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Criminal Justice

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 expose the myths within 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. This analysis will discuss three current trends in the criminal justice system. Each is a reflection of the growing injustices within the criminal justice system due to the growing class divisions in U.S. society based on race, economics, and power:: the distancing of police from the communities they serve; 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 U.S. has 5% of the worldÆs population but 25% of the worldwide prison population, while the costs of criminal justice amount to $1.7 trillion dollars annually (Anderson 1999). The distancing of police from the communities they serve, including increasing racial tensions, is a topic that is well-covered in John P. CrankÆs (1998) Understanding Police Culture. Crank teaches criminal justice classes. In his effort to provide greater understanding of an often misunderstood and secretive culture, Crank explores the growing resentment of police ov...

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Criminal Justice. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 08:03, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1710165.html