Criminal Justice in the United States
Criminal justice in the United States is an expensive business. Itis the only country in the west that routinely sentences offenders toprison terms longer than two years: 39 percent of state prisoners in 1991had been sentenced to ten years or longer. It is also the only country inthe west that, on an average day, holds more than 125 per 100,000 of itsresidents in jail or prison: on a typical day in 1998, nearly 700 per100,000 Americans were behind bars. (Hallett & Polumbo, xiii) Yetaccording to many, the US criminal justice system is doing far less thanenough; according to the US National Commission on the Causes andPrevention of Violence, "There is a criminal justice process through whicheach offender passes from the police, to the courts, and back unto thestreets. The inefficiency, fall-out, and failure of purpose during thisprocess is notorious." (Hallett & Polumbo, xiii) Contemporary policies concerning crime and punishment are not onlyamong the most draconian among wealthy nations, they are also the harshestin American history. No other Western country continues use the deathpenalty except the United States: 3300 prisoners were on death row in 1997
Many contend that thissystem results in the state lowering itself to the criminals' level andthat economic disparities between offenders assure that such punishmentwill never truly be egalitarian. There is a common perception among Americans that most criminals areyoung males that are either African American or of another racial or ethnicminority ( Graber, 1980, 55). 7 billion inoperating expenditures. 6 billion and employed460,000 persons on a full-time basis during 1990. " (Economist, 7/26/01) America's criminal justice system is a bone of contention that oftenleads politicians to question its nature. This theory is sometimes justified by the belief thatpunishment is expected to act as a deterrent. , law enforcement personnel, corrections officials, prosecutingattorneys) predominate. Television devotes 20 percent of localstation time to crime. Atthe local level, however, groups composed of criminal justice professionals(i. Although the two formsof cocaine are pharmacologically indistinguishable and comparablyaddictive, they reflect the drug consumption habits of two vastly differentdemographics: drug dealers that are arrested for selling drugs are mostlypoor inner city blacks, whereas the more expensive powder form of cocaineis usually sold by whites. Special interest groups affect policy at both the national and at the locallevel. By 1990, nearly 17,000 publicly funded state andlocal law enforcement agencies were operating in the United States. Local policedepartments had operating expenditures of $20.
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Acceptance Essays
