Analysis of criminal justice policy: Community Service
Criminal justice policies include a definitive collection of previously published documents that address the essential issues which have dominated the field of criminal justice for many years. Some of the areas covered by the policy include perspectives of criminal behavior, the social context of crime as well as give way for alternative policy options. Criminal justice policy is essential, especially to the community leaders, the legislatures, and all levels of government as well as the general public as it pronounces the more effective ways of crime control within society. According to Boutellier, many countries have implemented a community-oriented model of policing in addition to the given provisions by the state and the criminal justice system, including the prison system, which is based on re-education premise (361). Though the community procedures are part of the criminal justice system, they also present social policies within the community to address the issues related to the marginalized among the populations. The premise of the criminal justice policy is that incarceration is temporary and beneficial. Hence, the systems are meant to prevent criminal acts and help the perpetrators reform and become useful members of the community. In this regard, through the analysis of the criminal justice policies, one can grasp the dynamics behind the justice services and the need for improvement.
Background
Community service programs are initiatives that emanate from the criminal justice policy, and they focus on the treatment of offenders being arrested, charged, or being tried and convicted. In this regard, the community service entails unpaid community work to the convicts for the benefit of the community and to reform the individual. According to Lawlor, the provisions of the criminal justice policy about community services in many jurisdictions represent a paradigm shift from the traditional methods of dealing with a crime within the community. They are geared towards a more restorative form of justice that takes into consideration the interests of both the victim and society (4). Besides, through the policy, one can understand the initiative’s contribution to society and also acknowledge the relationship between the offender and the punishment and what the programs stand to benefit the victim. For instance, in the UK, the criminal justice amendment act of 2010 is a legislation aimed at encouraging greater community participation in the rehabilitation of convicts of minor offenses within the community (Bouffard 171). The act places the judgment requirements into consideration by imposing a sentence of less than one year for juvenile offenders with an alternative of serving the community under the community service programs.
Further, the reasoning behind the introduction of the policy is that most of the minor offenders are in a position to reform when given the right incentives and by being encouraged to do so. In this regard, the policy utilizes a framework that analyzes a set of regulations that were developed to assess the behavior of criminals and the best way of integrating them back into society. However, the enthusiasm at which the policy has been taken up in the community for the non-custodial suctions has until now been lack of luster. In this regard, it is essential to have discoveries of why policies stand the best chance of addressing criminality and why it signifies the direction of the criminal justice system in the future. Bouffard argues that the legislation, as well as the advancement of the policies of the criminal justice towards community orientation, emulates from the desire to ensure that defaulters are not imprisoned for minor crimes (172). The system also plays a role in rehabilitating juveniles who find themselves committing crimes due to social-economic pressures. Moreover, criminal behavior and the methods of dealing with a crime make up the intrinsic component of the policy as well as the aspect of transitional phase that affects the perception and actions of criminals and the entire criminal justice system.
Literature review
The literature on criminal justice policies attempts to focus on the nature of the penal system within the jurisdiction. A study by Boutellier pinpoints to the specific ideologies that underpin the penal policy in most countries as challenging tasks. In this regard, while the corrective procedure, the legislation could not describe the punitive measures, especially the placement of the criminal in the international context since some elements of the penal or community system is far from being rehabilitative and are inhumane (361). For instance, Ireland has a low rate of imprisonment as the conditions of some of the prisons remain antiquated and degrading to human living. In this case, the penal policy for community service comes in handy as it helps in the decongestion of the prison besides giving the convicts a more humane treatment within the community. Several materials are needed to ensure that a criminal justice policy is well thought out and useful to the community as well as to the convicts, such as sufficient statistical information. Besides, research has attributed to flaws in policymaking. It has attributed it to the nature of the criminal justice departments, which is seen to be reluctant to release information to the public to aid in a meaningful debate and brainstorming to enable proper policies.
