Criminal justice

2/1/2021 2021SP1-CRJS-1005-01: The Criminal Justice Systems

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By Hanyou23 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 .

The Criminal Justice Systems

You will often hear and see in this course references to "the criminal justice system." In reality, there is no such thing. At best, there are four criminal justice systems—those involving law enforcement, the courts, corrections and community corrections—and even those are fragmented, involving many different agencies with different authority, jurisdiction, functions, personnel, accountability and procedures. In the course of a "criminal career," an offender may wind their way through encounters with the police, the courts, prisons and probation and parole officers. But these entities are not really part of a single system. Instead, they comprise a series of interlocking systems that feed into one another and, sometimes, back again.

Even the individual components of the "system" are multi-faceted. Law enforcement is not comprised of a single agency but of many international, federal, state and local units. The federal government alone enforces the criminal laws through a wide variety of agencies apportioned throughout many different federal departments. The Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; the Secret Service; the Internal Revenue Service; the Postal Service, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, are just a few. The Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Defense Department's military intelligence units may now be considered part of this "system," as well, given their role in gathering information about terrorism and terrorist activities. Most states have their own police agencies, and hundreds of local municipalities within those states also have their own departments, often with

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(2021SP1-CRJS-1005-01) Introduction to Criminal Justice

2/1/2021 2021SP1-CRJS-1005-01: The Criminal Justice Systems

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"Presiding Judge Miles Ehrlich " (CC BY 2.0

) by maveric2003

"Corridors of central jail " (CC BY-ND 2.0 ) by

seeveeaar

By Dwight Burdette - Own work, CC BY 3.0 .

overlapping geographical jurisdictions. Personnel in all of these agencies are appointed with different qualifications, by different appointing authorities, have different training, operate under different laws and procedures and may have wholly different or slightly different jobs to perform.

Similarly, we have state and federal courts with different geographical and subject-matter jurisdictions. Some judges are appointed; others elected. Some are appointed, then subject to "recall" elections. Some are appointed for life and cannot be removed, except by the cumbersome and seldom-used vehicle of impeachment. Others owe their allegiance only to the voters and can't be controlled by appellate or administrative judges. A judge in one jurisdiction can interpret a statute or the same language in the Constitution differently from another in a concurrent jurisdiction, and both interpretations are acceptable unless and until a higher court with the authority to do so overrules them.

There are local jails, state prisons and federal prisons, each with distinct authority and each administered by different government entities with differing standards for hiring, training, performance and procedure. There are detention facilities for juveniles, and some states have separate prisons for women. Many states now contract the incarceration of prisoners out to private corporations. 

And, in most places, different agencies are in charge of offenders who don't go to prison or who are released before the completion on their sentences on parole or to half-way houses. Community service programs, restitution, drug and alcohol treatment, boot camps, probation, shock camps and a bevy of other diversionary programs may be administered by different authorities in different ways.

The consequence of all this is a startling lack of uniformity in the way people are treated and an overwhelming amount of paperwork and confusion. It also leads to frequent "turf battles" over which police agency should respond, in what

court a motion should be presented, what prison is responsible for housing an inmate or what is an appropriate diversionary program for an individual offender. On the other hand, all of this fragmentation is part of the plan of our founding fathers in creating a "system" of checks and balances. Since there really is no unified "system" of criminal justice, it makes it extremely difficult for one individual with power or influence to control the process and "railroad" an innocent person.

Last modified: Sunday, January 10, 2021, 11:17 AM