12 An Overview of the System

One of the most important advantages to living in a civil society is the security that it provides. In contemporary society, the role of ensuring security is relegated to government. That is, citizens have a reasonable expectation that society, as a collective, will protect us from rogue members. In giving power to government to perform this critical security function, we create the potential for the abuse of that power. In the American system of criminal justice, we see two competing and equally important ideas: We demand both security and freedom from governmental abuse of power. These freedoms are collectively known as individual rights or civil liberties. These civil rights are woven into the very fabric of our government at both the state and federal level.

In this context, we can view the criminal justice system is a collection of rules and people (usually in the form of public agencies) working together to protect the public from harm. These elements are commonly divided into three broad categories: police, courts, and corrections. These three elements have the same basic function: To respond to crime. A crime is a violation of some criminal law with no legal justification or excuse. Local, state, and federal governments can make criminal laws. The vast majority of criminal laws are a matter of state statutes .

Saying that the criminal justice system has the purpose of “responding to crime” results in a dramatically oversimplified view of how the system works. Every agency within the criminal justice system will agree that it responds to crime, but we find profoundly different mission statements, goals, objectives, and methods among these myriad agencies. A major reason for these differences is that the public has several conflicting definitions of the concept of justice.

Course Learning Objectives