Moreover, the reluctancy to participate in the penology policy making by the department of justice is also attributed to the political landscape of which some administrations attempt to provide the ethos for the penal policy. For instance in Ireland, the management of offender has a five-year plan which corresponds to the tracing of crime (Lawlor 7) These management frameworks have been hampered by the election of new governments which comes in with new policies that are politically included and meant to benefit the politicians who ignore the previous attempts to define penal system and ideology. The politicians instead engage in their plan, which at times does not involve the community and hence leading to more cases in the community. In this regard, the existence of the political as well as the lack of sufficient statistical data has resulted in the absence of enough evidence that could lead to efficient justice policy decisions that would benefit the community. Besides, the traditional penal policy was characterized by increased prison populations, and hence there was the need to deal with the pressures that come with overcrowding. Therefore, most jurisdictions have enacted new criminal justice systems such as the community service legislation that is meant to involve the community in rehabilitation of the offenders.
Personality Ideology
The ideology of personalities also underpins the justice policies in many countries where there is the scope of individuals who hold critical political and other authoritative positions that impact the process of policymaking. According to Lawlor, most research works have drawn their attention to the impact of influential individuals in the process of formatting policies within a given jurisdiction (21). The personalities explain how the leaders can impact the criminal justice system through zero tolerance to corruption. One of the factors that have derailed the implementation of community policing is corruption that ahs entrenched in most of the criminal justice system. In this regard, the offenders who are supposed to benefit from the community programs end up serving life in prison while others with political connections and up serving in community programs and then released to join the community. Boutellier describes how crimes are pursued as a personal crusade that is meant to attain specific agendas for some influential people serving in authoritative positions (362). Besides, criminal justice policy in some areas has led to some leaders increasing the number of prison officers as well as community parole officers, engages in facility development as a way to curb congestion, and ensured there is increased budget to the criminal justice system especially the prisons to ensure community policing is enhanced.
Similarly, Bouffard also noted the importance of personalities in the designing of the criminal justice policies and especially the community service legislations (177). Furthermore, policy decisions are seen to build more prisons without addressing the issue of bias up the criminal justice system, especially at the courts level where arbitrary decisions are made that are seen to discriminate certain minorities Also, at the same trial stage of the justice system, the policy should elaborate the measures and punishment for minor offenses that should include community service and rehabilitation especially for the juvenile offenders. Other studies indicate that personalities and more so the leadership of a given jurisdiction is a crucial catalyst behind the decision making process in terms of formulation of criminal justice policy that includes all the stakeholders such as the community. Although the leadership idea of building more prison facilities to accommodate the prisoners is noble, the issue of rehabilitation and the change of behavior of the convicts is not fully agreed upon. It has been proven that community policing and service play a huge role in the improvement and behavioral change among the convicts. Hence, it stands out as the best option, especially for minor offenders and juveniles.
The traditional Justice System
The community service system is part of the criminal justice system that was not a tradition within the justice department in many jurisdictions. In the 21st century, all countries had developed some form of a state judicial system under penal policies that were attached to the overall interior security department.
Only a handful of the systems of formal law in the European countries had the aspect of involving the community in its functions. Nevertheless, it is helpful to think of traditional state justice systems when formulating the present-day criminal justice policy. When conservative politicians in developed countries say that the legal system should recognize the minority groups’ bi-laws, they believe that it is the best way to enhance legal pluralists to respond to biases and discrimination in the justice system (Boutellier 363). In this regard, there is no country where there is one judicial system for all. Similarly, the state system, which comprises of the criminal justice policy, is the essential vehicle for the delivery of justice. Besides, most citizens usually take most of their issues about the injustices through the traditional justice system, which is much cheaper and happens within a quasi-judicial order of a court.
The traditional methods followed more of the standard protocols, and there was no national policy that guided the people as each community had their plans depending on their traditions. Besides, the traditional justice system also included religious groupings such as Christians and Muslims whose way of criminal handling cases varied. The aspect of religion has been factored in the current community service policy were the churches tend to follow the court system. In contrast, the Muslim follow the Kadhi system, where the offenders are tried based on the Muslim tenets (Lawlor 8). Similarly, Christians have the principles of forgiveness. In contrast, the Muslims have the policies of not taking what does not belong to you, and hence the fusing of the two religious systems leads to the formation of the community policing mechanisms. With the dynamics of traditional justice, the convicts reformed after going through the system as it seemed to be more just and considerate of an individual plea. The current community service policy appears to emulate the traditional method whereby the convict is put on parole to do unpaid community works as punishment for their petty crimes. Religion has also played a key role in stopping the formation of the current criminal justice policy as it has brought the aspect of spirituality as well as morality to the broader population.
