Criminology

Criminal justice is broadly about efforts to prevent crime but at a tertiary-level. In an event that crime has happened, the criminal has to be identified, proved guilty, taken in for correction and released back to the society. The direct approach is therefore seen through deterrence, incapacitation and rehabilitation while the system acts indirectly through effects on social norms. This is in effect a possible way to make the person who committed the crime to avoid repeating the act as a result of punishment and education through the correction process.

While considering the level of crime and violence in the society, there are repeated cases as well as new incidences. Criminal justice generally aims at reducing future incidences by properly dealing with the current ones. Therefore, if a new case emerges, there is always that process to follow in the cycle before the system can be confident to have avoided a repetition. This means that if there are many new cases of different people committing a crime of violence, the system cannot have been effective at preventing them. The crime in the society is however composed of a majority of culprits who have been dealt with before. This indicates two things. First, jails and prisons dont seem to be working out on their own. The fact that many of the released prisoners get back to jail having committed the same or a different crime indicates the failure of correction within the jailprison subsystem of the criminal justice system. There are many factors that could contribute to this result. The prisoners are locked collectively in the same facilities having committed different crimes and on sharing prison life they worsen each others situation by exchanging thoughts and criminal characters. They influence each other negatively leading to crime life training instead of correction. Then there is the poor prison and jail conditions the sometimes lead to ill health and death. The cruelty portrayed by these conditions make the prisoners to feel distant from the society by figuring out that bad things are what it has to offer and therefore feel completely rejected. This makes their mentality to turn on pessimism and further embrace crime and violence. The system therefore requires some backing up from rehabilitation, education and skillful training so that the prisoners can be released with some skills to earn a living from.  Secondly, it is not obvious that all the culprits who get arrested share a common response to the correction system. Some may change while others may just lay low in order to be released from prison, and then go back to their crime life after release. There is no perfect way of determining which of the prisoners have changed and which ones are in the pretence for release.

There are various ways proposed in reducing crimes through corrections, through community restraints or a combination of both correction and monitoring in the society. These methods in criminal justice systems aim to reduce crime in a long term basis by applying strategies that will with time make people aware of the generally acceptable norms or society standards. Prevention therefore cannot be seen as a direct approach from such an angle. It is by the involvement of the system in the ex-prisoners lives in the society that is supposed to show other members of the society that once someone committed crime, complete freedom in hisher life becomes debatable. This can create awareness and possibly reduce crime and violence from new members of the society.   People have different views when it comes to the issue of corrections. Some argue that criminals cause trouble in the society so just clogging them in jail is good enough to keep peace . Others have the perspective that criminals become violent in the society under their clear rationale and they therefore deserve proper punishment, so keeping them away for sometime is not good enough.

In the essence of protection for the people, the police department has in many cases made efforts to curb crime. From the installation of new technological devices like private CCTV systems in residential areas and police monitoring cameras in the streets to police patrols, the efforts have been enormous (Kriel Julius). But even the police department agrees that the presence of the police in the society is not an effort enough to prevent violence and crime from happening. The system cannot be completely accurate in monitoring and estimating chances for violence. The whole scenario in preventive methods for crime and violence control is purely probabilistic and cannot be completely relied upon. It calls for the system to deal only with the problems related probabilistically to the problem at hand, that is, violence. In the long run, the probabilistic estimations may not be correct and could turn out ineffective. In this sense therefore, the reactive method of dealing with and preventing crime and violence proves to be more important. It deals with a determined factor that is directly connected with the problem. For example, the community monitoring of an ex-prisoner directly targets a person already proven to be violent by his violent act that led to his arrest (Welsh and Farrington, 2005). The way that criminal justice handles crime after some incidences have already happened is somehow controlled by the need for evidence in order to act. Without violence incidences, there is no way of knowing they would occur and planning on preventive measures.

In an inclusive analysis, it is important to also notice that even though the various subsets of the criminal justice system act to capacity to try and chip in to the efforts of crime and violence prevention-even when violence incidences are presumed to happen-hindrances are there for the rescue to act on time. Sometimes there can be so many places that are hot spots for violence and the system cannot, in terms of resources, manage to deploy services for prevention and protection of the people. The police department cannot have enough policemen among other resources to monitor and guard all homes that are prone to crime and violence. This calls for a combination of the various departments each doing their best in prevention and their collaborative efforts geared towards strategies for the tertiary preventive measures.

The Criminal justice system offers the right package of avoiding the repetition of a crime. If the aims of the Criminal justice system are successfully achieved with respect to an individual, then we can be sure that we can limit the effects due to that one person to one action in hisher criminal life . Well, by doing this, the level of crime in the society can be put down to a limit that is somehow acceptable, based on the fact that most crimes are committed by secondary offenders and the cases of new offenders are very limited. It is also logical to emphasize that this correction methods and process can only be applied once a crime has been committed. This is an overall limitation that cannot be avoided when following the law and other social-political ideologies that govern the society (Moore et al, 2002). No one can be convicted of the possibility of committing a crime that he has no association with. There is also no way of foretelling that a person is likely to commit a crime he has not yet committed.

In the current times though, the police department has been on the move to indulge in a new way that might help actually prevent crime before it happens. This is presented in the idea of community policing (Moore, 1993). This idea seeks to make use of police officers in helping the society mobilize their own capacities of self defense to deal with violent attacks in order to reduce the opportunities of vulnerability. There is also the problem solving policing idea that aims at establishing hotspots of violence to quicken response by having standby prior arrangements for police support. This idea do not advocate for arrest and trial but eliminating the conditions necessary for crime and violence to happen. Although this might not work in a full swing due to other factors like the willingness, availability and capacity of the members of the society to execute defense actions, it is an effort worth trial for the future of violence and crime prevention.

Conclusion
One of the major mandates of the criminal justice system is to protect the society from crime and violence as part of crime prevention and reduction. The way that the system does this has been questioned and criticized over time. Lots of improvements have been seen in the past in various departments, like the police have undergone transformation through embracing of new technology and strategies of dealing with violence in the society (Kriel Julius). The debate on whether the efforts are effective is largely influenced by the facts of level of crime in the society. This is lacking in the sense that there have been numerous changes in the society itself leading to new requirement for change in the mandate, scope and methods of the service by the criminal justice system to society.

This paper establishes the varying angles from which the question of whether the criminal justice system can effectively prevent crime can be viewed and the direction of its importance or effectiveness evaluated. So far, the system has been limited by various factors and its success depends on the mandate defined for it. In the sense of preventing crime at the tertiary-level, the system has done a lot and the future of on the spot crime prevention has been proposed from the police department new ideas. If the community embraces the new ideas and the police keep up the use of technology helped by a positive development in culture and economy, the future of less violence through the criminal justice system is anticipated.