Criminal Justice in the United States essays

Criminal Justice in the United States essays Criminal justice in the United States is an expensive business. It is the only country in the west that routinely sentences offenders to prison terms longer than two years: 39 percent of state prisoners in 1991 had been sentenced to ten years or longer. It is also the only country in the west that, on an average day, holds more than 125 per 100,000 of its residents in jail or prison: on a typical day in 1998, nearly 700 per 100,000 Americans were behind bars. (Hallett according to many, the US criminal justice system is doing far less than enough; according to the US National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, "There is a criminal justice process through which each offender passes from the police, to the courts, and back unto the streets. The inefficiency, fall-out, and failure of purpose during this process is notorious." (Hallett Contemporary policies concerning crime and punishment are not only among the most draconian among wealthy nations, they are also the harshest in American history. No other Western country continues use the death penalty except the United States: 3300 prisoners were on death row in 1997 and more people were executed76than in any year since 1955. Capital punishment has been abolished by all the big democracies except the United States, Japan and India. Additionally, many emerging democracies in Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America have also abandoned it. Capital punishment in the United States is derided by critics in Europe for being antediluvian and barbaric. (Economist, 5/15/99) Cesare Beccaria, an Italian philosopher and reformer, is considered the father of modern criminal justice; he famously decried older, more severe punishments in Europe in 1764 when he published his seminal work "On Crimes and Punishments.'' Beccaria was the first to believe in the reformati...