Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Criminal Justice System

Justice and fairness is one of the most important ingredients in attaining peace, security and harmony in the society. The absence of justice in a society carries with it a risk of unimaginable failure and eventual chaos. The ability of man to choose between right and wrong includes the choice of committing crime that is punishable by law. The court of justice is the venue for a case to be filed, heard and tried. Criminal justice system wields the authority of the courts to determine the facts and the law of each case. The applicable penalty will then be executed against a convicted criminal. In the end, a criminal may either be convicted or absolved from the crime committed based on legal reasoning. Criminal justice is a term for the system by which criminal demeanor is investigated, arrests completed, evidence collected, charges filed, defense alleged, trials made, sentences rendered, and punishment executed. With all court processes, the criminal justice system must be molded in accordance with the principles of justice and fairness. Equity, which is justice sweetened with mercy, must also be applied in case the meaning and spirit of the law calls to do so. With that, the three most important issues on the criminal justice system of the United States include issue on discrimination between blacks and whites, ineffective justice system and failure to prioritize prevention.

There had been many questions as to whether or not the criminal justice system is racist. The main problem is the high rate of black incarceration. It is self-evident that the cause of the situation is discrimination. Political processes, like presidential elections, provide opportunities to tackle the issue with high degree. A writer named Mac Donald quoted what Barack Obama mentioned in a debate, wherein the latter questioned the fact that blacks and whites are arrested unequally. The real scenario is this; there are differences in degree of sentences for the same crime which makes it imperative to review the criminal justice system of the United States. The incarceration of so many blacks compared to whites is indeed disgraceful. The criminal justice system of the country is racist for the reason that there are increasing numbers of blacks who are in jail for the past two years. In the year 2006, the percentage of blacks in all state and federal prisoners is 37.5% even though; blacks were only 13% of the national population. In addition, 11% of all black males between 20 and 34 ages stay in detention cells. According to the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, the black homicide cases were seven times higher than those who are whites, a fact that is so depressing. The ultimate realization is that police officers, prosecutors, and judges are biased in their treatment towards blacks and whites in relation to criminal cases being charged and tried against offenders. In other words, police officers over-arrest blacks and disregard criminals who are white. Reports even mentioned that the rate of crime victims is also the same with the number of black suspects. Discrimination looms in the cities of the United States affecting thousands of blacks being tried for crimes with no commensurate sentences. Overcharging by prosecutors and over sentencing by judges against blacks who are suspected criminals are practices that should not be tolerated. Bias and discrimination weaken the economic and political development of a country where racial mixture and cultural assimilation is rich. The most notable scenario is that blacks were considerably poorly represented during trial of homicide cases. Therefore, the problem lies in the criminal justice system but not on patterns of offending victims in the society.

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