Recent events, such as the widespread incidents of police brutality and the increasingly frequent failed death row executions, have drawn a lot of attention toward the issue of criminal law enforcement in the United States. They also exposed the deficiencies and shortfalls of the criminal justice system, which has long been a source of disagreement between the Democrats and the Republicans, making any changes to the policy unlikely. However, now that conservative politicians, like their liberal counterparts, have come to acknowledge the inefficiency of the current system, there is hope for a comprehensive policy reform. The US criminal justice system urgently needs to be reformed as the current policy undermines justice and transparency in the US society.
The term ‘criminal justice administration’ refers to a set of policies and resource management practices that define how crime-committing individuals are treated in the society (Cole, Smith, & Dejong, 2014, p. 89). The US policy approach was formulated in the late 1960s and 1970s – a period marked by a rapidly growing crime rate – under a predominantly Republican government. The way new media channels, particularly television, exposed crimes, especially the most violent ones, agitated the public opinion. The citizens of the United States grew less and less tolerant of criminals, and, under the public pressure, the government opted out for the so-called “get tough” approach to criminal justice (Andrews & Bonta, 2010, p. 40). The common perception was that criminals choose the lifestyle they lead and thus they deserve to fully face the consequences of their actions, regardless of the specific context. While the origins of this approach are understandable, its results were largely unforeseen. A predominantly punitive approach, with its non-discriminating and inflexible view on crime, resulted in an oversimplification of the intricate concept of crime and is now threatening what it is intended to protect – justice in the United States.
The root of the problem is the inadequate legislation that resulted in a peculiar application of the law, with people receiving unjustifiably long sentences for relatively minor transgressions. For instance, implementation of mandatory minimum sentences, particularly in relation to possession or distribution of drugs, has filled the US prisons with non-violent drug offenders, some of them serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for possessing minuscule amounts of drugs. Mandatory minimums were initially intended to reduce the extent of judicial discretion to ensure that some crimes were punished by a certain number of years in prison (Cassell & Luna, 2011, p. 219). First introduced in 1951, these provisions did not become truly problematic until the War on Drugs when they started to raise questions about “the erosion of transparency and the truth-seeking function” of the US criminal justice system (Cassell & Luna, 2011, p. 219-220). Currently, even when the mandatory minimum requirements are reviewed and amended in some state legislations, these changes do not apply retrospectively to those already convicted under these provisions (Cassell & Luna, 2011, p. 225). To make the matter even more preposterous, some of the drug offenders are currently serving their sentences for possession or distribution of marijuana – a substance whose recreational consumption has been recently legalized in several states. Clearly, a new understanding of what constitutes and what causes crimes has emerged, highlighting the obsoleteness of the concept of mandatory minimum sentencing and similar laws.
Policies like mandatory minimums demonstrate the commitment of the US legal system to the crime control model at the expense of the due process model (Cole et al., 2014, p. 14). The former model values speed and efficiency above everything else: the system is performing well if it is capable of apprehending and convicting as many offenders as possible. Another example of such legislation is the three strikes laws, requiring that those who have committed two prior offenses get a considerably longer sentence on their “third strike” (Andrews, & Bonta, 2010). The due process model, on the other hand, emphasizes the importance of everyone receiving a fair trial based on carefully examined information, all while being represented by a qualified defender. Surely, the two models are not necessarily mutually exclusive but they do represent two extremes on one spectrum. For too long, the policy pendulum in the American criminal justice system has swung to the crime control model. It resulted in mass incarceration and large economic strains on the state and federal budgets. Currently, America is the leading country in terms of the number of its imprisoned citizens, outperforming illiberal regimes like Russia and China (Cullen, Johnson, & Nagin, 2011). The exploding incarceration rates naturally caused a significant increase in criminal justice expenses. Currently, about $60 billion is spent annually on correctional institutions, which represents a 235% increase since 1982 (Subramanian, Delaney, Roberts, Fishman, & McGarry, 2015, p. 12). Clearly, the current state of affairs is not sustainable in the long run, especially since some states are forced to prioritize prison maintenance over education in their budgets.
