Law Enforcement, the Courts & the Prisons
The writings of Alexis de Tocqueville on democracy and prisons, those of Michel Foucault on punishment and prisons, and those of Emile Durkheim on deviance neatly sum up the challenges, contradictions, and controversies with the U.S. Criminal Justice System. Each of these philosophers equated law enforcement, the courts, and crime and corrections as dynamic entities that were a reflection of its cultural institutions and values. In the U.S., the criminal justice system exists to maintain order and to achieve this under the rule of law. The three main components of the criminal justice system (law enforcement, the courts and corrections) are a reflection of American cultural institutions and values. However, in maintaining the rule of law in a democracy the rights of individual citizens and checks upon initiatives of legal officials create a tension between operational consequences of ideas of order, efficiency, and initiative, on one hand and legality on the other. Keeping a social construction perspective of the criminal justice system and the inbuilt tension with democratic systems of justice in mind, this analysis will use the work of Johnson, Crank, and Feeley to discuss three current trends in the criminal justice system that threaten its credibility and stability. These three trends are: the distancing of police from the communities they serve, including increasing racial tensions; the increasingly bureaucratic and ineffective nature of the court system; and the growing tendency of prison as a means to punish versus rehabilitating inmates.
The distancing of police from the communities they serve, including increasing racial tensions, is a topic that is well-covered in John P. Crankâs Understanding Police Culture. Crank, formerly a scofflaw and no fan of law enforcement, now teaches criminal justice classes. In his effort to provide greater understanding of an often misunde...