...OVER – REPRESENTATIO OF INDEGINEOUS PEOPLE IN AUSTRALIA. AYOM MAAN STUDENT 8403295: SUBJECTS: JSB 371 INTRODUCTION Over –representation of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system is well established. Although the extent of the over-representation is the subject of some disagreement and varies between communities and data (Ghys 1994: 132-137). the issue of Indigenous over-representation is not always at the forefront of public debate. It often takes high profile inquires, or tragic incidents to put the issue on the front pages of newspapers One document that highlights the high rates of over-representation is The Royal commission into Aboriginal death in custody, which was established in October 1987. This inquiry was mainly established to investigate the death of ninety-nine Indigenous people who died in custody over a period of nearly ten years. Despite the fact that, the issue of Indigenous over-representation is not an issue that occupies the minds of most people in Australia on a regular basis, it is a phenomenon which continues to have devastating effects on Indigenous people nation-wide, especially those who resided in rural areas. Reference: National report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Death in custody vol.2 (p.3): History and Legislation Indigenous communities in Australia had and continue to have very different cultural notions in relation to childhood and young Aboriginal people in the past. Generally there is no the same separation or exclusion...
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...“value for money” from the billions of dollars being spent to imprison small drug-users. In fact, California voters were not alone in demanding reform of harsh drug laws: there were drug policy issues on ballots in seven states in the recent election, and in five of them, harsh drug laws were voted out. Combined with the long-term drop in crime (especially violent crime) that has taken place over the past ten to fifteen years, as well as the budget crises at the state level, this gradual recognition in the US of the enormous costs of harsh sentences, with little criminal justice benefits, has — in fact — led to a decline in support for prisons as a one-(jumbo)-size-fits-all solution. As King and Mauer (2002) noted already in 2002, this decline in the attractiveness of prisons as political institutions is reflected in the “roll-back” of pro-prison policies in a number of state legislatures across the US. To name simply a few, certain mandatory minimum sentences have already been eliminated or reduced. For example, Louisiana has recently imposed the three-strikes requirement that all three offences be...
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...mounting. Meanwhile an expensive and ineffective international counter narcotics policy entails growing human rights and environmental costs. Drug problems can be reduced at less cost if we change course and adopt strategies that work. At a time when the federal budget is limited programs need to be re-evaluated. Funding needs to go to programs that work. We need new ideas to save lives – we can't afford to continue to be wrong. Below are eight steps that are effective methods of controlling drugs and reducing drug-related harms. (To download a copy of this as a PDF, click here.) 1. Shift Resources Into Programs That Work 2. Make Treatment Available on Request Like Any Other Health Service 3. Prevent Drug Abuse By Investing in American Youth and Providing Them with Accurate Information 4. Focus Law Enforcement Resources on the Most Dangerous and Violent Criminals 5. International Drug Control Efforts Should Be Demilitarized and Focus on Economic Development 6. Restore Justice to the US Justice System 7. Respect State's Rights and Allow New Approaches to Be Tried 8. Make Prevention of HIV and Other Blood Borne Diseases a Top Priority Shift Resources Into Programs That Work: US drug control strategy has been approached primarily as a law enforcement issue. Police have done their jobs with record arrests, drug seizures and...
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...entering the youth justice system. In order to answer this statement the essay shall explore the various legislations implemented in an attempt to prevent youth criminality, discussing any conflicts that exist with the principles of Human Rights and Natural Justice. In Britain there are two types of Law, firstly Statutory Law, which are Acts of Law passed by the Parliament. Whereby the Parliament must check its consistency with the 1998 Human Rights Act (the HRA). The HRA ‘introduced European Convention on Human Rights into English Law’ (Crawford & Newburn; 2003: p16). The UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice include: ‘The best interests of the child are paramount; judicial proceedings should be avoided where possible; any intervention should be kept minimum; police, prosecution or other agencies should be able to dispose of cases at their discretion; criminalizing and penalising young people should be avoided unless there is serious damage or harm to others; legal assistance should be prompt and free of charge’ (Crawford & Newburn; 2003: p16). The second type is Common Law; this is whereby nothing is passed through Parliament, the majority of the Law has evolved by custom, its about a group of people sitting down and coming up with a reasonable answer, this is commonly known as ‘Natural Justice’. It is a common belief in the UK that youth criminality is a modern phenomenon, however it has been suggested that youth criminality has...
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...they would see a world of good being done and a countless amount of juveniles being rehabilitated for good. Getting informed on how the Juvenile System works, hearing testimony from the people on the inside of the justice system, as well as specific citing from a former criminal and learning about the “scared straight” program will make it evident that rehabilitation works. It is important to know as much as possible about the Juvenile System. In order to make a decision on if the system is effective, it is imperative to know how the system works and what the goals of the system are. Following the arrest of a juvenile offender, a law enforcement officer has the discretion to release the juvenile to his or her parents, or take the offender to juvenile hall.(LAO) The county probation department has the discretion to accept the offender or not, in which case, the disposition of the juvenile is left to the police. Because most of the state’s juvenile halls are overcrowded, juvenile halls may only accept the most violent offenders.(LAO) This leaves all the rest of the offenders at the mercy of the court for ruling on how to discipline the juvenile. California’s juvenile system has specific goals for their justice system. The goal is the treatment and rehabilitation of...
