role of the criminal justice system is to respond to crimes in the name of society. It is not confined to one level of government. It spans the federal state and local governments. The lines of authority and distinction between agencies are not always clear and may need to be negotiated according to the jurisdiction of the case. The police, courts and corrections facilities are supposed to work together as a system to implement criminal justice functions. The broad scope and size of the process can make efficient and effective goals, and different agencies within the system emphasize different goals. Sometimes the difference in these goals creates conflict. The five criminal justice goals are not mutually exclusive. Deterrence occurs with an offender is caught, punished, and decides not to engage in further criminal behavior because he or she now understands the consequence of that behavior. Retribution involves the act of taking revenge on a criminal perpetrator. Types of retribution include incarceration, victim compensation, fines paid to public agencies, community service and/or public humiliation or embarrassment. Restoration involves the attempt to make the victim “whole again.” The goal of restorative justice is to repair the harm crime has done to the relationship between the offender and victim and the offender and the community...
Words: 879 - Pages: 4
...The Criminal Justice System is made up three components that follow each other; the police, the courts and corrections. The criminal justice system has the responsibility of obtaining law violators and giving out a reasonable punishment for crimes that are committed. The criminal justice system also has the duty of protecting the innocent and making sure those that are offenders are treated with fairness, not only by the law enforcement but by the courts and correctional institutions. According to (Schmallger, 2009, page7 of Criminal Justice Today) crime is defined as: the conduct in violation of the criminal laws of a state, the federal government, or local jurisdiction for which there is no legally acceptable justification or excuse. Justice is defined as: the principle of fairness; the ideal of moral equity. We can start of by saying crime is law’s wife, they go hand and hand know matter which way you put it. When a crime is committed it is a one hundred percent chance that a law has been broken. In the criminal justice system when a crime is committed the first component that has a part is the police. Law enforcement has the responsibility of the investigation and arrest. Majority of the time the crime has to be investigated, so that law enforcement has enough evidence and probable cause to charge the person in question. Sometimes when a crime is committed the police get there in enough time to catch the criminal before he or she can leave the scene. Once enough sufficient...
Words: 914 - Pages: 4
...Criminal Justice System Professor: DD Jona Jones Devry University ] I. Criminal Justice System II. Introduction Incarceration is a kind of punishment in which criminals are held in prison, because they have committed a crime. People are usually incarcerated because they are involved in illegal activities various jurisdictions in different nations have devise different laws and regulations to govern the function of incarceration (Mauer, 1999) III. Body of the paper A. Prevalence 1. Statistics regarding incarceration 2. Statistics regarding race (Kennedy, 1997) 3. Racial disparity in prison sentence 4. Racial disparity in duration of sentence (Kennedy, 1997) This explains and illustrates the various incidents and statistics of African American, Hispanic and the white people. This elaborates that ethical discrimination occurs is the entire criminal justice process. The minorities and ethnic groups are given more harsh punishments as compared to white. B. Causes 1. Reasons behind African American in jail 2. Disparities in ways African American communities are policed (Huffing Post). 3. In adequate allocation of resources 4. Racial profiling (Wall Street Journal). This section describes the various reasons and causes due to which most of the African Americans have to go to jails once in their life time. It will also show how lack of resources contributes to the problem. C. Consequences 1. The impact on individual...
Words: 463 - Pages: 2
...Criminal Justice System Je’Nea Taylor March 19, 2011 Dale Jenereaux CJA/204 Crime, can anyone really give the correct meaning of this word. People hear the word crime and put a lot of different meaning to it. They think about the crime that has happen to the people close to them and all the bad things that goes on in the world. Most people would tell you the meaning of crime is when someone is doing something that is against the law. According to our text book, crime is conduct in violation of the criminal law of a state, the federal government, or a local jurisdiction, for which there is no legally acceptable justification or excuse. Crime has many different meanings but it all comes to the same setting; anything that is illegal is against the law, whether state or federal. Crime relate with in many different forms. Crime is a violation of the law, not all violation of the law is considered a crime. For example, if someone sign a contract and do not follow through with the terms of the contract, they are in violation of the contract but they have not committed a crime. When someone commits a murder, they are in violation of the law and they have committed a crime. No matter what a person may do whether they commit a crime or they violate the law, they deal with the criminal justice system at all time. There are instruments that people can use to measure crime. Sometimes it helps law enforcement and sometimes it do not. One measure is self-reporting....
