The Role of Criminal Justice and Administration in the Country (Essay Sample)

Criminal Justice and Administration
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11th September, 2014
Introduction
Criminal justice and administration is an administrative or management unit in a country which focuses on ensuring that there is fairness in a country’s justice system. It aims at tackling crime and maintaining social calm. Its main components include administration within the police department, the part played by courts in maintaining and restoring justice and fairness. It also entails the correction strategies put in place by the justice system towards law breakers in a country (Vold, 1987). This essay will briefly review each of these three parts of criminal justice and administration.
Administration in the police department focuses on how criminals are handled; police recruitment (qualities considered) and overall ethical conduct of these officers. Police officers are not expected to handle suspects inhumanly. There are two major theories put forward about justice ethics; utilitarian theory and deontology theory. All of them emphasize that if moral action has to be taken against suspects then it has to be for the good of the whole society. Police administration also entails traffic operations, managing criminal investigations and community policing. Administrators in the police force include the police chief or commissioner of police and his assistants along with other senior police personnel.
Courts have the duty to determine who has broken the law and what action will be taken against him or her. Judges are to give appropriate rulings on cases depending on evidence, prosecutors and lawyers are also to represent relevant parties effectively. Internal disputes involving lawyers, judges and prosecutors are to be handled professionally. This is part of what the criminal justice administrators are expected to handle. In this case, administrators include chief justice, head judges and other senior members of a country’s judiciary system (Vold, 1987).
The Nature of Criminal Justice And Administration
Criminal justice and administration is more of an academic discipline with extensive research areas such as comparative criminal justice, forensic psychology and juvenile justice. It is quite distinct from criminology which deals with causes of crime and how to tackle them. Comparative criminal justice has emerged as a major research area where various criminal justice and administration systems are compared and contrasted, hence enhancing criminal justice systems in various nations.
Crime has evolved in the recent past from rape and sexual assault to robbery to general assault. Today, crime has gone hi-tech hence the need for more elaborate and efficient crime handling system has come up. Criminal justice and administration has gone through various transitions or eras hence it has eventually reformed with time. It went through the industrial era of the1880s to 1950s, the civil rights era of 1950 to 1980s to the modern transitional era (Clena, 1992).
There are four criminal justice systems in the world; Common, Islamic, Civil and Socialist systems (Akers, 1978). Common law systems are found in USA, Britain and other commonwealth nations, civil law systems are found in Sweden, Japan and also in Germany. Islamic law is associated with Arabic nations while socialist systems are common in socialist states such as China. Each of these systems have their own way of ensuring law is obeyed and crime, tackled.
Criminal justice systems in various nations in the world are related hence they can be compared and contrasted (Vold, 1987). The criminal justice and administration of the USA and that of united kingdom and noted that the criminal system of USA heavily inclines towards the defendant’...