Cold-case reopening
Cold-case teams have been mandated with reopening fresh investigations of crimes that happened many years ago. Some of these offenses have utilized the opportunities enabled by DNA know-how to pursue the cases. Hughes and Jonas (2015) assert that time may have an impact on the cold-case investigation appropriateness since, as time passes, the possibility of the perpetrators being alive is minimal. Similarly, if the physical evidence of the crime is still available, forensic technology can be applied to identify the offenders and bring them to justice. Considering the years back since the crime occurred, over time, costs incurred in investigations can be affected. According to Hughes and Jonas (2015), such costs are financial costs provided by the state and suspects, opportunity costs, and personal costs imposed on suspects, victims, and their families.
Goals of the Criminal Justice System
In normal circumstances, a criminal justice system is mandated to respond to a criminal offense by performing investigations to bring perpetrators to justice. The criminal justice system then convicts the suspects into account according to the laws and reaches their verdict (Hughes & Jonas, 2015). Therefore, the responsibility of the criminal justice system is confined to punishing, rehabilitating, treating, or releasing convicts or the incarcerated, according to the verdict issued. According to Hughes and Jonas (2015), one of the primary goals of a criminal justice system is a punishment which is the endpoint through which other operations are directed to. The increment of public safety is another goal of the criminal justice system, as Hughes and Jonas (2015) assert. This ensures a sense of security for the victims and society as a whole, and psychological gratification is ensured. Another goal is the communication of social attitudes, eventually leading to crime reduction and expressing society’s disapproval of wrongdoings.
The Contribution of Criminal Investigation to the Goals of Criminal Justice
The criminal investigations should be able to produce a suspect who can be prosecuted and adequate evidence for the conviction of the perpetrator. Therefore, Hughes & Jonas (2015) mentions three objectives of criminal investigations determining whether an offense has been committed, the nature of the offense, and whether the collected evidence can lead to identifying the offender and the extent of their offense. The moral obligation of criminal investigations is determined where they go to completion, that is, leads to conviction and incarceration of the offender. One of the goals that require the criminal investigation to undergo completion, according to Hughes and Jonas (2015), is retribution, where the verdict is to be issued for an offender’s wrongdoing. Retribution warrants that sufficient evidence is gathered so as to determine the nature of the crime done, identify the person involved, and the degree of criminal responsibility. Another goal that needs the completion of a criminal investigation is when public safety needs to be secured through the containment of the perpetrator. In this case, the perpetrator is seen as dangerous. Hence, an investigation must lead to convicting the offender. Consequently, criminal investigations lead to a direct and indirect contribution to meeting the goals of the criminal justice system.
The Justifiability of Cold-case Investigations
As time passes, the achievability of cold-case investigations through the criminal justice system is affected by a range of factors. Some of these factors are the weight of the crime at that time may affect the changes that have been made concerning social attitudes and verdicts about the seriousness of the offense (Hughes & Jonas, 2015). Similarly, another factor is on time and evidence whereby, according to Hughes and Jonas (2015), the quality of evidence is bound to diminish as time passes. In that, physical evidence can degrade, memories become less viable, and witnesses can be hard to locate. Hughes and Jonas (2015) mention another factor, time and death, were the offender may have aged or died as time passed hence, preventing further investigations from being done. Time and society are other factors that assert that the offender may no longer be a threat to public safety and the expressive value lost.
Time and evidence
When an investigation is left unsolved for several years, the time during which the case was temporarily closed may lead to success or failure in resolving the criminal offense. I agree with the general findings of the article by Hughes and Jonas (2015) since, with time, the quality and availability of evidence may have been tampered with or lost. On the same note, the perpetrators, with time, may have greatly aged, died, or changing of their psychological state. Thereby they are even no longer a threat to the public. Therefore, further investigation may be altered, eventually proving hard to bring the offender to face the law. Similarly, the originally upheld social attitudes may have eroded with time, sometimes lowering the weight of the offense committed a long time ago. The victims may have obtained closure with time hence, would no longer wish to reopen the criminal investigation. A major limitation of the study is that there are no clear narrowed objectives of the study or which approach was used to gather the information presented.
From the information obtained about reinvestigations of cold cases, to ensure the victims get justice, the criminal justice system can be encouraged to reopen the cases whenever new evidence is obtained. Forensic science techniques can also be applied to obtain more information about the perpetrators and convict them. The prospect that the offender may have transformed and hence, no longer be a threat to the victim or society should be ruled out as a justifying factor for halting the investigation.
Studying ethics in criminal justice is essential in several ways. Ethics helps discern what are considered wrongdoings or offenses and which are the acceptable punishments for the perpetrators. Upholding ethics in the criminal justice system enables society to report and reduce criminal activities as well as cooperate with criminal investigations. The evidence from witnesses or suspects will be obtained through non-threatening and non-biased means, and the verdict by the attorneys will follow the professional code of conduct. Studying ethics helps in decision-making as law enforcers are considered guardians of public interests. Policymaking as well needs ethical knowledge due to the protection of the constitution.
Reference
Hughes, J. A., & Jonas, M. (2015). Time and Crime: Which cold-case investigations should be reheated? Criminal Justice Ethics, 34(1), 18-41.