Criminal Justice System Essay

The criminal justice system was created to protect an individual’s rights and protect the society from people that are dangerous. In the last decade alone, the federal, state and local governments in the United States spent close to $200 billion to create a safe and strong Justice System.(AmericanCJSystem) The money was distributed to the parts that make up the Justice System: the police, the courts and the corrections. These components were to work together and address situations fairly. However, we hear more on the news about police officers abusing their power and making decisions that end up putting them in jail. How are we suppose to feel safe if the people supposedly “protecting us” are behind bars for committing crimes themselves? A

law enforcement. There have been too many incidents where cops took advantage of their power. Police brutality is creating a distrust between the people and the system that is suppose to protect them. The practice of racial profiling has also become so common that police assume that just because someone is a certain race means they are committing a crime. There is mass racism and discrimination of African American males in the justice system. According to Shelden (2008, pg.128), An African American child has one in three chance of ending up in prison. After watching Prison State, I learned about how different people are treated. Living in Edgemont there I have never witnessed how corrupt the system really is. One of the girls in from the documentary was put in jail because she skipped school. I also learned that almost everyone from that town was put at jail more than once, and sometimes for no reason at all. Many argue that racial profiling is “self-fulfilling prophecy” and they have statistics that display a concentration of people of a certain race committing crimes. I believe that there are some people that do something bad and then end up getting so much attention for it that they ruin the reputation of others. There are police officers that are killing people and ruining the reputation of cops that actually do the right thing. There are terrorist that do terrible things and give people the impression

There are two types of facilities: detention facilities and correctional facilities. Detention facilities are used as temporary holding facilities for those that are either waiting to be transferred or for their trial. Correction facilities are composed of jails and state/federal prisons. Jail is where people who commit misdemeanors and in jail for less than a year will attend. On the other hand, prison is where people who commit felonies go and usually for at least a year. There is currently over two million people in prison/jails. The United States has more people in jail than anywhere else in the world. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics,2004: “By 2004 the U.S. had 1,410,000 prisoners incarcerated in over 1,500 state and federal prisons. In addition, over 714,000 were in local jails, over 100,000 children were in custody, and an estimated 5 million were on probation or parole.”Many people are blind to the colossal amount of people being put away. This large amount of people in prisons has led to overcrowding. There are three large contributors to the increasing population in prisons: stricter drug laws, DUI laws, and the closing of mental institutions. According to AmericanCJStystem, “Construction costs are growing to $50,000 and more per cell and the cost of confinement reaching $20,000-$30,000 per year per inmate, there were finite