Drug Crime and the Criminal Justice System: The Situation in the State of Michigan and Cities of Detroit and Adrian: Statement of Lowell Dodge, Director Administration of Justice Issues Before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Committee on Governmental Affairs, United States Senate

1990 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lowell Dodge
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
United States Senate ◽  
The State ◽  
Drug Crime ◽  
Administration Of Justice

scholarly journals RESTORATIVE JUSTICE: BRINGING JUSTICE FOR CRIME VICTIMS?

Obiter ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
PN Makiwane
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Restorative Justice ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Crime Victims ◽  
The State ◽  
Therapeutic Jurisprudence ◽  
Crime Victim ◽  
Meaningful Participation ◽  
Administration Of Justice

To date, South Africa’s criminal justice system has been about crime and the punishment of offenders, and not about redress for crime victims. This can be ascribed to the nature of a criminal system that perceives crime to be a matter between the State and the accused, with the victim playing the marginal role of a witness. The retributive nature of our criminal justice has played a crucial role in the marginalization of the very person who was victimized, namely the crime victim. A number of countries have recently developed practices of restorative justice and therapeutic jurisprudence that have introduced an all-inclusive justice system that allows for participation by offenders, crime victims, their family members, the community and the State. Sadly, our country has been but tentative in its acceptance of restorative justice processes, with only a few thousands of individuals having benefitted from it since its inception. Although restorative justice is acclaimed as a system that allows for meaningful participation of victims in criminal processes, the author argues that the system favours mostly offenders, young offenders in particular, and is applied in respect of minor offences. For serious crimes, courts have been reluctant to embrace restorative justice processes, preferring to revert to the retributive system which is believed to have failed in reducing the crime rate in any country. In this article the author develops the idea that a lukewarm reception of restorative processes is detrimental to the administration of justice. It defeats the very purpose of victim involvement in the criminal justice system, and deprives the crime victim of the very benefits restorative justice is acclaimed for, namely healing and satisfaction.

scholarly journals Mercy towards decarceration: Examining the legal constraints on early release from prison

Incarceration ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 263266632097780
Author(s):  
Alexandra Cox ◽  
Dwayne Betts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Family Members ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Release ◽  
The Us ◽  
Legal Constraints ◽  
Release From Prison

There are close to seven million people under correctional supervision in the United States, both in prison and in the community. The US criminal justice system is widely regarded as an inherently unmerciful institution by scholars and policymakers but also by people who have spent time in prison and their family members; it is deeply punitive, racist, expansive and damaging in its reach. In this article, we probe the meanings of mercy for the institution of parole.

Criminal Justice in an Era of Mass Deportation

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid V. Eagly
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
State Level ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
The United States ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Collateral Consequence

After a sustained period of hypercriminalization, the United States criminal justice system is undergoing reform. Congress has reduced federal sentencing for drug crimes, prison growth is slowing, and some states are even closing prisons. Low-level crimes have been removed from criminal law books, and attention is beginning to focus on long-neglected issues such as bail and criminal court fines. Still largely overlooked in this era of ambitious reform, however, is the treatment of immigrants in the criminal justice system. An unprecedented focus on immigration enforcement targeted at “felons, not families” has resulted in a separate system of punitive treatment reserved for noncitizens, which includes crimes of migration, longer periods of pretrial detention, harsher criminal sentences, and the almost certain collateral consequence of lifetime banishment from the United States. For examples of state-level solutions to this predicament, this Essay turns to a trio of bold criminal justice reforms from California that (1) require prosecutors to consider immigration penalties in plea bargaining; (2) change the state definition of “misdemeanor” from a maximum sentence of a year to 364 days; and (3) instruct law enforcement agencies to not hold immigrants for deportation purposes unless they are first convicted of serious crimes. Together, these new laws provide an important window into how state criminal justice systems could begin to address some of the unique concerns of noncitizen criminal defendants.

Do Americans Like to Punish?

