After examining the advantages and disadvantages of plea bargaining it should be abolished. This is because innocent people will often take the plea bargaining, admitting guilt even if they are innocent, simply to make sure they don’t receive a serious punishment. Also, defendants are frequently persuaded or pressured into taking a plea bargaining in exchange for a reward or because it’s easier for everyone involved. Another reason why it should be abolished is that it destroys the integrity of the court system, as well as the justice system. An alternative to plea bargaining that should be tried is to allow victims in a case to have input into the bargaining process. This is because half of the time the victims feel that the offender should be punished with the full extent of the law. Another alternative is to have diversion programs, which remove minor criminal acts from plea bargaining procedures. This is an alternative because the defendants agree to probation and once they are rehabilitated the matter is expunged from the record. This will relieve the courts and victims because the offender will be making amends to the crime they did instead of just getting a lesser sentence.
In chapter 19 the big issue is caseloads, especially in state
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There are fourteen medium prisons for men and two for women. They also have eleven maximum prisons for men and one supermax for men, but none for women. Their philosophy is to improve the public’s safety by effectively reintegrating released prisoners back into society. Their sentencing focuses more of rehabilitating the offender. Under the control of the DOC, they offer work programs such as highway maintenance, institutional jobs or public service work. They also have health services and educational programs such as residential treatment programs, dental services, medicine, life skill programs, re-entry programs, and pen
Plea bargaining precludes justice from being achieved, where the consent to less severe sentences are given in favour of time and money. The case of R v Rogerson and McNamara, demonstrates the advantages of hiring highly trained legal personnel, which inevitably contributed to their lesser sentence. Thus, making it more difficult for offenders to be convicted.
A plea bargain is compliance between a prosecutor and defendant in which the accused offender agrees to plead guilty in return for some compromise from the prosecutor. The New Jim Crow, explains how most Americans have no clue on how common it is for people to be prosecuted without proper legal representation and are sentenced to jail when innocent out of fear. Tens of thousands of poor people go to jail every year without ever talking to a lawyer that could possibly help them. Over four decades ago, the American Supreme Court ruled that low-income people who are accused of serious crimes are entitled to council, but thousands of people are processed through America’s courts annually with a low resource lawyer, or no lawyer at all. Sometimes
People expect a penitentiary to hold inmates, especially dangerous ones, for as long as the court determines they should serve. Kingston Penitentiary has been doing that for many years. But it has also dedicated to the reform of inmates. What that means has changed dramatically over time. (Curtis et al, 1985)
middle of paper ... ... (Mohr 6) For prosecutors, “guilty pleas avoided ‘onerous and protracted’ trials whose outcomes – ‘losing’ or ‘having to oppose an appeal to the higher courts’ – were both undesirable.” (Smith 134) Finally for judges, plea bargaining reduces their caseload, and elevates their reputation indirectly because accepting a plea bargaining also includes waiver of appeal to higher courts. (Mohr 6) Criticism of plea bargaining mainly stems from two aspects.
To affectively combat the negative connotations of the supermax facilities, a reform is necessary. Total confinement in supermax facilities has lasting negative effects on inmates and can potentially produce worse individuals for society. Segregation among dangerous inmates and the general prison population should be sought after, although total confinement is not the answer. Inmates that are classified as ‘the worst of the worst’ should be administered into programs of rehabilitation, especially focusing on good morale and principles of ethics. Instead, these inmates are stripped of these trainings and dehumanized. Rehabilitation is one of the goals that is not achieved through incarceration of supermax facilities. Rehabilitation should be the main priority for the routine of supermax facilities, as practicing ways to be an effective and beneficial member of society should repeatedly be
Plea bargaining saves the court a lot of time by a case not going to trial. If the case doesn’t go to trial it also saves the criminal justice system a lot of money (CJ Interactive Multi-Media, 2014). This allows for the local, state, or Federal government to save on resources they would need to use if every case went to trial. It also saves on how much resources needs to go into the criminal justice system (CJ Interactive Multi-Media, 2014). The courts are all ready over loaded with cases and many have become extremely backlogged. By people plea bargaining it helps resolve the case faster and helps bring down the number of back logged cases in court. A plea bargain also saves on all parties having to go through a trial (CJ Interactive Multi-Media, 2014). Some trials can take up to several months and the outcome of the trial is very unpredictable. Plea barging can also help law enforcement get information they can use about other criminal activities (CJ Interactive Multi-Media,
Plea bargains are one of the most controversial debates that are discussed over the criminal justice court system. A plea bargain is when a defendant agrees to plead guilty to a crime and in exchange for something, for example a lesser sentence. There are three types of plea bargains. Charge bargaining is when a defendant pleads guilty to a less serious charge than the original charge. Count bargaining is when the defendant pleads guilty for some of the charge, but not all. Sentence bargaining is when the defendants get a lesser sentence than the maximum penalty. Through the course of this semester it has been brought to our attention, multiple times, about the problems plea bargaining has caused. Many defendants are pressured by those who surround them in
After all, we are all human, and no one deserves to be tricked into plea bargain due to the prosecutor’s pushing their own agendas, or because of mental issues derived from solitary confinement. Most of all, how is someone supposed to support himself or herself if they don’t have a backbone support from reentry programs. The criminal justice system needs to undergo reformation and address the real reasons to high crime rates and inmate failures to sustain a successful life after the time they served. So who are we to deny a person the right to happiness if they serve their time and want to live a crime free life?
