To study law is a privilege and a gift that assists humans in diminishing the ignorance surrounding the legal system. Though it is a privilege and a gift, one individual in particular highlights the faults, he feels, are embedded within the system. This individual is a professor of criminology at the Faculty of Law at the University of Oslo (Oslo, 2008) named Nils Christie. His insight regarding the issues with the legal system will be discussed in depth throughout this paper, using his article entitled Conflicts as Property (Christie, 1977). Through reading this article, one could extrapolate, that the legal system essentially steals the conflicts from the people and uses them as property for the state. Christie’s argument holds a great amount …show more content…
As stated by A. Hayashi of Harvard University, “an abundance of emotion (anger, for example) can lead to faulty decisions.” (Hayashi, 2001). In the context of law, the victim may have a severe emotional disturbance caused by the offender, which in turn, will cause the victim to demand a harsher penalty than necessary. To exacerbate this faulty concept, one must take into account ignorance to the law. When a legal representative or lawyer is hired to take on a case, there is a relief that this individual has devoted their lives to the field of law. This individual is familiar with the system and he/she will locate legally relevant material to add strength to the case. When these legal professionals are removed from the equation, it is up to the victim/offender to determine the legally relevant material and/or outcome of the case. With that in thought, sentencing risks being determined based off of individual discretion rather than the law. Another thought associated with the absence of lawyers, is scenarios where the victim/offender is unable represent themselves fairly due to mental state/condition, physical state/condition, religious barriers, cultural barriers, and/or language barriers. This can pose a significant problem in accordance with Section 15 of The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms . With all these factors surrounding a victim versus offender type setting, it would be in the legal system’s benefit to keep lawyers present in legal
In 1977, Nils Christie wrote the essay, “Conflicts as Properties”, in which he discusses the four problems that occur within the western legal system. The four problems that affect the legal system in four ways is that the courts are always located in areas that people may not have easy access to locate, the courthouses are challenging to find your way around, the parties are irrelevant to much of the proceedings and the proceedings makes conflicts between the actual parties involved turn into conflicts between the State and the parties 2.
The Criminal Justice System and its agencies encounter challenges while trying to perform their daily activities. The system deals with laws involving criminal behaviour. It dwells on three major agencies: the police, courts, and the corrections. Each agency has its own specific and important roles to contribute to society. This paper will explain both the roles and challenges each agency unfortunately battles.
“ ….Judgments, right or wrong. This concern with concepts such as finality, jurisdiction, and the balance of powers may sound technical, lawyerly, and highly abstract. But so is the criminal justice system….Law must provide simple answers: innocence or guilt, freedom or imprisonment, life or death.” (Baude, 21).
In Nils Christie’s “Conflicts as Property”, Christie develops an argument in which depicts the concept of perceiving conflict as property and the measure that it impacts individuals and the legal system. This summary will further examine and comply with Christie’s perception, that conflict can be seen as property. In order to examine the argument and perspective of the author, understanding his implementation is of great importance. The ways in which professionals in the area of law can be perceived as “professional thieves”, and the example of laws pertaining to domestic violence, will be further discussed to validate the key concept of conflict as property. In summary; Christie believes that conflict is adverse to growth of the society
Many things contribute to the corruption of our justice system. Within the past five years, through police brutality the United States has shown how tainted it really is. In Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson argues that because of family history, misunderstanding youth, and background, our justice system is defined by error. His many points and examples give exceptional proof to his findings. While the government has made some changes over the years for the justice system subjects such as the incarceration of minors and police and laws within the system still need adjusting.
