The Criminal Justice System
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This paper will analyze the criminal justice system in America today. The discussion will focus on whether the existing criminal justice system fails to reduce crime. The paper will explore what author Jeffrey Reiman means when he states that "we can make more sense our of criminal justice policy by assuming certain acts as criminal and other harmful acts as noncriminal, and by diverting valuable resources away from social programs that could reduce crime." Moreover, the discussion will consider the role which the currently existing legal and criminal justice systems play in maintaining a socio-economic system with structural features that generate high levels of crime and juvenile delinquency. This paper will also describe some of the causes and sources of crime in contemporary U.S. society. Finally, the text will show how the alienation, personal humiliation, violence and isolation of prison life, combined with the lack of opportunity for ex-inmates outside of prison to create a new life for themselves, lead to recidivism and thus, increased crime.America's Diversion of Resources Away from Social Programs According to author Jeffrey Reiman, Americans can make more sense out of criminal justice policy by assuming that certain acts are criminal and other harmful acts are noncriminal, and that the government diverts valuable resources away from social programs that could reduce crime. Reiman states that the government's policy of diverti
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ny other country in the world" (Donziger, 2). Moreover, Donziger reports that we are not spending over $100 million a year to on weapons to combat crime, to no avail. He asserts that the problem is not so much the crime statistics, that is, not the number of crimes committed each year that is a problem. Instead, he claims that the problem is the increasingly violent nature of the crimes committed (Donziger, 2-3). He agrees with Reiman that failure to reduce poverty leads to more crime (Donziger, 29). But he makes an outstanding point which shows that solving the problems of our nation's poor is not the only answer. Donziger explains that by building so many prisons and enacting laws like California's new "three strikes" policy, that America has essentially planned for social failure. In this respect Donziger indirectly agrees with Reiman that we are planning for there to be more criminals, thus we engage in massive prison construction instead of massive plans to prevent crimes from occurring (Donziger, 21-30). Donziger believes America's criminal justice system would be far more effective if we spent the money used to build prisons on anti-poverty and youth programs which were designed to prevent crimes from occurring in
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1993
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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