Metamorphosis ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Values ◽  
The People ◽  
American Prison

This chapter addresses the question of whether Americans like to punish. The United States clearly punishes more heavily and for longer periods than other countries, with comparable social and political values. One can land in an American prison for life over minor offenses—a punishment not used for serious offenses in Western Europe. The leading comparativist on criminology, James Whitman, argues that a politics of dignity has instilled mercy and mildness in European systems, while leveling impulses, distrust of authority, and too much power in the people is said to have left the United States with a criminal justice system long in degradation and short on mercy.

scholarly journals TINJAUAN YURIDIS EKSISTENSI HAKIM PENGAWAS DAN PENGAMAT DALAM SISTEM PERADILAN PIDANA INDONESIA

FIAT JUSTISIA ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maroni Maroni
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The State ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Procedural Law

Monitoring and observation of court decisions made by judges is a new institution in the criminal procedural law in Indonesia. Through monitoring and observation of expected gaps (gap) between what the judge decided and reality implementation of the criminal in prison can be bridged. Judges will be brought closer to the prosecutors and corrections officials so that judges can follow the development of the state of the convict. Keywords: Judge, Supervisor and Observer, the Criminal Justice System

scholarly journals Discreet Discretion and Moderate Moderation in Judicial Sentencing: A commentary on Kenya’s Sentencing Policy Guidelines, 2016

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-112
Author(s):  
Harrison O Mbori
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Judicial System ◽  
Sentencing Guidelines ◽  
Criminal Sentencing ◽  
Administration Of Justice ◽  
Sentencing Policy

Criminal sentencing is an integral part in any judicial system for the fair administration of justice. The process of sentencing and the standards applied by judicial officers has, however, been a notoriously difficult component in many criminal law systems. In Kenya, sentencing has been blamed as one of the sources of ‘popular dissatisfaction with the administration of justice’ to borrow from Roscoe Pound. This was the impetus for the Kenyan Judiciary to introduce the Sentencing Policy Guidelines, 2016 (SPGs). This paper is a general commentary, critique, and analysis of the SPGs. The author argues that SPGs come at an instructive epoch in Kenya’s economic, socio-political, and cultural development. This contribution is not a polemic on the Kenyan SPGs. The commentary makes sideglances to various jurisdictions that have had a longer experience with sentencing guidelines. The article forecasts that Kenyan SPGs will, despite its few shortcomings, nevertheless, prove to be important for all judicial officers involved in Kenya’s criminal justice system.

Sex Panic and Denial

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 458-482
Author(s):  
Corey Rayburn Yung
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Sex Offenders ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Goal ◽  
Residency Restrictions

The American criminal justice system regarding sex is not just logically incoherent, it is also often morally bankrupt because it remains unexamined and poorly understood. This Article contends that there are actually common roots underlying the seemingly oppositional forces of social panic and denial, which explain why the United States has an endemic sexual violence problem. Both panic and denial reinforce the implicit, and sometimes explicit, desire to avoid substantive engagement with socially contentious issues related to sex. The use of residency restrictions and civil commitment fit the modern social goal of putting sex offenders out-of-sight and out-of-mind. Yet, those same desires also explain America’s unwillingness to believe victims of sexual violence and police failure to properly investigate criminal complaints. In this way, sex panic dovetails with sex denial—in both instances, American culture only permits a limited discussion and understanding of sex and sexual violence. The result is that our nation fails to take sex crime complaints seriously while overreacting to the few convictions that emerge from the hostile criminal justice system.

West Belfast

The Hoods ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Hamill
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Irish Republican Army

This chapter argues that, from the early days of the political conflict in the 1970s the conditions were such that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) adopted some of the functions of the state, namely the provision of policing and punishment of ordinary crime. The hostility of the statutory criminal justice system, particularly the police, toward the working-class Catholic community dramatically increased the costs of using state services. The high levels of disaffection and aggression among working-class Catholics toward the police meant that the state could no longer fulfill its function and police the community in any “normal” way. A demand for policing therefore existed. Simultaneously, this demand was met and fostered by the IRA, which had the motivation, the manpower, and the monopoly on the use of violence necessary to carry out this role.

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