If McGuiness, who was the defendant of Brendon, was not as skilled and dedicated as he was to prove Brendon Butler innocence, Brendon would have probably been incarcerated until this day. This case demonstrate how commercial progress, system pride, criminal and racial profiling such qualities are explained by legal realism; which is the view of natural law that base judicial decisions given in interest of larger society and public policy instead of any non-traditional
This problem affects everyone, but only benefits four types of people; the judges, the lawyers, the clients paying thousands more to the lawyers to win their case, and the police. Judges today are not playing fair, and they are accepting bribes from equally corrupt lawyers that are desperate to win a case and improve their case winnings over their losses. The lawyers are asking for more money from the clients so that they can secretly hand over cash to the lawyers and ask for “favors” in the courtroom. With all of this injustice, comes fear implanted in the client, who is then willing to spend more on a lawyer to guarantee their success in a case; “fear and injustice equals more money for lawyers and judges”(Sachs).
The individuals within our society have allowed we the people to assess and measure the level of focus and implementation of our justice system to remedy the modern day crime which conflict with the very existence of our social order. Enlightening us to the devices that will further, establish the order of our society, resides in our ability to observe the Individual’s rights for public order.
The basis of criminal justice in the United States is one founded on both the rights of the individual and the democratic order of the people. Evinced through the myriad forms whereby liberty and equity marry into the mores of society to form the ethos of a people. However, these two systems of justice are rife with conflicts too. With the challenges of determining prevailing worth in public order and individual rights coming down to the best service of justice for society. Bearing a perpetual eye to their manifestations by the truth of how "the trade-off between freedom and security, so often proposed so seductively, very often leads to the loss of both" (Hitchens, 2003, para. 5).
Schmalleger, F. (2009). The Conflict Perspective. In F. Schmalleger, Criminology: An Intergrative Introduction (p. 347). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Lippman, M. (2012). Contemporary Criminal Law Concepts, Cases and Controversies (3rd ed.). [Vitalsouce Bookshelf version]. Retrieved from http://online.vitalsource.com/books/9781452277660/5/3
In his book on ?The Behavior of Law? Donald Black attempts to describe and explain the conduct of law as a social phenomenon. His theory of law does not consider the purpose, value, impact of law, neither proposes any kind of solutions, guidance or judgment; it plainly ponders on the behavior of law. The author grounds his theory purely on sociology and excludes the psychology of the individual from his assumptions on the behavior of law (Black 7). The theory of law comes to the same outcome as other theories scrutinizing the legal environment, such as deprivation theory or criminal theory; however, the former concentrates on the patterns of behavior of law, not involving the motivation of an individual as such. In this respect, Black?s theory is blind for social life, which is beyond the behavior of law.
However, “Conflict theory holds that the administration of criminal justice reflects the unequal distribution of power in society. The more powerful groups use the criminal justice system to maintain their dominant position and to repress groups or social movements that threaten it. (Hess, Orthmann and Wright) This theory is to be a conflict about power of the people that are to be in charge such as the government and local authorities to get what they want, when where and the reason for their actions as a means of preventing those that do not have the power of authority to do as they
Law is a tool in society as it helps to maintain social control, promoting social justice. The way law functions in society and its social institution provide a mechanism for solutions. There are many different theories of the function of law in relation to society in considering the insight they bring to different socio-legal and criminological problems. In the discussion of law’s role in social theory, Leon Petrażycki and Eugen Ehrlich share similar beliefs in the jurisprudence of society. They focused their work on the experience of individuals in establishing meaning in their legal relations with others based on the question of what it means to be a participant in law. Jürgen Habermas presents a relationship between law and morality. From a certain standpoint, law is a key steering mechanism in society as it plays an educational role in promoting conducts, a mean of communication and it
The Classical School of Criminology generally refers to the work of social contract and utilitarian philosophers Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham during the enlightenment in the 18th century. The contributions of these philosophers regarding punishment still influence modern corrections today. The Classical School of Criminology advocated for better methods of punishment and the reform of criminal behaviour. The belief was that for a criminal justice system to be effective, punishment must be certain, swift and in proportion to the crime committed. The focus was on the crime itself and not the individual criminal (Cullen & Wilcox, 2010). This essay will look at the key principles of the Classical School of Criminology, in particular