Impact of Cultural Perspectives on Policing, Courts, and Corrections
Cultural perspectives play a huge role in the formation of policy and legislation in any criminal justice system. In the United States, cultural diversity is rampant as the nation comprises many different ethnicities, religions, faiths, and value systems. Therefore, this creates various approaches to the policing process with varying perspectives in the courts and corrections. The diversity of cultural perspectives has led to the formulation of a strong communication policy that ensures that communication in the American justice system is well set out. Nevertheless, cultural diversity has led to racial profiling in courts and corrections facilities. For instance, law enforcement and judicial officers tend to judge based on stereotypes for certain racial groups. This leads to a bias whereby the correctional and criminal justice system has a premeditated notion that certain people are violent or criminals by nature (Bryant et al., 2017). In the United States, this phenomenon has greatly affected the criminal justice system’s legal traditions resulting from the inability to make impartial rulings, especially for African American convicts. The majority of them are convicted wrongfully.
On the other hand, England has a different cultural composition comprised of a British majority, other white ethnicities, and other black British Caribbean and African nationals.
The British culture is heavily influenced by the Church of England from where the majority of the population draws their cultural perspective. In England, policing, court, and correctional facilities enjoy strong legal systems that control the population but minimal use of force. However, the policing and correctional institutions have a
challenge in policing minority groups. The differing cultural perspectives between the minority and the white majority have resulted in a skewed relationship with the police and criminal justice system (Bryant et al., 2017). This phenomenon has led to a lack of confidence in the correctional and criminal justice system by the minority groups. The collaboration between the court and minority groups to curb crimes is not viable because they are treated as suspects rather than victims.
Indeed there is a correlation between the cultural beliefs of a nation and its legal traditions. This relation may not be directly due to the evolution of law over the years resulting in the amendment of various clauses to promote fairness during the execution of justice (Kurchiyan, & Kubal, 2018). These two nations’ cultures impact policing courts and corrections since they form the foundation of legislation and legal traditions used in the criminal justice system.