Felicia Gunn
Criminal Justice 1010
Police, Courts, Correction
The United States Government has made a criminal justice system that
they believe in the right way to convict a felon for the crimes that they have
committed. This has three main steps, we have the police which help with taking
the crime off of the streets, the courts that provide a way to sentence people
fairly, and that corrections that tries to help people see what they have done
wrong and help them to make better choices.
The police are a big part in the American justice system. They have four
main responsibilities enforcing the laws, providing services, prevent crime, and
preserve the peace in that community. (Criminal Justice Pg. 135) When they
enforce the law they find the people that are breaking the laws of the city and
take them into custody, and or just handle that situation by issuing citations ECT.
They help to provide services in all kind of ways whether it be helping someone
get into their car because they locked the keys in it or helping rescue a dog in a
hole. I think that it is often missed that police officers do these kinds of things.
They prevent crime when there are terrorist related threats or other threats
made. They take care of these things as soon as possible. Police are always
working on preserving the peace. The biggest thing that they have to deal with
is domestic disputes and domestic violence between both people.
The courts have four main functions that they have to accomplish. These
are the due process, crime control, rehabilitation, and bureaucratic. (Criminal
Justice 1010 Pg. 255-256). The due process helps to protect the freedoms and
rights of the person being charged with a crime against the state’s power. The
due process also gives us the right to a jury trial. Crime control enforces
punishment and retribution of the suspect. The courts have a responsibility to
society to punish people for the harm they have caused to the people with in
society. Rehabilitation is based on the “medical model” of the American
criminal justice system. (Criminal justice 1010 Pg. 256) This is to help people that
have a sickness or addiction and need treatment for that. The bureaucratic is
pretty much all of these (Due process, crime control, and rehabilitation) are
secondary to bureaucratic. The bureaucratic deals with cases that are brought
and they have to take care of them with speed and still make sure that they are
being efficiency, they have to make sure that the deadlines are meant when
they are supposed to be.
In our society we have what are known as corrections. Corrections are
given to those who break the law or get into trouble with that the individual can
receive jail time, prison time, or probation. The differences would be in time
obviously depending on what that specific individual did really rules out to how
long their probation, jail, or prison time could and will be. Jail time is usually a
year or less of a sentence anything longer that individual is sent to prison for two
or more years. In Jails they hold these individuals awaiting trials, convictions,
sentencing. Holding people who are waiting to be transferred into state or
federal prisons: holding inmates who are mentally ill to be transferred to local
health facilities. There are three models of prisons first there is custodial model,
which is where prisoners are incarcerated for incapacitation, deterrence, and
retribution. In this they are on a strict routine each is tremendously controlled to
do what is needed of them. The second is Rehabilitation which gives inmates a
chance to get their lives on somewhat a better path while they are spending
their lives in a prison. With Rehabilitation they offer treatment programs to aid
them to change their criminal anti-social behavior. Reintegration model is more
of a training ground in the community. The prisoners have more responsibility
during each of their incarceration and are offered half way houses and working
opportunities, to get them ready to enter society. Probation there is three main
types of conditions for probation the first is standard conditions which are given
to all probationers with this regular reports to an officer with notification of
change in address, and remaining employed. Punitive conditions usually shows
the how serious the offense is and can increase the punishment of the offender.
Conditions could include community service, home confinements. Treatment
conditions is used to rewind the destructive behavior it is shown that using drug
testing can lead to offenders wanting more help like anger management
classes.
The police, courts, and the corrections all tie together in some way or
another. We have built the criminal justice system this way so that there is less
room for a mess up in the society. We have the police because they are there
to make sure that the people that are committing the crimes in our society are
stopped. The people that are committing these crimes in society are then taken
into custody by the police officers. After they have been processed in the
system they will go into the courts to get their sentencing. The courts are there to
help people have a fair orderly and somewhat speedy trial. This is to insure that
there is an enough evidence to convict the defendant of their crime. They are
then sentenced to their punishment. The punishment is based on the level of
crime that you have committed. The correction makes sure that the defendant
has the punishment that they have been sentenced in the courts.