Criminal Justice Research

Criminal Justice System

Introduction

The lawful permanent resident status is referred under the U.S immigration law as an alien who is lawfully accorded the privilege of residing permanently in the U.S.A. A permanent resident has a privilege of being able to reside in the States of employment including self-employment, with the exception of the requirement of U.S. citizenship. The proof of the resident status is the Green card. The card is valid for ten years and then it must be renewed. Unlike a U.S citizen, a permanent resident has no right to vote in U.S. elections or serve on jury duty. Despite the outlined procedures there has been much debate made on the nature of these laws and the requirement that resident cards are proof of identity. The illegal residents at times are smart enough to make an illegal driving licensing, thus the law has to identify such cases. Keeping this debate in view the paper highlights the nature of law in various states and why the department of justice claims the immigrant's laws as being impractical.

The article highlights the models that are used to describe the criminal justice system and accentuates its vanity in satisfactorily reflecting current practices. Roach describes his model as punitive and restorative models. From past forty years, scholars have relied on different models and their variables to determine the functional operation of the criminal justice system. The reason of this dependency is majorly due to the fact that they take into account discretionary powers, but also incorporate the current legal standards (Roach, 1999).

Discussion

A criminal justice system consists of the social and legal institutions that enforce the criminal law in confirmation to the defined procedures, limitations and rules. In the U.S, there are separate state, military and federal criminal justice systems. Each of the states has separate systems for juveniles and adults. This system also consist of subsystems which comprises of either one or more of the public institutions and their staff members which include police and agencies responsible for enforcing laws. The responsibility even lies on appellate and trial courts, public and prosecution defender offices; parole and probation agencies; custodial institutions and departments responsible for all the functions (Tony et al, 1999). The key players of a criminal justice system comprises of both private and public actors such as private defense attorneys, bail bondsmen, defendants, private agencies who offers supervision, treatment or assistance to the criminals. It also provides assistance to the victims and officials that represent or assist the offenders. There are few agencies whose work includes the enforcement of the criminal law, for example, driver and bureaus for vehicle licensing; agencies responsible for allotting the taxation and the resources.

Criminal justice system is the state's legal apparatus for the use of public penal power. In brief, the criminal justice system is considered as the subsystem of the overall legal system of the state that is concerned with crime and punishment. The purpose of the criminal justice system is to secure social order on ...