Extending The Evaluation Of America’s Criminal Justice System

Extending the Evaluation of America’s Criminal Justice System by Understanding Other Systems Your Name Subject and Section Professor’s Name May 3, 2019 Introduction The development of human civilization has gone a long way from the use of sticks and stones. This goes the same, not only for their technological capacities, but even societal, cultural, and ideological aspects of their daily lives. In the United States, several changes have already happened in the societal milieu such as the abolition of slavery and equalization of the rights of all genders, just to cite some. However, despite these advancements brought about by several struggles, new difficulties consistently arise, requiring the immediate attention of those involved. In line with this, this article would delve on the present difficulties being faced by the American Criminal Justice System. And in order to understand this, the author would focus on the use of two main articles, which focuses on different aspects of American society. On the one hand, the author would use the article written by Nessan, entitled ‘The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the age of Colorblindness’, which discusses how several ‘loopholes’ in the law could lead to drawbacks in the progress already made by the US Justice System. On the other hand, the article would also utilize the work of Carr, entitled ‘Is Google Making us stupid?’, in order to understand how an understanding of other ‘systems’ could lead to a better evaluation of the reality of the American Justice system. All in all, the author believes that understanding other systems, could help in evaluating the American Criminal Justice System, by giving a wider view of how different institutions are related to one another. The American Criminal Justice System A wider perspective helps in identifying certain misconceptions about the American justice system. In the article written by Nessan (2014), she stated that the US’ criminal justice system “perpetuates the myth that the primary function of the system is to keep our streets safe and our homes secure by rooting out dangerous criminals and punishing them” (p. 59). This statement shows the ideal purpose of the criminal system, since the essence of punishing others in order to keep the innocent civilians safe has been the cornerstone of any criminal justice systems around the world. Without which, confidence in the system would crumble as it would only be viewed as oppressive and unjust. However, the reason why such is considered as a ‘myth’ is that reality is somehow different from the ideal picture of the justice system. This can be exemplified in one of the issues raised by the ...