The Criminal Justice Satisfaction Survey - Assignment Example

In the 2011/2012 report, 70.625 % of the respondent felt satisfied with the criminal justice system as compared with 65.3% in the year 2008/2009 survey. Introduction Public confidence and perception of criminal justice system are fundamental in the administration of justice in any country. The system relies on the participation of witnesses and victims for successful operation. Bad perception of criminal justice system by both victims and witnesses leads to low involvement with the process of delivering justice to people (American Bar Association, 2007).

It also results into disrespect of court pronouncement and rulings a threat to stability. The dissatisfaction is central to many studies conducted on the criminal justice system. In Northern Island the monitoring of bridging the gap in criminal justice strategy began in 2007 with Witness and Victim Survey. By using the findings of these annual surveys, this country aimed at improving their criminal justice system to meet the needs of its citizens. Today, countries such as United States of America, United Kingdom and Australia conduct similar studies on regular basis.

These studies contribute to the development of better methods of measuring and evaluating the public attitudes towards courts, law enforcers and correctional facilities. The general findings of most surveys is that public satisfaction level declines from law enforcers to courts and finally to prisons. Meaning, the public view the stakeholders in the system as individual components. However, the Northern Ireland survey established an interesting finding which does not support this position. The satisfaction level with the services of criminal justice staff was 82.

5%, which is the highest in among the four indicator scores. Surprisingly, the police, judges and the probation officers fall under the staff within the justice department. This leads to a conclusion, that it is the structures within the system rather than the people which derail the public confidence. The score on information flow is the lowest despite the fact that the victims and witnesses needs to know the progress of their cases in time. The sharing of information promotes accountability, good governance and transparency in criminal justice system (Worrall &Nugent, 2008).

Summary of the Survey The Witness Victim Survey 2011/2012 aimed at measuring the satisfaction level the people who came into contact with the criminal justice system. These were the witnesses and victims who had cases dated January to June 2011. The IPSOS MORI used the data from the Public Prosecution Services (PPS) record to come of with 6359 expected participants. However, a 1000 witnesses and victims participated in the survey conducted from November 9 to December 11, 2011 through Out of this number only 1000 people got the opportunity for the interview conducted through Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing.

The percentages of witnesses and victims were 49% and 51% respectively and were people age 18 years and above. The scores were from 1 to 7 where representing complete dissatisfaction and satisfaction respectively. The respondents awarded scores on the four questions administered to them by the interviewer. Data Set Key Score Meaning 1 Completely Satisfied 2