The criminal justice system consists of three major components law enforcement, courts, and correction system. The court ensures that people’s rights are not violated and fairness is achieved during the trial. However, the law enforcement apprehends individuals who are responsible for a crime, uphold the law, and investigate crimes. Finally, the corrections ensure that those who have been convicted serve their sentences. Therefore, the work focuses on the corrections system as a component of the criminal justice, including its past, current, and future trends and how managerial and budgetary impact all the three components.
Past Trends
The past trend indicates that there were harsh and dangerous punishments before the introduction of jails and prisons. The offenders were given sentences such as public humiliation, flogging, branding, exile, or mutilation (Russo et al., 2017). Further, jails existed as places where the criminals were held while waiting for their sentencing. The system was considered to be socially unfair as it involved bloodshed and brutal punishment which was rejected based on the humanitarian ground.
However, a new trend developed which involved imprisoning the criminals with the time that the offenders spend while housing depending on the intensity of their crimes. The system included adopting solitary confinement to total abstinence and hard labor to the convicted persons. The prisoners would be held in the confinements at night and allowed to work during the day under strict rules of silence as a way of punishment (Flynn, 1977). The current trend serves the goals of punishment and retribution. Although it is considered effective in meeting its objective, there is an increasing concern about the costs of holding the inmates. The sizes of people who are housed have been seen to be high, and this leads to overcrowding at the jails which skyrocket the costs of housing the inmates.
As a result, there has been a concern about a future trend which is aimed at rehabilitating the inmates so that they become more productive to society. The cost of housing inmates is considered to be high, and there is a future trend to use community-based corrections to rehabilitate the criminals. The community-based approach acts as an alternative to being locked up in prisons or jails, which seems to be expensive regarding food bills. The community-based corrections system has also been termed as probation, electronic monitoring, parole, or house arrest. The community corrections system is considered a privilege and has several conditions attached to it which, when disobeyed, then the offender may be taken back to jail.
Current Trends
There is a current bill, which has been passed in California that intends to reduce the number of inmates and decrease the cost of housing the criminals (Caffiero, 2013). In the US, the number of prisoners who were jailed was estimated to have reduced by almost 14,000 people between the years 20011 to 2012 (Caffiero, 2013). Moreover, the program was expected to continue reducing the size of inmates by almost 40,000 once it completely rolls out in the years 2014 to 2015 (Caffiero, 2013). The use of the program was also approximated to save the budget of the state by about 453 million dollars before the complete roll out and by 1.5 billion dollars upon its complete roll out (Caffiero, 2013).
Unluckily, there is the likelihood that the bill will improve the number of problems in the community as the dangerous criminals will be released back to the society. Additionally, recidivism is expected to improve because the likelihood of the criminals to re-offend will be high. The California Department estimated that almost 63.7% of those who were released back to the society as a result of the program ended up being jailed again while only 36.3% were reformed (Caffiero, 2013). Therefore, the bill is expected to be a short-term strategy but a failure in reducing the size of inmates in the future because most people will engage in criminal activities with a hope that they will be released back to the society and the cases of those who have reoffended will be high. Hence, there will be caseloads on probation officers giving them little time to watch the inmates who have been released back to the community.
Future Trends
Moreover, there are other alternative future trends which are aimed at reducing the number of criminals instead of releasing them back to society. One of the strategies is the death penalty where a person is hanged or imprisoned for life. The aim is to inflict a harsh punishment which will discourage the other members of the society from committing criminal activities (Simon, 2017). Similarly, there is a need to adopt an intensive probation strategy where the criminals are greatly monitored and send back to the prison in case they re-offend. Also, there will be electronic monitoring, shock incarceration, or community residential centers.
The future trends are expected to have managerial and budgetary impacts on the three components of the criminal justice system. First, with a larger number of criminals back to the streets, the police will have problems in managing the large population of criminals roaming the streets. The state will spend much money in the law enforcement department to ensure that the police have enough resources to investigate crimes and apprehend the offenders (Cole, Smith & DeJong, 2018). Further, the courts are already slow considering the number of cases that are being handled daily. Hence, managing the increasing number of cases new offenders are brought in including those who are being jailed again will only continue dragging down the already slow system. Additionally, the government will spend additional funds to employ more court officials to help with the cases. Finally, there will be a large number of inmates in the correctional system which will need more resources to be monitored which will be costly to the state.
Conclusion
To sum up, the past trend in the criminal justice system, especially the corrections department was effective despite being unfair. The punishments discouraged other people from engaging in criminal activities because of the cruel sentences that they faced. Therefore, the state spends little money on the justice system as there were few criminals to manage. However, the current system of imprisoning the criminals is seen as denying the inmates the opportunity to participate in building the nation. Moreover, it leads to overcrowding of the jails despite reducing the costs of managing the other two components. Finally, the future trend of rehabilitating the criminals will inflate the state’s budget, and more officials will be needed to manage the three components. Hence, there is need to adopt a better system that will take into consideration factors such as cost, achieving fairness, and the ease of administration.
References
- Caffiero, M. J. (2013). California Prison Realignment: The First Six Months of Assembly Bill (AB) 109’s Implementation. San Jose State University, SJSU Scholar Works.
- Cole, G. F., Smith, C. E., & DeJong, C. (2018). The American system of criminal justice. Belmont, USA: Wadsworth Publishing.
- Flynn, E. E. (1977). The correctional facility: the environment today and in the future. Library Trends.
- Russo, J., Drake, G. B., Shaffer, J. S., & Jackson, B. A. (2017). Envisioning an Alternative Future for the Corrections Sector Within the US Criminal Justice System. Rand Corporation.
- Simon, J. (2017). Governing through crime. In Law and Poverty (pp. 97-115). Routledge.