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...major components to the administration of the U.S. criminal justice system: the police, the courts, and corrections. In a perfect criminal justice system the police would arrest violators of the law, the courts would prosecute all law violators, and corrections would punish and rehabilitate violators, to integrate them back into society. While this is the formula the U.S. criminal justice system governs itself by, reality shows us that this quite often this is not the case. Only ten percent of court cases ever go to trial, with almost 90 percent of trials, being settled by plea bargain before going to trial. This often time eliminates the rehabilitation aspect of corrections. There are also instances where due to over packed jails and prisons, inmates do not end up serving their whole sentence. This is a break in corrections ability to complete the process started by the police. THE PROSECUTOR The key...
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...parens patriae as its foundation, discretion of the juvenile's behaviors, and has the judge be the sole determining factor of the juvenile's faith (Cauffman, 2018). Throughout history, it is evident that the pendulum tends to swing back and forth between rehabilitation and punishment, especially within the past century. In fact, cases such as In re Gault and in re Winship, have...
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...Crime statistics and incarceration rates reveal that young African American men are prosecuted and imprisoned at higher rates than their Non-Hispanic White counterparts. Although the total number of incarcerations by race does not vary significantly, the age of prisoners by race is meaningful. In December 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice statistics for sentenced male prisoners under state and federal jurisdiction totaled 1,537,415. Broken down by race, African American lacks totaled 555,300 prisoners with Whites totaling 465,100 and Hispanics 331,500. As the assignment scenario noted, in 2003 there was disparity between the incarceration rates for males aged 25-29 among races. As of 2011, rates for the same age group do not show as wide of a gap. In 2011, White males ages 25 to 29 comprised 14.4 percent of incarcerated males compared to 16.5 percent African American lacks and 18.8 percent Hispanics. The statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice for 2011 show that, “More than half (52%) of white male prisoners were age 39 or younger, compared to 63% of black and 68% of Hispanic male prisoners.” There remains disparity when age is factored into the incarceration rates with eleven percent more Blacks and sixteen percent more Hispanics incarcerated than Whites for those 39 and younger. In addition, one must consider that African Americans have higher rates of arrest, conviction, and incarceration when they total a minority number in the population. When evaluating...
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...Name: Rhode Jadotte Course: Minorities in the Criminal Justice System Professor: Dr. S. Williams The interviews excerpted here show that racially biased pretextual traffic stops have a strong and immediate impact on the individual African-American drivers involved. These stops are not the minor inconveniences they might seem to those who are not subjected to them. Rather, they are experiences that can wound the soul and cause psychological scar tissue to form. And the statistics show that these experiences are not simply disconnected anecdotes or exaggerated versions of personal experiences, but rather established and persistent patterns of law enforcement conduct. It may be that these stops do not spring from racism on the part of individual officers, or even from the official policies of the police departments for which they work. Nevertheless, the statistics leave little doubt that, whatever the source of this conduct by police, it has a disparate and degrading impact on blacks. But racial profiling is important not only because of the damage it does, but also because of the connections between stops of minority drivers and other, larger issues of criminal justice and race. Put another way, "driving while black" reflects, illustrates, and aggravates some of the most important problems we face today when we debate issues involving race, the police, the courts, punishment, crime control, criminal justice, and constitutional law. A. The Impact on the Innocent ...
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...Name Teacher Juvenile Justice 113 I1 Date History of Juvenile Correction Philosophies and Facilities To talk of the history of juvenile correction philosophies and different juvenile correction facilities, one should understand a brief juvenile justice history to bring us to a point where a correction philosophy or correction facility would be needed. Dealing with juveniles in criminal matters can be traced back as far as the beginning of time. However, early Europe in the fifth century A.D. is where we will start. What is considered a juvenile??? At this time in history the age was fixed at seven for determining whether youths would be exempted from criminal responsibility. With the onset of puberty, at the age of twelve for girls and fourteen for boys, youths were held totally responsibility for their socially unacceptable behaviors. English juvenile justice had some 160 to 200 capital offenses statutes listed for which children could be executed. In London in 1785 eighteen of twenty juveniles were executed. Executions of juveniles continued into the 1800s. (Bartollas, Miller, 2014, p. 4) Here in the United States during the colonial period juvenile justice was shaped by the culture and religious ideas of the Puritans. The family was expected to control their children and when juveniles were caught breaking laws they were sent back to their families for punishment. Of course the older the child got the greater the chances the juveniles would be dealt with by colonial...