Another grave implication of the current inadequate legislation is the disproportionate adverse impact it has on racial and socioeconomic minorities in the United States. The most affected group are the African Americans, who represent about 40% of all prisoners but account for only 10% of the total population (Cullen et al., 2011). This distribution is clearly influenced by the existing prejudices in the criminal law enforcement practices: for instance, policing is largely concentrated in minority neighborhoods, and schools in such areas are more likely to implement zero-tolerance policies (Subramanian et al., 2015, p. 15). The bail system also disproportionally favors those who can afford it, meaning disadvantaged socioeconomic groups are not given an equal opportunity when it comes to just treatment. Currently, the prisons are filled with those who may have committed a minor offense, such as driving with a suspended license, but who are too poor – or too ill – to afford bail (Subramanian et al., 2015, p. 2). Thus, rather than delivering justice, the system appears to be merely furthering the socioeconomic cleavages in the United States.
Even though incarceration itself is already flawed, former prisoners experience further problems upon their release. Particularly, some states make former inmates subject to the so-called “collateral consequences.” These penalties vary from prisoner disenfranchisement to suspension of a driver’s license to inability to receive an education loan or get a job. As Chin duly notes, having a criminal record represents the modern form of civil death – or a loss of individual civil rights – comparable to the barbaric practice of outlawry in the Middle Ages (Chin, 2012). The criminal justice system has been criticized for not putting enough effort into prisoner rehabilitation to help former inmates make a successful transition back into the community as law-abiding citizens. Insufficient resources are currently allocated for prison education and job training, and former inmates come out of the prison unprepared to live in the society (Cole et al., 2014, p. 645). Being stripped of education and employment opportunities and, in some cases, deprived of public housing, many former inmates have no choice but to return to crime – a vicious circle responsible for creating a permanent underclass.
With the negative consequences of the current criminal justice policy being so pervasive and well-documented, it seems surprising why the status quo persisted for so long. The answer is more simple and yet more complex than one may think. Public security and individual freedom are believed to present an irreconcilable trade-off, with every society deciding how much of each it is willing to sacrifice. Even though the crime rates in the United States are not necessarily higher than in other developed countries, the majority public opinion often seems to favor security over freedom, especially since those most affected rarely have a voice in the matter (Kelly, 2014). The ever-growing terrorist threat only gave more legitimacy to such opinions. However, reforming the criminal justice system does not mean unleashing vile criminals back into the society. Rather, it implies remedying the injustice done to individuals who have received disproportionate sentences and re-allocating the efforts and funds toward rehabilitation rather than punishment.
Thus, decades of inadequate governance exacerbated the problem of criminal justice administration, as currently the system is overburdened with costly mass incarceration, disadvantaging the vulnerable members of the society and creating a permanent underclass because of insufficient rehabilitation efforts. A major policy overhaul is long overdue: it is time to acknowledge that the “tough-on-crime” approach, however promising it sounds in populist rhetoric, is failing the US society and instead turn to the due process approach to criminal justice.
References
Andrews, D. A., & Bonta, J. (2010). Rehabilitating criminal justice policy and practice. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 16(1), 39-55.
Cassell, P. G., & Luna, E. (2011). Sense and sensibility in mandatory minimum sentencing. Federal Sentencing Reporter, 23(3), 219-227.
Chin, G. J. (2012). The new civil death: Rethinking punishment in the era of mass conviction. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 160, 1789-1833.
Cole, G. F., Smith, C. E., & Dejong, C. (2014). The American System of Criminal Justice (14th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Cullen, F. T., Johnson, C. L., & Nagin, D. S. (2011). Prisons do not reduce recidivism: The high cost of ignoring science. The Prison Journal, 91(3), 48S-65S.
Kelly, J. J. (2014). Balancing national security and freedom: Reactions to terrorism and its effect on citizens’ civil liberties, civil rights, and privacy (Master’s thesis, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD). Web.
Subramanian, R., Delaney, R., Roberts, S., Fishman, N., & McGarry, P. (2015). Incarceration’s front door: The misuse of jails in America. Web.