Criminal Justice - Coursework Example

There are three types of court jurisdiction that are Personal Jurisdiction, Territorial Jurisdiction and Subject Matter Jurisdiction: • Personal Jurisdiction- A court has a personal jurisdiction over a person if that person has been personally served that is has accepted the service of court papers and also the defendant has some form of contact with the state in which the court is located (Berman, 1983, p. 530). • Territorial Jurisdiction- A court is said to have territorial jurisdiction over an event or a person or persons, by virtue of the sovereign jurisdiction of that state over the land which falls within its boundary, which includes all its inland and territorial waters.

Territorial jurisdiction of a court ensues from the authority of a court over a bounded space and over the people present there and the events taking place there (Berman, 1983, p. 222). • Subject Matter Jurisdiction- Subject Matter Jurisdiction pertains to the authority of a court to hear over the cases of a specific type or the cases relating to a particular subject matter (Berman, 1983, p. 222). To decide on a case, a court must have Subject Matter Jurisdiction and one of Personal or Territorial Jurisdiction. . ubjected to politically and commercially conducive confinements like workhouses, serving as galley slaves, or transportation to the colonies (King, 1984, p. 110). Like their European counterparts, the American colonists to begin with developed semblances of jails known as ‘gaols’ to detain the offenders awaiting trials (King, 1984, p. 110). These jails were simple and undefined in their architecture, involving no provisiosn to segregate the hardcore criminals from the petty offenders (King, 1984).

The lighting, sanitation and amenities in these jails were pitiable, giving way to pestilence and a hell like environment. The jail architecture underwent immense change in the 2nd half of the 18th century under the influence of the European social reformers. The modernization of Prison architecture in the US began with the renovation of the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia in 1789 (Tappan, 1951, p. 276). The prison architecture of these times took care to create special cells to segregate the petty offenders from the hardcore criminals.

Care was taken to make the prison ambience more conducive and healthy by making proper arrangements for light and sanitation. By the earlyb19th century the prisons started to have well defined wings with central hubs (Tappan, 1951). The prisons started to have solitary confinement cells, garden areas and some sort of exercise and recreation area (Tappan, 1951). The management of prisoners started to get more humane and reformation oriented. 3. Discuss how the Gault & Winship Supreme Court Cases impacted the juvenile court system.

  To begin with the issues pertaining to juvenile delinquency rarely got the attention of the US Supreme Court, until in the late 60s, the US Supreme Court decided on a wide range of landmark cases that had a