Theoretical review
A criminal justice theoretical framework involves a well-organized collection of explanatory concepts that are targeted at making theoretical sense in regards to crime control and the criminal justice system under the phenomena. The criminal justice system is seen as a multifaceted field with deferent approaches to a crime that have used different theories to try and explain the various scenarios that face the people, including individual practitioner decision making as well as the exponential growth in power of the criminal justice system. In this regard, a dependent variable to the study of crime and the justice system within communities is the crime rates, which help in the acknowledging of the interconnections between the justice policy and other criminal justice phenomena that affect the price of crime. In the field of criminal justice, the widely used theory is the crime theory, which deconstructs all the related assumptions to criminal studies and outlines the complexity of criminal justice policies in handling community service. The crime theory is the default concept in criminal investigations, and it assumes that conceptual work is reserved for why crime rates keep on increasing even in the face of increased community works. In this case, the theory is used to focus on all aspects of crime that include deviance, crime, as well as delinquency.
Methodology
The primary focus of the research was to establish the rationale behind the criminal justice policy when it comes to community service. In this regard, the paper utilized qualitative research, which involves analyzing the factors that may lead to the influence of the criminal justice policymaking process. Also, the research carried out a literature review that was meant to identify and highlight the essential driving forces behind the policy actors and the influence of the policy actors such as politicians and interest groups. A qualitative analysis was also needed for a practical summary of the potential elements behind the process of policy formation that promote social cohesion as well as enhance behavioral change among the convicts. This analysis involved identifying the problem, designing the problem, conceptualizing, and eventually designing the solution to the problem. Additionally, the policy analysis used a framework that was previously set by Kingdon in 1995 that was recommended to be utilized for purposes of qualitative research works (Boutellier 361). The policy analysis framework sets in pace a prolonged approach to the paper that involves areas that are relevant to the fields of study, which are divided into the political stream and the policy stream.
Government publications also formed a large portion of the papers research work, and this included ministerial statements, bills, legislative reports, consultation documents, and manifestos, among others. In this regard, several public records belonging to the government were analyzed to determine the level of implementation of the community ser ice policy and the impact the administration has had on the criminal justice system. In terms of data collection, there was a collection of a variety of documentaries and literature materials related to the hypothesis that included journals and dissertations. Also, data on community service legislation in other jurisdictions in the world were collected from different government departments where a large number of information was available. Further, debates were explored using search engines on various websites such as the criminal justice system, the policymaking process, and the community policing implementation. The discussions provided a rich base of information and account proceedings that illustrated the state of the criminal justice policy in different parts of the globe.
Overall, it is argued that policy-oriented criminology to advance, it is critical to process the complexity of community service and its impact on the overall criminal justice system. The calls for the policies to be simplified by shifting the policy from pineal legislation that focuses only on the prisons and focuses more on the community aspects of rehabilitation has been amplified. I this regard, the analysis of the criminal policy insists on the complexity inherent to the criminal justice policymaking process, which usually accumulates knowledge in both policy process and knowledge. Besides, there have been identified three methods that meet the challenge of policymaking, and they include first, the identification of the various contextual features of the criminal policy environment. Secondly, involving the features of the policy community with the involvement of the public, and lastly uncovering of the networks that expose the patterns of power and influence. Nevertheless, there are issues with a community justice model based on the criminal justice policy such that the citizens are not eager to participate in the process as justice officials seem to be resistant to the change. Besides, the field of community organization and development has a history of lukewarm experiences to match its successes in that it is well known that community programs present are, at times, complicated and current operational difficulties.