I. Alternatives to incarceration give courts more options. For example, it’s ridiculous that the majority of the growth in our prison populations in this country is due to slamming people in jail just because they were caught using drugs. So much of the crime on the streets of our country is drug-related--crime that would largely disappear if the massive profits brought on by drug criminalization were eliminated. You can reduce drug usage more efficiently, and at a lower cost, through treatment than through law enforcement.
The “Tough on Crime” and “War on Drugs” policies of the 1970s – 1980s have caused an over populated prison system where incarceration is policy and assistance for prevention was placed on the back burner. As of 2005, a little fewer than 2,000 prisoners are being released every day. These individuals have not gone through treatment or been properly assisted in reentering society. This has caused individuals to reenter the prison system after only a year of being release and this problem will not go away, but will get worst if current thinking does not change. This change must be bigger than putting in place some under funded programs that do not provide support. As the current cost of incarceration is around $30,000 a year per inmate, change to the system/procedure must prevent recidivism and the current problem of over-crowed prisons.
When it comes to the accuracy of emotions, Naz failed in controlling his emotions while making the plea deal decision. Even though his decision of rejecting the plea deal turned out to be the right choice, he did not follow the factors of making an effective decision. Furthermore, Naz’s accurate intuition was shown in his belief that he did not commit the murder, which turned out to be right. Before rejecting the plea deal, Naz agreed to all the crimes he committed including the murder by answering “yes” to all the D.A.’s questions. However, when he was asked to admit to the murder crime using his own words, he could not do it. He paused for a minute, then said that he did not kill her. Even though Naz did not remember parts of what happened that night, and he had no evidence at the decision time, he had an accurate intuition that he was incapable of committing manslaughter. Despite the fact the Naz was an honored student, he was not familiar with the court process. He showed in the earliest episode that he did not know his right of an attorney. This was a new horrible experience for Naz. In fact, Naz used his previous experience when his lawyer Crowe told him to take the deal, in dealing with his previous lawyer, Stone who came just before the hearing to advise Naz to take the deal. He quietly acknowledged that both lawyers are behaving in the same way. They both assumed
“The history of correctional thought and practice has been marked by enthusiasm for new approaches, disillusionment with these approaches, and then substitution of yet other tactics”(Clear 59). During the mid 1900s, many changes came about for the system of corrections in America. Once a new idea goes sour, a new one replaces it. Prisons shifted their focus from the punishment of offenders to the rehabilitation of offenders, then to the reentry into society, and back to incarceration. As times and the needs of the criminal justice system changed, new prison models were organized in hopes of lowering the crime rates in America. The three major models of prisons that were developed were the medical, model, the community model, and the crime control model.
Firstly, in order to gain a better understanding of the problems that plague or correctional system we must fully understand the enormous overcrowding problem that exist in the majority of or state and federal prisons. Since 1980 the prison population has quadrupled and only the numb...
The first purpose of the prison is that of Public protection via incapacitation of offenders; this is considered to be the only purpo...
Prison was designed to house and isolate criminals away from the society in order for our society and the people within it to function without the fears of the outlaws. The purpose of prison is to deter and prevent people from committing a crime using the ideas of incarceration by taking away freedom and liberty from those individuals committed of crimes. Prisons in America are run either by the federal, states or even private contractors. There are many challenges and issues that our correctional system is facing today due to the nature of prisons being the place to house various types of criminals. In this paper, I will address and identify three major issues that I believe our correctional system is facing today using my own ideas along with the researches from three reputable outside academic sources.