Flawed Criminal Justice Policies Summary

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Chapter One Summary The first chapter of the book Flawed Criminal Justice Policies by Reddington and Bonham talks about the policy making process in the United States, who influences the policy, who are the stakeholders, and what are the end results of those policies placed in our society. According to the text there are plenty of bad and good policies placed in our lives, but looking more at the Criminal Justice we can recognize that the policies are mostly concerned about the victims of the crime, with its limitation, the crime is on the rise, we let out people from jails due to the insanity rule, as well as due to very light rules for the offenders that are drug or alcohol users that end up back in the society without proper help. Authors …show more content…

Public policy in the USA recently was influenced mostly by the politics, debated and evaluated by the ideology and the government, and politicians are mostly influenced by the media, that are not always right in terms of portraying the truth about certain situations. According to the text some of the public policies can develop from the public communities that are part of the political system, it allows the government to see the bigger spectrum of the issue and implement policy within the interest of stakeholders in that situation. Another important feature of the policy making process is the fact of who from the public interest is participating in the process and who is making the policy. Two models are presented in the book that determine the process of policy making; the elitist model which concludes that most of the policy is being conducted by small wealthy group that holds the biggest power in the government and the society. Recently US policy making process has moved from the elitist model to the populist model which includes the general public,

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