Three Core Components of the American Criminal Justice System

CJ 101 DB 1

Three Core Components of the American Criminal Justice System

Police

The police departments in the United States are the main component in the justice system. They enforce the law, investigate criminals, and apprehend offenders. They also keep our towns and country’s as safe as they can.

Court

Courts is the second of the three core components in the justice system. The court system conducts fair and impartial trails, decides outcome of criminal cases, and uploads the law to the best of their abilitys

Correctional Agency’s

The correctional agency has a lot of responsibility such as protecting the community where the facility is located. This is also where the inmates are housed for their sentence. Protecting the offenders from of the other known inmates. The idea of a correctional facility is to rehabilitate offenders and get them back into the community, and hope they don’t come back. Correctional facilities offer different programs such as GED, substance abuse, and parenting classes.

Harmful Components of the Justice System

In my opinion the most harmful component of the justice system would be correctional facilities. Fore instances US prisons vs. Norway prisons. They fall on opposite ends of the spectrum. (Chris Weller, business insider:2017) As Chris Weller stated a fork in the US is a deadly weapon, where as in Norway a fork is simply a fork.

Such is the philosophy behind the prison: Allow people, even dangerous people, to feel like humans and they’ll behave more civilly than if treated like forces of evil. (Chris Weller, 2017) Norway prisons have wooden doors, not metal, private rooms with a bathroom, bed, and a desk kinda like a college dorm. Norway you can buy fresh fruit, and take pottery classes, United states you cant buy fresh fruit, and they don’t offer pottery classes in Memphis, TN maximum security. (Michael Jent, 2019)

I believe that once a person goes to prison they become accustom to the way things was in prison. Being told when to wake, eat, sleep, workout, bath. In Norway you can shower when you want, roam the prison watch TV, shower when you want. They’re not housed like animals. United States tend to focus on the length of the punishment. Rather than the rehabilitation of the inmate to be able to go back into society and not be a repeat offender.

If the United States would take part in some other counties customs in prison then maybe the inmate population would drastically decrease. Of course you will always have men and women who don’t abide by the law, and deserve to be in prison.

References

Schmallager, F. (01/2014). Criminal Justice Today: An introductory text for the 21st century, 13th Edition. (kaplan). Retrieved from https://kaplan.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781269731195https://kaplan.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781269731195

Business Insider. (Nov 28,2017). Chris Weller.

https://www.businessinsider.com/norway-and-american-prisons-reveal-how-each-country-sees-punishment-2017-1

Michael Jent. (January, 2020) Tennessee Inmate