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...Minority Inmates in American Prisons Noreen Harman ENG122: English Composition II Instructor January Pearson July 7, 2014 There is a disparate rate of minorities in the American prison system currently. I will present evidence from scholarly resources proving that the reason why the minority population is so high is due to racial profiling. The judicial system imposes stricter and longer prison terms on minorities because of their culture. Blacks are about eight times more likely to go to prison than whites, which dwarfs black-white disparities in, for example, unemployment rates (2-to -1 disparity), infant mortality (2-to -1 disparity), and out of wedlock births (3-to-1 disparity). L.J. Geo (2010). African American and Hispanic offenders were more likely than whites to be sentenced to prison, especially if they were male, young and unemployed, S. Spohn (2000). Even though there may be a high rate of minority crimes being committed, I believe the reason for having so many minorities in prison is due to the current judicial system stereo typing. In the article Rethinking Drug Courts: Restorative Justice as a Response to Racial Injustice, it talks about the rate of drug crimes committed by minority and longer sentences imposed to blacks and Hispanics. Drug court offers offenders the opportunity to not do time in prison and get court supervised treatment instead. This is beneficial to the families of minorities so they can keep working and providing...
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...Juvenile Delinquency and the Adult Court System Soc. 321 Juvenile Delinquency February 21, 2013 Table of Contents Abstract 3 Social Norms in Society 4 The founding father 4 Gangs 4 Juvenile Delinquent 5 Juvenile Justice 5 Juvenile Prosecution 6 Waivers 7 Factors for Waivers ...
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...Community Corrections Community corrections are the programs which manage offenders outside of jail or prison. Community corrections include probation and parole. Probation is a correctional supervision within the community rather than jail or prison. Parole is a period of conditional, supervised release from prison. There are some offenders who do not present any threat to society, and to incarcerate them in a dangerous correctional system, which could cause harm or damage to the person, and possibly lock them into a life of crime. Community corrections would be less costly, and more effective to let them remain in the community under the supervision of a trained court officer. The offender can receive treatment that might help to turn their life around. There are a variety of community sentencing alternatives today that are cost-effective. There is the house arrest concept that requires convicted offenders to spend a designated amount of time per week in his or her home. The sentencing authorities must be assured that the arrestees are actually at home during their assigned times, so random calls and visits are a way for officers to check on the compliance of the house arrest orders. The electronic monitoring device is used to manage an offender in most home confinement orders today. The most secure intermediate sanction is a sentence to a residential community corrections facility; located in the community that houses probationers. Most often, residents are allowed to...
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...Juveniles being tried as adults Student’s name University affiliation Juveniles being tried as adults Introduction The first juvenile court started in the United States of America in 1899. The two basic principles on which the court juvenile court were founded are one, and juveniles were not mature enough to take responsibility of their actions compared to adults and two, it was easier to rehabilitate juveniles as compared to adult criminals (Grisso & Schwartz, 2000). In more than a century, these principles remained the benchmarks of the juvenile courts as they expanded from Chicago, their original birthplace, into other states and eventually in other parts of the world. However, in the recent year rising incidences of juvenile criminals being tried as adults has increased as it was before the advent of the first juvenile court. Much of this stems from the public outrage against the children who, in high numbers, are engaging in violent crimes. Many countries have adopted legislation that permits them to juveniles to be tried as adults. In some countries, there are provisions that allow prosecutors to try children as young as 14 years under certain circumstances (Grisso & Schwartz, 2000). Juvenile courts establishment aimed at separating the youthful offenders from the adult criminals and thereafter processing and rehabilitating them in forgiving and less punitive manner compared to the adult criminal system (Redding & Fuller, 2004)...
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...Sentencing and Punishment Paper Karen Peters CJS/200 03-31-2013 Brenda Barney Sentencing and Punishment Paper There are several philosophies used in the court systems that are used in determining what the punishment will be for criminals that are found guilty for the crimes they have committed. The four philosophical, reasons are used in juvenile and adult courts; they are retribution, incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation. Juvenile courts are similar to how that adult court systems, but there are several differences of the two. Both systems work at trying to keep crime from occurring, and they both us some sort of sentencing and punishment for the criminals that are found guilty, they use the punishment philosophy that courts use to determine a punishment suitable for the crime and that will help with future prevention of crimes happening from the same offenders. Six forms of punishments go along with the four philosophical forms. The first philosophical reason is retribution; this is the earliest form that is known as a rationale punishment, it followed the Old Testament of and Schmalleger (2011) “eye for and eye” and a “tooth for a tooth” (p. 373). In the case of minor crimes, it was supposed to lower the severity of punishments. In today’s world it corresponds to what is called just deserts a form of sentencing holding criminals responsible for the crimes that they commit. Once they are convicted they are known to have gotten their “just deserts”...
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