Words: 565 - Pages: 3
...Criminal Justice System CJA/204 Criminal Justice System The following paper summarizes the criminal justice system in our culture, its goals and dependencies and the processes within. It will address what crime is, to how its citizens are processed, the government structure and whether or not it is actually a system. Crime and its Relationship to Law As defined by the Oxford dictionary, crime is defined as “An action or omission that constitutes an offense that may be prosecuted by the state and is punishable by law.” The two most common models of how society determines which acts are criminal are the Consensus model and the Conflict model. The Consensus model supports the idea that the makeup of the criminal justice system from police to corrections and the methods of obtaining information to criminal punishment are in agreement in working to achieve the same outcome. This is done through the cooperation of all parties involved, each striving for a common goal. The Conflict model supports the individual person and/or agencies in which the benefits of the system are personal with disregard to others involved. Success is determined not by the system as a whole working together, but rather, the individual obtaining a pay raise, notoriety, and the ability of their personal achievements. This model’s success is focused more on the individual rather than the sum of the parts. Government Structure and its application to the Criminal...
Words: 942 - Pages: 4
...Criminal justice System Three main components in the Criminal justice Those components are polices, courts, and Corrections They each play a significant role in the various stages .The content will be an overview of the criminal justice System as well as a description of the police officer, district attorney, defense attorney and local magistrate roles., Each component will be defined according to the American criminal justice system. The primary Function of each component will also be identified and two examples of each component will be given. The Ultimate goal in the criminal justice system is “(1) the need to enforce the law and to maintain public order and (2) the need to protect individuals from injustice, especially at the hands of the criminal justice system” (Schmalleger, 2011). What is the function of the police? Police are government officials in charge of regulating and controlling affairs within the community. Police are designed “to regulate, control, or keep order with or as if with a law enforcement agency” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/police ) The functions of the police are to enforce the law, investigate crimes, apprehend criminals, maintain public order, prevent and reduce crime, and ensure community safety. Two examples of policing are the television show “CSI: NY” and the movie “The Glades”. The criminal justice system is the combination of legal...
Words: 419 - Pages: 2
...Criminal Justice System The criminal justice system can be a complicated system to try to understand. There are many different laws and regulations that need to be followed to ensure that each person being charged with a crime or the person charging another with a crime get treated equally and fairly as another person would. Morrison (n.d.), "Crime is associated with harm and violence; harm to individuals, destruction of property, and the denial of respect to people and institutions.” (para. 1). The relation between crime and law is when a person commits an act that is capable of a crime or criminal activity, which can lead to a punishment by the courts and carried out by corrections. In today’s society there are laws made that state what could be considered a federal crime or a state crime. The state level crimes are set by Revised Statutes. Government system for criminal justice. “The Police are to enforce the laws, investigate crimes, apprehend offenders, reduce and prevent crime, maintain public order, ensure community safety, provide emergency and related community service, protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals. The Courts are to conduct fair and impartial trials, decide criminal cases, ensure due process, determine guilt or innocence, impose sentences on the guilty, uphold the law, require fairness throughout the justice system, protect the rights and freedom of anyone facing processing by the justice system, provide a check on the exercise...
Words: 798 - Pages: 4
...Criminal Justice System Pg 1 Criminal Justice System James J. Bradbury University of Phoenix The United States Criminal Justice System has many different components and sub-components, from law enforcement officials to lawyers and judges to the correctional institutions. In this paper I will be defining what each component is responsible for and how it is processed. As this pertains to the health and welfare of the country I will also be explaining how the criminal justice system pertains to the government. The first branch of the system that we will be looking at is law enforcement which includes your police, sheriffs, security guards, and other agencies out there that are charged with upholding the law. When a law is broken it is up to the aforementioned agencies to determine the level in which the crime was committed and apprehend the suspected party who supposedly committed said crime. When it comes to the determination of the severity of crime and who committed the crime, a good amount of discretion must be used so as to warn, investigate, or arrest the suspected party. The information gathered in the investigation can then be presented to the prosecutor for use at trial. If a strong enough case can not be presented, or lack of actus reus(the act of committing the crime) and mens rea(the mental knowledge of committing that crime) then the prosecutor may act to drop the charges thus releasing the suspect. As there are three branches to the Criminal Justice system...
Words: 823 - Pages: 4
...Components of the Criminal Justice System and the Criminal Justice Process There are three components of criminal justice that we will explain: Police, Courts, and Corrections. Policing is the first component of our justice system. Policemen are the first responders within this system and are the ones who basically see the crime as it happens or right after. They are also the ones who come in contact with the evidence as they search the suspects or their property. They are also responsible for deterring crime with the presence in neighborhoods, highways, and events. They are the ones who serve the community with helping others in distress and protecting citizens from criminals. Police have the ability to determine if a crime was committed or not. Perpetrators are told their rights and taken into custody and transported safely by police. Police are also responsible for being role models within their community and must respect citizens on a mutual level. Too many times we see a case of police brutality and we know that a majority of policemen are good people, but our society sees “CNN”, “FOX NEWS” and our local news media and we only see what the ratings want us to see. Policemen have one of the toughest jobs in the world and yet are some of the most underpaid professionals besides soldiers and teachers. We must understand that policemen are on our side and not always think the criminal is right. The second component of our justice system is the courts...
Words: 849 - Pages: 4
