Policies in Criminal Justice Department (Essay Sample)

Policies in Criminal Justice Department
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Abstract
The primary role of the criminal justice system is to deter individuals from committing crimes likely to compromise the safety of people and their property. The department also corrects the convicts of crime to modify their behavior and ensure they become responsible citizens. Policies are the driving forces that foster the realization of goals in the criminal justice department. The policies provide the laws that must be respected and the legal sanctions related to their violations. The paper analyzes three policies in the criminal justice department with special attention to the problem arising from the provisions, significance of the problem and the solution. Included in the paper is also the impacts of the solutions. The policies reviewed are the mandatory minimum sentencing policy, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and the collateral consequence policy. The former requires the jurists to prescribe a specific minimum sentence for offences committed. It was established that this policy increases the prison population hence the need for it to be abolished. The RICO policy on the other hand targets organizations and organized crimes. Its limitation is that it only allows for the conviction of groups and organizations involved in more than two crimes. There is thus a need for modification to ensure that even those involved in one racketeering crime are convicted. The last policy is the collateral consequence policy that inhibits former convicts from accessing jobs, housing, education and other opportunities. It is suggested that the policy should be abolished since it is discriminatory. Also, the collateral consequence policy results in high recidivism rates considering that prisoners denied opportunities after their release are likely to engage in crimes to earn a living. The adoption of the suggested measures would reduce the prison population, lower costs of managing the correctional facilities and increase the stability of the economy.
Policies in Criminal Justice Department
A country must have laws that deter crime to foster stability and high adoption of morals by its citizens. The US criminal justice system is designed to enforce laws, deliver justice to the victims of crime and ensure that the citizens and their property are safe. The effective functioning of the department is attributed to the partnership of the government bureaus and private agencies that formulate overarching policies that work together to maintain order in the communities. Gest (2018) opines that an effective criminal justice system should focus not only on imprisoning the preceptors of crime but also modifying their behavior through subjection to correctional facilities to enable them to be responsible citizens. There are however high cases of recidivism in the US, a factor that questions the effectiveness of the correctional facilities in reducing future crimes on the part of the convicts. The laws formulated by a country should also deter individuals from committing crimes. The mandatory minimum licensing policy, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and collateral consequence policies are the major provisions enacted in the criminal justice department. The policies seem infective considering the high number of felonies committed on the aspects they stand to protect, hence the need for modifications.
Policy 1: Prison Population
The primary role of the criminal justice system is to correct the offenders and reduce their chances of repeating the same or repeated mistakes in future. Several policies have been adopted in a majority of the US states to deter the citizens from committing a crime. One such policy is the mandatory minimum sentencing policy which provides that convicts must serve a minimum jail sentence before being released. The sentence terms are harsh with the jurists expecting that such stringent measures would deter potential criminals from committing a crime. The enactment of the policy also meant that few people would be convicted since the law is already deterrent and thus makes the citizens fear committing crimes likely to make them serve long prison sentences.
The Problem Originating From the Mandatory Sentencing Policy
The major problem with this policy is that leads to a high prison population instead of reducing the number of prisoners as earlier targeted by the criminal justice department. The war on drugs resulted in dramatic incarceration for drug offenders, with a majority of them placed on mandatory sentence terms. Furthermore, the harsh minimum sentencing laws make a significant portion of people serve lengthy jail sentences that increase the prison population. Finally, the modern cybercrime cases have attracted fixed jail terms with the expectation that harsh penalties such as fixed sentence terms would deter individuals from committing such crimes to reduce the prison population (Gest, 2018). However, the policies seem less deterrent since the number of people sentenced on jail terms over capital crimes continues to rise, calling for the need for other measures to control the population.
Additionally, the mandatory sentencing policy results in high cases of recidivism, leading to more incarceration and prison population increase. Even though the correctional facilities are essential in modifying the conduct of prisoners, the long stay in prison attributed to the implementation of the mandatory minimum sentence could hinder the realization of the behavior changes. United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) (2020) reports that offenders serving short sentence terms are less likely to be re-imprisoned than their counterparts on long jail terms. These findings confirm that minimum mandatory sentencing results in re-arrests leading to a population increase in prison. The argument is that the higher the length of stay, the likelihood that the prisoners would learn and be accumulated to the jail culture thus willing to commit offences to be returned into the environment they have accustomed to (USSC, 2020). Thus, a long stay in prison results in increased cases of recidivism.
Significance
The mandatory sentencing elimination policy has failed to realize the targeted goals considering that it has led to an increase in prison potation instead of reducing the number of prisoners. Currently, the US has a prison population of 2.2 million, having increased by 500% in the last 4 decades (The Sentencing Project, 2022). Individuals, not only in the US but also from other external partners question how the US reached this level considering that it has a third of the world’s prison population. In the US, 1 out of 100 adults is in prison serving different sentence terms (The Sentencing Project, 2022). According to Hayes (2020), the US has a prison population comprising mostly of people drawn from disadvantaged and minority communities and poorly educated individuals. Also, a portion of them requires special care since they are suffering from mental and physical illnesses while others lack work experience or job preparations that can make them serve the prison sentence while growing the economy of the nation.
Additionally, the increasing prison population resulting from the minimum mandatory sentencing policy exerts pressure on government resources with taxpayers’ money highly utilized on non-income generating activities. According to Hayes (2020), $295.6 billion was incurred in managing the prison population in 2016. With the increase of prisoners to 2.2 million, the country is expected to incur $134,400 per person resulting in more expenses than that reported in 2016 (Hayes, 2020). The increasing costs are likely to harm the economy since a significant amount of money that would have been used in setting up the country’s income-generating projects are used in managing the prison activities. Thus, the continued expenditure may compromise the development of the US economy.
Solutions
The first suggestion is the elimination of the mandatory minimum sentence. The former requires the jurists to provide a fixed sentence term for criminals convicted over specific crimes. In the US, offenders of capital crimes like murder and treason are subjected to this type of sanction (United States Sentencing Commission, 2017). In some cases, the mandatory minimum sentence is prescribed to immediate exigencies like drug and child trafficking and cybercrime offences (Gray, 2017). Even though the sanctions deter crime, they are not effective considering that they increase the prison population resulting in more social problems like overcrowding and economic challenges such as high costs of managing the correctional facilities. This policy should be eliminated with the jurists prescribing sentences based on the dangers likely to be posed by the offender, situations surrounding the offense and the likelihood of the criminal repeating the offense or running away if released early. This strategy would reduce the prison population thus solving the associated problems.
Additionally, the criminal justice department should utilize the parole and probation systems to reduce the prison population. Parole is a conditional release in which a jurist commands the release of a prisoner upon satisfying that they have modified their conduct. The prisoners are overseen by the parole officer and therefore likely to be rearrested and re-prisoned if they violate the conditions of their release (Harding, Siegel & Morenoff, 2017). On the other hand, probation is an act of service that ...