Crime and Punishment - the Main Mandate of the Justice System - Essay Example

Crime and Punishment - the Main Mandate of the Justice System The word crime is often used to describe an action or omission that constitutes an offence that is punishable by law or simply an illegal activity. From the sociology point of view, it is any action by a person that is deemed injurious to the general public welfare or morals or to the interest of the state and that is legally prohibited. Most of the crimes committed have adverse effects either on an individual e.g. murder or the state. As any wrong doing is treated, the committing of a crime is always expected to be followed by a punishment. The main mandate of the justice system is to investigate, make arrests, gather evidence, bring charges forward, conduct trials, render a sentence and carry out a punishment. The judicial system is therefore trusted to make the right judgments and to give punishments only to those who deserve it in proportion to the nature of the crimes they have committed. They are not expected to make mistakes because they are supposed to conduct a sufficient investigation and gather enough evidence before they can convict a criminal (Gilligan 47). It is a pity however how many people are serving sentences for crimes they have never committed. Innocent people are languishing in jails in many parts of the world just because somebody failed to do their duty properly. The death penalty information Centre estimates that about 1200 people executed since 1976 in the United States may have been innocent. Another group of people are those that are exonerated after further evidence of their innocence comes up. A good example is the case of Willingham Cameron who was charged with the murder of his three children by arson. After his execution, a new report from a national arson expert concluded that the original investigation to the case was seriously flawed and could not support a finding of arson. The question is how many people cannot defend themselves or prove their innocence yet they really are innocent? (Garrett 69) I mainly attribute these cases where the guilty walk scot free while innocent people are punished to sheer negligence. As the people bestowed with the mandate to investigate and punish wrong doers, the justice system should be very good at what they do. They should know how to seek evidence and at the same time how to classify it. They should also know that not all sources of evidence are reliable, like a person’s testimony, and they should therefore seek to verify evidence. It is a common phenomenon of the police to intentionally or accidentally feed details of crime to suspects. There are even cases where the police indicate which suspects in a line up during an identification parade should be selected by using suggestive methods hence contaminating eyewitness’s identification. This is pure negligence, because they are of course trained on how to carry out investigations, why do they do otherwise? I also attribute the rampant increase of punishing the innocent to greed and corruption (Gilligan 76). There are cases where the police are paid to plant evidence on an innocent person and convict him/ her. There are also cases where the police are paid by criminals in order to get rid of the evidence against them. They of course blame their actions on their poor pay but it doesn’t justify what they do. The justice system that was once trusted to offer justice is now criticized and looked down upon by many. The question is what exactly went wrong with our judicial system. Jeffrey Rosen in his article the wrongful convictions as a way of life also seem to ask the same question. He writes of instances where the appellate judges termed the evidence of the innocent people’s guilt as overwhelming and also instances where the Supreme Court dismisses request to review cases without even giving reasons for their decisions. Brandon L.Garrett, in his book convicting the innocent also points out how the courts have in many instances failed to take their time to properly consider the evidence of innocence of the suspects before they convict them. Many of our justice systems are also characterized by greedy and corrupt judges and officers. Judges who would set a criminal free at a fee. Judges who would convict an innocent person just because a client who is offering them a good amount of money has asked them to do so. Some of the judges and the officers no longer have their countries best interest at their hearts but are working hard for their own benefits and personal interests. Our justice system is quickly turning out to be the place where a lot of injustices actually occur. The craving for power has also been a common phenomenon affecting our justice system. Judges no longer make objective judgments but make their decisions and judgments according to the political wave in order to find favor with the high and mighty. They have allowed politics to influence and take part in their activities yet it was ideally supposed to be an independent system away from any politics. It completely illogical for these very people who swear to be true to their country and serve without fear or favor, to be swayed by other factors and do things against the interests of the citizens of their country. It is also amazing how this very people who took this oath to be coerced by powerful people to make rulings in their favor. As we grow up, we are usually taught on how to be good people in the society. One aspect we are usually taught is that of forgiveness. We also taught that as human beings we should be able to understand people, the motive behind their actions and that we try to help this people overcome their weaknesses. But is there really a relationship