Criminal justice

When warranted, law enforcement agencies or police officers are empowered to use force and other forms of legal coercion and means to effect public and social order.

The word comes from the Latin politia ("civil administration"), which itself derives from the Ancient Greek: πόλις for polis ("city").

[3][4][5] Police are primarily concerned with keeping the peace and enforcing criminal law based on their particular mission and jurisdiction.

[7] Policing has included an array of activities in different contexts, but the predominant ones are concerned with order maintenance and the provision of services.

The judge, or magistrate, is a person, elected or appointed, who is knowledgeable in the law, and whose function is to objectively administer the legal proceedings and offer a final decision to dispose of a case.

It is the prosecutor's duty to explain to the court what crime was committed and to detail what evidence has been found which incriminates the accused.

The accused, not the lawyer, has the right to make final decisions regarding a number of fundamental points, including whether to testify, and to accept a plea offer or demand a jury trial in appropriate cases.

It is the defense attorney's duty to represent the interests of the client, raise procedural and evidentiary issues, and hold the prosecution to its burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

In the U.S., accused people are entitled to a government-paid defense attorney if the individual is in jeopardy of losing life and/or liberty.

In America, this process depends on the state, level of court, and even agreements between the prosecuting and defending parties.

Many nations do not permit the use of plea bargaining, believing that it coerces innocent people to plead guilty in an attempt to avoid a harsh punishment.

Any prejudice on the part of the lawyers, the judge, or jury members threatens to destroy the court's credibility.

The jury process is another area of frequent criticism, as there are few mechanisms to guard against poor judgment or incompetence on the part of the layman jurors.

[11] Manipulations of the court system by defense and prosecution attorneys, law enforcement as well as the defendants have occurred and there have been cases where justice was denied.

Early on, when civilizations lacked the resources necessary to construct and maintain prisons, exile and execution were the primary forms of punishment.

In America, the Quaker movement is commonly credited with establishing the idea that prisons should be used to reform criminals.

Probation and house arrest are also sanctions which seek to limit a person's mobility and his or her opportunities to commit crimes without actually placing them in a prison setting.

Others still have discontinued the practice entirely, accepting the use of execution to be excessively cruel and/or irreversible in case of an erroneous conviction.

A number of new laws and studies focused federal resources on researching new approaches to crime control.

The Civil Rights Era offered significant legal and ethical challenges to the status quo.

In the late 1960s, with the establishment of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) and associated policy changes that resulted with the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968.

Criminal justice degrees are offered at both the two-year community college and four-year university level.

The modern criminal justice system has evolved since ancient times, with new forms of punishment, added rights for offenders and victims, and policing reforms.

Patrick Colquhoun, Henry Fielding and others led significant reforms during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

[23] The development of a modern criminal justice system was contemporary to the formation of the concept of a nation-state, later defined by German sociologist Max Weber as establishing a "monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force", which was exercised in the criminal justice case by the police.

[28][29] Based on the Peelian principles, it promoted the preventive role of police as a deterrent to urban crime and disorder.

[37] The Court of Assizes sits in each of the departments of France and is normally composed of three judges and six jurors, and has jurisdiction over more serious crimes.