Purpose Of The Criminal Justice System

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The main purpose of the legal system is to provide the community with a set of rules to provide and maintain order within society. Legislation, the criminal justice system and the way in which we deal with criminal activity is constantly changing as we are discovering more efficient ways of handling these crimes in order to meet the needs of all stakeholders involved (Ochoa 2013). The criminal justice system we employ today is designed to determine the guilt or innocence of an accused person through the use of a jury and if found to be guilty determine a fair punishment or appropriate rehabilitation process (Burgess, Regehr & Roberts 2013). However making these continual changes has caused the justice system to become increasingly more complicated and with that seemingly less able to provide justice to the victims, community and also the offenders (Ochoa 2013). In only a short amount of time legal assistance has become very hard to access and many have simply thought it not worth the trouble to gain compensation for the harm they have felt, leaving many offenders without consequences to face for their actions (Burgess, Regehr & Roberts 2013). Without these consequences a large number of offenders are very likely to reoffend causing disruption to the community. …show more content…

In order to make these crucial decisions the judge provides jury directions that help them to decide whether the accused is guilty or innocent (The Victorian Department of Justice (VDJ) 2013). As the jury is formed by regular people drawn from the community these directions should be clear and easily understandable. However, the Victorian Department of Justice (2013) says that jury direction has become too complex and lengthy and does not focus enough on the matters in issue to be considered effective but is rather an

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