Goals of Our Criminal Justice System and How They Are Balanced
Introduction
Criminal justice refers to the system used by government to maintain social control, prevent crime, enforce laws, and administer justice. The primary agencies that are in charge of the responsibilities of implementing criminal justice are the law enforcement (police), courts, and corrections. When processing the accused through the criminal justice system, government must keep within the framework of laws that protect individual rights. The pursuit of criminal justice is, like all forms of “justice”, “fairness” or “process”, essentially the pursuit of an ideal.
The criminal justice system primary goals are justice for individual, personal liberty, dignity of human beings and the right to due process.
Justice for the Individual
“Justice for the individual is distinguished from social, for not only individuals have claims in justice against other individuals but a subject has claims against the society to which he belongs, as society has claims against him. Justice requires that all should have what belongs to them, and so the just man will render to the society, or State, of which he is a member, what is due to it. The justice which prescribes this is called legal justice. On the other hand, the individual subject has claims against the State. It is the function of the State to protect its subjects in their rights and to govern the whole body for the common good.” ( 1910)
Personal Liberty
“Personal liberty means not only freedom from unlawful physical restraint or harm, but also freedom from arbitrary interference with one’s privacy and lawful belongings, which, in practice, means freedom from arbitrary search and seizure of personal belongings. A myriad of common law and statutory rules protects these rights and a comprehensive survey of the law on this subject is outside the scope of this publication. The common law formulated rules to safeguard personal liberty in relation to arrest, detention, use of force, invasion of privacy and procedure in relation to trial.” ()
However, it should be noted that personal liberty is only protected with a combination of principles which is indispensable to liberty. Freedom from arrest, detention or punishment is of limited value if the law penalizes ordinary moral conduct or non-violent political conduct. In addition, it is ineffective if there are no effective remedies for infringement or no safeguards to ensure fair trials ().The combined operation of these principles alone can guarantee the effective enjoyment of personal freedom.
Dignity as a human being
Human dignity is an expression that can be used as a moral concept or as a legal term. Sometimes it means no more than that human beings should not be treated as objects. One factor that denies the inherent dignity of each person is discrimination in its many forms, such as that based on race, gender or economic status. Human dignity transcends any social order as the basis for rights and is neither granted by society nor can it be legitimately violated by society. In this way, human dignity is the conceptual basis for human rights.
One direct normative implication of human dignity is that every human being should be acknowledged as an inherently valuable member of the human community and as a unique expression of life, with an integrated bodily and spiritual nature. In Catholic moral thought, because there is a social or communal dimension to human dignity itself, persons must be conceived of, not in overly-individualistic terms, but as being inherently connected to the rest of society. Because the tradition emphasizes the integral nature of our body and spirit, the human body takes on greater significance and value than in the prevailing dualistic conception of the person.
The normative implications of this conception of human dignity impacts much of Catholic moral thought as it pertains to a range of human life issues
The right to due process
In United States, adopted from English law, due process (more fully due process of law) is the principle that the government must normally respect all of a person’s legal rights instead of just some or most of those legal rights when the government deprives a person of life, liberty, or property (2005). Due process has also been frequently interpreted as placing limitations on laws and legal proceedings, in order for judges instead of legislators to guarantee fundamental fairness, justice, and liberty.
The due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment protects against state of local government abuse of power. This clause has been interpreted by the courts to extend most of the rights in the Bill of Rights that originally applied only to the federal government, to protect people against unfair actions by state and local governments ( 2005). The right to due process is the right to be treated fairly by your government.
Generally, due process guarantees the following (2006):
- Right to a fair and public trial conducted in a competent manner
- Right to be present at the trial
- Right to an impartial jury
- Right to be heard in one’s own defense
- Laws must be written so that a reasonable person can understand what is criminal behavior
- Taxes may only be taken for public purposes
- Property may be taken by the government only for public purposes
- Owners of taken property must be fairly compensated
“It is generally argued that victim’s and defendant’s rights are inversely related, and individual rights, as a whole, are likewise viewed as inversely related to social control. Rights, of course, imply responsibilities or duties, and this in turn requires a great deal of consensus in the community regarding the appropriate definitions for many of these legal terms.” (2004)
Fairness in a criminal trial should not be understood to mandate literal parity of resources and prerogative among parties. Rather, (1999) asserts, “what we must mean is balanced empowerment,” or a commitment to assigning privileges to the prosecution and defense on the basis of their dissimilar roles in the criminal trial (p. 16). Whether the respective entitlements promote or inhibit fairness depends on the “rationality of the connection between the supposed advantage and the principle it serves” ( 2004).
Law in both substance and process is, after all, an expression of what we think is right, a collection of aspirational conventions. It is surprisingly difficult, however, to tease them out of the tightly woven fabric of common experience and invisible assumption. And if and when any intrepid soul undertakes to expose and describe these essential strands, there is bound to be disagreement, mocking any claim to universal accord. ( 2004]
According to (1968), a fair trial is the ultimate institutional safeguard of personal freedom. Protection against abuse of the investigatory process is of no avail if a person can be unfairly tried and convicted.
The most important principle relevant to a fair trial is the presumption of innocence (1968). “In common law jurisdictions it means that an accused person is entitled to an acquittal if the prosecution fails to prove the commission of the offence beyond a reasonable doubt. The rule itself is inflexible, although the accused may sometimes be required to prove certain facts peculiarly within his knowledge. This principle, more than any other, demonstrates the concern that a citizen should not be deprived of his personal liberty except on the most cogent proof of guilt. However, even this hallowed principle of the common law is undergoing considerable derogation by legislation.” ( 1968)
“Apart from the presumption of innocence, a person facing trial in a common law court is entitled to the protection of detailed procedural and evidentiary rules. These rules have been developed to ensure, among other things, adequate notice of charges, adequate opportunity to prepare the defense, adequate representation, exclusion of doubtful evidence and the effective conduct of the defense through means such as the examination of witnesses and the making of legal submissions. Additional safeguards may include trial by jury, public trial and the prevention of prejudice by unfavorable publicity.” (2005)
Conclusion
The goals of the criminal justice are to provide justice and fairness to the citizens. It primary aimed for the individual justice, personal liberty, human dignity and the right to due process. The criminal justice has balance these goals through the criminal justice law and the legal process of fairness in the process of jurisdiction.
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