Interactive Blog 1

For my first Interactive Blog I’m going to talk about chapters 1,2 and 3.  In the first chapter it talks about the main purpose of the criminal justice system. It shows how the criminal justice system works and the many components of the criminal justice system.  The definition of the criminal justice system is “institutions, policies, and practices with the goal of maintaining social control and deterring crime through sanctions and rehabilitation” ( Rennison;Dodge 3). The components of the  Criminal justice system are law enforcement, courts, and corrections. In one part of chapter one it talks about the different types of crime. Some of those being  street crimes, property crimes, victimless crimes, white-collar crimes, cyber crime, and terrorism. I would have to say that I did not know about many of the different names for crimes. I just thought there was crime but not certain category’s that they go into. When I think about crime, I can’t help but to think about how these people can commit certain crimes.  There are times where I do understand why someone would commit a crime, but there is also times when it does not make any sense to me. In the cases where I can understand would be something like, say a woman is stealing food from the store to feed her family because they are homeless, with that I could understand why she would attempt to do it. Not saying that makes it the right thing to do but it’s more understandable to commit that crime rather than a man who is selling a girl for prostitution with no reason behind it. I happened to find a website that helps to give a good overview of what the criminal justice system is and many facts about it (BJS) .  In chapter two it talks about how crime is measured and the different reports and surveys that help make up how they would measure the crimes. There’s the UCR which stands for Uniform Crime reports and is the oldest national crime data collection, SHRC which stands for supplemental homicide report, NIBRS which stands for national incident based reporting system. NCVS which stands for national crime victimization survey and they help with the unreported crimes, and Self-report surveys which are for yourself meaning a survey about yourself. So say the lady that stole from the store was caught, the police could take a look at the UCR and decided if she would be part of part 1 crimes or part 2 crimes. Since the crime she committed was theft, they could say it was a part 1 crime. Now on the other hand with the man who was selling the girl for prostitution then he would be under part 2 of the UCR report because he was selling a girl into prostitution.  In chapter three it talks about the age of enlightenment meaning there are new ways of thinking not only philosophically but also new ideas on punishments. In an article I found it explains some of the different punishments that were re-thought (punishment-enlightenment) . At one point it states that ” They argued that punishment must only result from violations of civil law, not of religious edicts.” Later on through the chapter it describes the rule of law and the goals of law. “The rule of law mandates the application of known legal principles in governmental decision-making and establishes the premise that every citizen should obey laws.” (Rennison;Dodge 76). In other words it means that us as citizens should go by the law and obey the law by not breaking it. The goals of the law are retribution meaning and eye for and eye, restitution meaning sending them to the correct place to get help and treatment, rehabilitation meaning somewhere and someone to help make them better, and lastly incapacitation meaning removing the offender from society to help protect the citizens. Deterrence was created to help prevent crime by posing a threat of punishment. There are cases where deterrence does in fact work, but there is also some cases where deterrence doesn’t work. What I mean by this is that in our daily lives many of us don’t weigh out our outcomes for the things we do. For instance, many people who are about to commit a crime don’t think about whats going to happen if they get caught. Say a man was going to murder someone, Chances are he’s not going to stop and think ” wow if I do this I’m going to get the Chair” or in certain cases that person won’t care and know the outcome and yet still commit the crime. Deterrence can work in some instances but in others doesn’t and therefore that’s the reason why there is some controversy about it. I think that if you try to use deterrence against someone who is very determined to commit the crime that it will have no effect on that person. Now if you tried to use deterrence on someone who doesn’t exactly know what they are doing and are not to determined to commit the crime, then yes there is a possibility that deterrence would work on that person. I learned through these three chapters that there is a lot of complex information about the criminal justice system and although I had trouble understanding some of the topics I found it very resourceful and helpful towards my future career and the criminal justice field. I also feel that after reading these few chapters I have a better understanding of how the criminal justice system works and the many different aspects that it brings out in the life of everyday people. I now have a better knowledge of the different categories of crimes that my biological parents have committed and understand the punishments they received as well as the many other punishments that are a result from breaking the law. In addition to knowing more about the criminal justice system I can now relate many crimes that happen in everyday life to the consequences they have and the punishments they should receive for not abiding the law.