Criminal Justice System

This is a research paper on reward systems and how can they hinder the criminal justice administration. Reward systems are the systems used to reinforce behavior in crime offenders and make them better people. For an organization to act upon its members, the formal reward system should positively reinforce desired behaviors and not be an obstacle that should be overcome. On the other hand Criminal Justice system is a group of organizations dealing with criminology and has greatly helped criminal justice analysts improve on and deal with the crime impact globally with the use of some restorative practices of behavior in justice conferencing. In this system meetings are arranged between the offenders and the victims.

Both parties' family and friends are also supposed to be there. In these arranged meetings, they discuss the reasons of the crime and later they come up with the best to way to deal with the situation. On the other hand this involves the general approach of criminal justice in a life situation and this is a well known area all over the world that is mostly practiced and used in law firms (Kerr, 1975). There are however hindrances that reward systems can cause to the criminal justice system and this paper helps elaborate on that. 

Since 1995, the Criminal Justice system has greatly helped criminal justice analysts improve on and deal with the crime impact globally with the use of some restorative practices of behavior in justice conferencing. In these practices as explained above in the abstract, meetings are arranged between the offenders and the victims. Both parties' family and friends are also supposed to be there. In these arranged meetings, they discuss the reasons of the crime and later they come up with the best to way to deal with the situation. Therefore we should be able to comprehend what criminal justice is.

What is criminal justice?

Criminal Justice is the way of treating all people equally according to their rights and in ways that they deserve to be treated due to their relevant conduct by law. Criminal justice is a people's rights respecting treatment. For example in many states Good Samaritan laws have been installed to protect doctors who stop to assist for example a stricken motorist. In states without such laws it is common for doctors to refuse to stop for fear of involvement in a law suit (Stringer, 1968)

With the criminal justice system, a project known as the BJS-Princeton Project is used. The goal of this project is to engage the criminal justice community in various important debates concerning the suitable measures and methods that can effectively be utilized by practitioners and the policymakers. On the other side there are some areas where these measures can be practiced.  (Perrow, 1969)

For example in the article, "War on Drugs", the BJS data shows that drug offenses have now gone much higher than before thus leading to increased imprisonment of such offenders. The BJS data states that the agendas that are discussed by the public legislative are supposed to come up with some measures to reduce crimes.

The criminal justice system is currently undergoing major transformation as it is trying to meet the demands for criminal justice activities in every year which for instance roughly accounts for 3 cents of every dollar for the all republic spending that are about $74 billion, there is also less than 1.5% of Federal spending and more than 5% of spending by the country and also nearly 7.2% of local spending. The overall or total spending at all parts of government on justice activities is almost equal to the spending on transportation and just below the spending of government on hospitals and health.  (Garland, 1959)                         

The big question in this paper is: How Can Conflicting Rewards Systems Hinder Criminal Justice Administration? It can be through actions like:

Plea Negotiations and Trials

The public prosecutors are in charge of administration of public justice, and are rewarded by courts and their superiors for moving large numbers of cases along quickly by prompt plea negotiation and settlement (Kerr, 1973).  On the other side, they are subjected to public cries for life sentences and some trials of unwanted defendant's behaviors. In meeting this demand, a person must be very thorough so as to be rewarded during the by- election and public approval. Making communities secure doesn't exactly means achieving low rate of crime. It does rather means providing the security to property, life, and liberty and this is important if the community is to flourish. It also means enabling citizens to pursue their whole lives as they see fit without any fear of having their lives disrupted or destroyed.

By restoring convicts behaviors, this means to honor the nation's obligation of making victims of crime and disorder recover and be whole again. The victims' rights organizations and laws that have been enhanced over the last decade or so and they generally reflect this goal that has long been ignored. (Dulilio, 1991)

Another thing that reward systems hinder criminal justice administration is the fact that victims of crime have special claims on the criminal justice system's human and financial resources. Even if this may be achievable, no other system that dishonors that claim can be considered legitimate and the promotion of non-criminal options means that punishment for criminal behavior should least interfere with the pursuit of good behavior. Even in the prisons, criminal offenders should at least have the opportunity of engaging in meaningful, constructive, and legitimate activities. The government should not make restrictions on employment of crime offenders and other legitimate activities by convicted offenders except where it has been justified as a form of punishment or where the safety of the public is at risk. It is not right to only say that the government has an obligation toward the betterment of offenders and non offenders alike but also one function of the government is to promote legitimate opportunities and to facilitate their pursuit. (Trajanowicz, 1990)

Investigation and Arrests

The actions of investigations and arrests also show how rewards systems can hinder criminal justice administration. This can be through conflicting law enforcement on investigations on the causes of crime which had been diverted by the criminal justice administration away from community needs. The hindrance of reward systems to the criminal justice administration was that there was high reliance on money which encouraged demand of money from most law enforcers depending on policy requirements which has designs for the law enforcers which was to be reinforced and could bring in more conflict in the community policy goals. For example when police want to retrieve forfeited drug assets, they will have target investigations so as to arrest persons with desirable assets and keep those assets. Law enforcement resources expended on asset-rich individuals can leave other community needs unaddressed. (Fiedler, 1972)

Lastly, there is a rights-based theory which has the perception that justice as a process of ongoing property of criminal sanctioning as it occurs and not as an expected outcome. Criminal justice is hence a value in itself and not a means to an end. Sanctioning that is evaluated as to its justice or injustice may be evaluated in terms of its consequences for other values, such as freedom, order, wealth and welfare but those are of separate concern. This means that the effectiveness of the criminal justice system in achieving various goals should be kept separate from the evaluation of the performance of the justice system and should be by doing justice for each of those goals.

The principal measure of its achievement is the number of crimes avoided in the community. This is true even on other ways of doing things because it refers to maintaining order in prisons and avoiding the crimes that the current prisoners might have continued committing if they had not been in jail custody. Incapacitation therefore reflects more on the performance of the police, prosecutors, and judges who respectively arrest, defend, and send offenders to prison than it does to the performance of those who simply hold them there. (Blumstein 1986)

It has also been observed that knowledge of the constitutional and social factors has been found to be associated with criminal behavior. This hence focuses our attention on the earliest stages of an individual's life cycle and reveals that after all is said and done; the most serious offenders are boys who begin their delinquent behaviors at a very early age. (Scheff, 1965)