The Criminal Justice System of US - Essay Example

Essentially, many elements can influence the behavior of police—and that, in turn, has an influence on violent crime.  Of course, policing policies vary from station to station, so a blanket statement about law enforcement can’t be made.  However, in a political machine, typically the media influence how violent crime is viewed.  “[The media can favor] aggressive reactive justice tactics that can border on unconstitutional intrusions; vigilantism by officers and the public, which furthers constitutional violations; and fictitious accounts of crime, crime control, and the criminal justice process.

”  The good news is that police departments are starting to get much more highly-organized.  The other issue is that many police departments require their officers to have Bachelor’s degrees now.  Of course, police stations want to train recruits who can do good research.  “A problem-solving approach, rooted in systematic research, is being used more and more police departments and in many other criminal justice agencies as well.  Therefore, criminal justice professionals need to know not only how to interpret research accurately, but how to produce accurate research.

”   However, just as the fact is true that educated cops can’t necessarily deter violent crimes, the same fact holds true for the court system. The difficulty with the American court system as it is, is that many people do not take being sentenced seriously.  Therefore, they commit violent crimes and think that perhaps they will be able to get off without having to serve half of their sentence (if they have good behavior), much less serve a sentence at all. If the police work has been sloppy, DNA sampling and all manner of testing can be disputed in the courts.

What is even worse is that many people are concernid with the courts themselves because judges can be ‘in the back pocket’ of prosecutors, who can bribe the judges to send people off to jail. “Problems with inadequate resources and the uneven quality of judges hurt the courts' effectiveness.”3 Thusly, no one is sure about what type of judge is going to hear any one case. Some judges might be effective at sentencing, but really, it’s a crap shoot. Defendants who commit violent crimes do so at their own risk because they don’t know if they are going to be given a fair shake at the trial—however, this, too, does not deter violent criminals. IV. Corrections Just because people know that they are going to be put in jail, doesn’t necessarily deter violent crime either.

Some people actually commit petty crimes to be put in jail, where they might be safest rather than on the street and homeless, dead, or sold into slavery. Corrections, or rehabilitation, are both fancy names for being put into a concrete cell behind bars and then being left there to rot. However, not everyone just sits there staring at the wall. During his 33 years in confinement, one prisoner by the name of Leopold Loeb “studied and became fluent in 27 languages, completed university courses, reclassified the prison library, helped criminologists study parole prediction, helped found the Stateville Correspondence School, became an X-ray technician, registered inmates for the World War II draft, [and] wrote books and pamphlets”