Literature Review on the Current State of Criminal Justice

Criminal Justice in Today’s Society: Literature Review

Introduction

In modern-day society, the criminal justice system has to address new scenarios and challenges, among them terrorism, growth in multicultural societies, increased migration, disruptions in demographics and age?composition, advancements in technology, and the effects of globalization. In today’s community, criminal justice has to change with the change like crime. As society continues to change, it is obvious that criminal justice will have to change to remain effective and relevant (Ritter, 2006). The criminal justice system, and in particular laws, usually remains unchanged long after the customs that support it have fallen into disuse. Social change brings into existence new concepts of what is permissible or otherwise, but laws are often challenging to change and adapt to new concepts (The United Nations, 1979). This paper, therefore, is a literature review on the place of criminal justice in today’s society, to situate the available literature on this topic on the general pool of information on the subject.

Source Findings analysis

The search for materials was done using the New Jersey State Library database resources. This database was used primarily because it is highly resourceful, with numerous academic and professional databases with professional and peer-reviewed materials. Various databases that were useful for this paper and accessible through the New Jersey State Library are the Academic Search Complete database, Ancestry Library Edition Database, and Arts & Humanities Database. The search on the New Jersey Database electronic portal was done using several keywords; “The evolution of the criminal justice system,” “Criminal Justice in the 21st century,” “Modern criminal justice,” and “Adapting laws to modern-day social concepts.” However, the Ancestry Library Edition Database was eliminated because it didn’t produce any materials relevant to the topic. Also, two keywords, “Modern criminal justice system” and “Adapting laws to modern-day social concepts,” were eliminated for not yielding relevant materials. To ensure that the information sources are highly relevant, and inclusion-exclusion criterion was used.

The sources selected for inclusion in the project had to meet the requirements set in the inclusion criteria (Tompson & Belur, 2016). First, the sources selected had to be published work. Published work is available for peer review. Thus, it meets the high-quality requirement. Second, selected sources had to have been published within the last ten years. Third, they had to be in the English language and the research down in the USA, in the UK, or Australia. Once the sources to be included in the study were selected, they were then evaluated for appropriateness to the research objective. The assessment started with an evaluation of the title of the sources. Duplicate or irrelevant titles were eliminated. Next, the sources were evaluated at the abstract level. An abstract provided a snapshot of the paper, and thus, sources deemed irrelevant as per the abstract were dropped. Lastly, the evaluation was done at the full-text level. This involved evaluation of the entire paper to determine its relevancy to the research objective of the current capstone project. To ensure that the variety of sources selected were appropriate for the scope of the current capstone project, the evaluation project was done by two persons, the Principal Investigator (PI) for the project, and GM.

They ensure compliance with ethical and legal restrictions on the use of the various sources; first, all the sources were cited appropriately in both the text and the reference list. Second, for all sources that required express permission from the author before they could be used, then such permission was sought and acquired before the sources were included. Lastly, for all the sources included, ethnological ethics were applied when evaluating the content and using the content in the current project (Suri, 2020).

Themes

i. Rehabilitative and not just punitive criminal justice

In the not too distant past, the criminal justice system was purely punitive. However, in today’s society, criminal justice has been significantly adjusted to rehabilitate and correct the behavior of offenders. Prisons today have adopted programs that are meant to rehabilitate offenders and help them to upskill to enable them to take up resourceful opportunities after release. Today, most crimes, e.g., 50?80% of men arrested for drug crimes test positive for drug usage (Ransley & Mazerolle, 2009; Schmalleger et al., 2014). This is a significantly large proportion that not only costs the government but also destroys human resource for the country. Rehabilitation programs are helping to adapt to the criminal justice system to play a crucial role in today’s society.

ii. Racial equity

In multicultural and multiracial societies, e.g., America, the criminal justice system has had an unpredictable racial effect on persons of color. Policies and practices are seemingly neutral have significantly negative racial effects when implemented (Bennett & Plaut, 2017; Owusu-Bempah, 2017). For example, there is the differential treatment of crack and cocaine offenses, crimes committed in school zone attract enhanced penalties – and these zones cover a large proportion of space in densely populated urban intercity where the majority are African and Latin Americans, and having a prior criminal record, e.g., the “three strikes” laws all have a disproportionate effect on persons of color (Mauer & Epstein, 2012; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018; Owusu-Bempah, 2017). To effectively address crime in modern-day society, it is vital that the criminal justice system in multiracial societies appropriately changes to ensure equal treatment of all races.

iii. Evidence-based practices

In today’s society, criminal justice has increasingly adopted evidence-based practices, i.e., based on scientific theories and real field findings to guarantee their outcomes. As a result, criminal justice in today’s society has evolved significantly, its outcome significantly improved, and the goal is not just to punish offenders, but prevent crime (Epperson & Pettus-Davis, 2017). For example, criminal justice today is not just a matter for officials in the criminal and justice system, but also the community is involved through various programs (LeClerc & Savona, 2016), e.g., community policing programs, trial by jury, and probation and parole programs, and various models of incarceration, e.g., home jail programs.

iv. Incorporation of technology

It is obvious that technology is an integral part of today’s society. As a result, the criminal justice system has made significant improvements in incorporating technology to tackle a variety of crimes. These include terrorism which is today being coordinated through technology, use of technology for supervision and prevention of recidivism, e.g., use of electronic monitoring wearable devices, electronic forensics and DNA analysis technology to solve a crime that was previously unsolvable of lead to wrong conviction (Epperson & Pettus-Davis, 2017; LeClerc & Savona, 2016). It is also expected that, as technology continues to advance, so with the use of technology in the entire criminal justice system continue to broaden in today’s and tomorrow’s society.

Curiosity (Sources and Evidence)

It was interesting to learn how the criminal justice system has been shaped to factor in concepts that are important in the day to day lifestyle, i.e., the involvement of the people, the use of technology, and the need to ensure that the programs selected are appropriate for the intended purpose. The community based policing concept is important as it borrows on the democratic idea of governance, using technology to improve the effectiveness of criminal justice processes, and evidence?based concepts to ensure only working initiatives are implemented.

Conclusion

Criminal justice today has coincided with a changing society, changing crime and security landscape, and the development of new threats and challenges. As a result, criminal justice today has been forced to change to reflect emerging needs. This literature review indicated that today’s criminal justice is faced with many issues among which the primary one, as in the context of this paper are; the need to ensure criminal justice is rehabilitative and not just punitive, that there is racial equity in the enforcement of the judgment, that practices used are evidence-based and ensure that technology is maximally and effectively used to prevent crime while at the same time cutting on costs.