Trends and future developments in criminal justice system interfaces with society

¶ … U.S. Criminal Justice system as in the last few decades and link the trends to the future. We will access the following, including:

Recent and future trends and contemporary issues affecting the criminal justice system.

Value of the criminal justice system in a changing society.

Traditionally, American citizens have traditionally thought of the United States criminal justice system as being in the business of dispensing justice for crimes that are actually committed. Unfortunately, over several decades a move within the criminal justice system has been unfolding where instead of punishing past offenses, it attempts to prevent future crimes through the incarceration and control of dangerous offenders. This is a fallacious approach and erodes our constitutional protections of individual rights under the Bill of Rights and the United States Constitution.

Unfortunately for individual rights in the United States, the criminal justice system has misused the War on Terrorism and an act of the Congress that was signed into law on October 26, 2001 by President George W. Bush. The U.S.A. PATRIOT Act. This law enhances law enforcement's law enforcement per view to search personal records. Further, it eases limitations on domestic intelligence gathering as well as greatly expanded the government's authority to regulate financial transactions. Also, it broadened the discretion of law enforcement and immigration officials in detaining and deporting immigrants suspected in terrorism-related acts. Finally, the act expanded the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism. That has enlarged the number of activities to which the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act's broadened powers can be applied ("Usa patriot act," 2001).

Just before the midnight deadline that was set for May 26, 2011, President Barack Obama signed an extension of three USA Patriot Act provisions that extended three key provisions of the 2001 law, including roving wiretaps, searches of business records and conducting surveillance on "lone wolves." These are people suspected of terrorist type activities but not linked to traditional terrorist groups ("Obama signs last-minute," 2011)

To any objective observer, one marvels at he negative, chilling effects that the Act has had upon individual due process during the undeclared war on terror. The detention facility was established in 2002 by the Bush Administration to hold detainees from the war in Afghanistan and later Iraq. Since then, detention facilities have grown in number with many other enemy combatants are being held at secret U.S. facilities in various countries, including some American citizens who are held for months and years without charges (Priest, 2005).

Unfortunately, the War on Terrorism is not the only venue where the criminal justice system is out of control. Due process is routinely hampered by mandatory sentencing laws which limit the discretionary power of judges to tailor the law to situations. Changes in the law have reduced the age at which juveniles can be considered and tried as adults. Shockingly similar to the issues of free assembly that has come under attack with people accused of being members of "terrorist" groups, gang membership. Similarly, gang recruitment and membership is punishable as a crime. "Sexual predator" laws provide for the civil detention of sexual offenders after the normal term of their criminal detention is over. Due to the supposedly dangerousness of their nature, they are singled out for special attention by a criminal justice system that makes the dubious claim to be able to prevent crime by increasing government control of particular individuals for the supposed good of society. The criminal justice system still claims to be punishing crime and dispensing justice despite the preventive nature of the prison system and the courts. The real reason why the facade has to be maintained is obvious. Under normal circumstances, a thinking society would never tolerate a cure that is worse than the disease (Robinson, 2001, 1429-1432).

In the opinion of this author, the resort to detention as prevention instead of punishment must be repackaged in frighteningly Orwellian terms and must be sold and maintained (like the War on Terror or the War on Drugs) in a climate of fear and reaction. This impinges on what the real value of the criminal justice system is for citizens in civic society. Will it degenerate Soviet-style into a system of gulags where increasing numbers of people are held indefinitely without charge, trial, or counsel or potentially sentenced to death without the freedoms and protections that Americans have traditionally enjoyed? Hopefully, this will not be the case. Certainly, a point of pride of the U.S. Criminal justice system in particular and American democracy in general is that we are a system of laws that are passed by popularly elected assemblies. We are traditionally not subject to military or secret tribunals, but instead to juries of our peers. Constitutionally, we should be presumed innocent until we are proven guilty, and not the other way around. It has been and should continue to be the onus of government to work through the criminal justice system so that the words American and justice do not become contradictions in terms.