between forgiveness and crime? Many scholars will argue that when it comes to crime, there is no room for forgiveness. This is because criminals should be taught that their actions have consequences and they should be punished for their actions to show them that what they did was not right. Forgiveness and lack of punishment for criminals can also lead to the up rise of criminal activities because people will take shelter or solace in the fact that there is no punishment after all. James Gilligan in his book Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic however seeks to bring another view on how criminals should be handled. Drawing his experience from being a prison psychiatrist where he dealt one on one with criminals from all walks of life, he to argue that punishment is in itself a crime (Gilligan 114). Gilligan shows the links between violence and shame and argues out that that emotion (shame) drives people to destroy others and even themselves. He attributes most cases of violence to the absence of love, absence of self-worth and presence of shame. He points out that they prefer doing this to losing their self-respect. He therefore argues out that punishment is not the best approach to deal with violence and criminal cases. He goes further to assert that the current responses to violence are doomed to fail. Violence and crime, according to him should be dealt with at the grassroots during the bringing up of a child to ensure this negative attributes of loss of self-worth are not in the child. Those who are already in it should be counseled and helped overcome their feelings of shame and learn to regard themselves worthy for them to be better citizens. This will help reduce crime levels since the criminals will come out of prisons better people than they came in. in a nut shell, he advocated that prisons should be correctional facilities and not punishment facilities. In my view it is very necessary for criminals to be punished. Punishment is not a new word to young children and students. This is because they always get punished for doing what is wrong. From my research and experience, punishment has gone a long way in shaping some of the great men we have in our society today. It taught them that there are consequences of doing what is wrong and just because they didn’t want to face these consequences; they always made sure that they are on their parents and teachers good books. Punishment therefore helps in making people stay away from criminal activities in fear of the consequences of engaging in the same. Punishment also provides a basis for reference to other people who may have had the intention of engaging in criminal activities. It is a common thing to learn from other people mistakes. If somebody sees another serving a sentence because of a crime he committed, he may shy away from doing the same for fear of facing the same predicament. Where there is no punishment, people will be encouraged to engage in crime because after all there are no adverse consequences for them. Therefore in a way it helps to reduce crime levels in the society. The question of to what degree punishment should be carried out should however be considered when issuing punishments. Punishments are meant to help people change and not make them worse and bitter people. In my view, punishment should go hand in hand with counseling to help these criminals understand why they are being punished and also help them overcome any shortcomings they might be having that could be a cause to their behavior as Gilligan argues. Corporal punishment is therefore not justified at all. The canning and flogging or infliction of pain on one’s body only increases the feeling of shame and loss of self-worth in individuals. At the end of the day, it only serves to produce more stubborn and better criminals rather than help them change to be better citizens. Death penalties should even be a thing of the past by now according to me. The people who are sentenced to death are not given a chance to reform. Even if they regret their actions and they want to be better persons, they are not given the chance to make their wishes come true. It is a crime against humanity in itself because it takes away a life of a person without giving them a second chance. As punishments are meant to make people better persons, I am of the opinion that the justice system should come up with ways to help people change and fit in back in the society instead of taking away their lives. A society without proper punishment will be a perverse society. People have to take responsibility for their actions and also have to learn that criminal activities are not accepted in the society. In a society where people are not punished for their wrong doing, irresponsibility is doomed to be the order of the day. Though in agree with Gilligan on the way criminals should be handled, I don’t agree that a society without punishment entails one without crime. This is because complete scrap off of punishment will encourage people to engage in crime because there are no direct consequences for their actions. People will have nothing to bar them from committing these crimes which as a matter of fact cause great losses not only to individuals but also to nations. It is not justifiable at all for somebody to cause such losses and walk unpunished. Everybody must be taught to take responsibility for their actions. One point that must be noted though is that punishment is meant to correct. It should therefore not hurt anyone’s ego or make them worse persons. It should not be overdone. Works Cited Garrett, Brandon. Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011. Gilligan, James. Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. London: Vintage Books, 1997. Read More