Criminal Justice Assignment Sample

Introduction of Criminal Justice Assignment

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Increase in the Ill-Treatment of Civilians and Murder by State

It has always been a game of government power that has challenged the potential of states. To prove the potential of a state, it is evident that the states have implemented targeted murders and processed ill-treatment to civilians. The aspect of increased murder and ill-treatment has increased in the 20th century just after the end of World War 2 and the advancement of the Cold War. It has always been the cause of wars that have provided the states with infinite power to take up such ruthless decisions (Bridges, 2019). It is the implementation of conglomeration amongst governments that have pushed them to take up such harsh decisions. The advent of mass-murdering humans by the government and pertaining ill-treatment towards the citizens is known as Democide.

It is with the increase in power of the government along with collaborations and backing from other governments that the elites of the groups perform their whims. It has been observed that the more constrained power of the government, the more it is checked on proceedings towards the negative aspect of fulfilling the whims of the elite. It has been observed that the totalitarian communist government present in the mid-European region believed in those types of Democide events. The proceedings have been between 1900 and 1987, it has been studied that the quasi-states and the stateless groups have covered a mass democide of around 170,000,000 people (Bledsoe and Wright, 2019). It can be said that in the case of stable democracies in the 19th century there have been no military actions amongst the governments. Although mass murders and democides have occurred amongst non-democracies, these stateless governments are the ones that have implicated such acts.

Focusing on the reason behind the democide, it can be said that the diversity in the aspects of ethnicity, racialism, religious diversity, and economic development is the root cause. They have transformed the issue into non-collaborative factors that have impacted the educational level of the individuals and the cultural differences (Evans et al. 2021). This has led to differential politics on the face of the governmental organizations that have resulted in the ill-treatment. The governments have transformed a form of anarchy within the governmental system in which the leader practised their chores. Any recessive movement against the government has led to opposition of the government and the actions to embellish the citizens have led to ill-treatment and cold governmental murders (Johnson and Fernquest, 2018). It has been observed that most of the murders have been political murders that have been implemented by the government in the form of genocide. It is the aspect of the genocide that has saved the government by providing issues of the social, cultural, and ecliptic issues of the people against the government.

Emphasizing the aspect of how the government has implemented such ruthless activity based on caste, creed, and religion. It can be said that the belligerence of unstained power is the root cause of the action and the aspect of democracy has been kept to implement a shield of prudence. It has been observed that if one of the democracies has relied on the reluctance of exponential power distribution it is important to understand that its execution happened on the lower and middle classes of the society (Khan et al. 2018). The government has been able to do so because there has been no impact of a universal body that could monitor the governments of the era. It has always been the fact that the governments have practised anarchy in the name of democracy to carry out their whims. Greed has also been an intricate factor that has changed the mentality of the government to sacrifice their citizens and use them as resources of the government.

Application of Cohen’s Theory for Better Understanding of Major State Crimes

State crimes are mainly highly affecting crimes that revolve around the youth of the states. It is the youth of the states that take up aggressive decisions for the root cause of an inexplicable motive. It is the process of implementing negative ideologies positively so that eloquence is entertained in the nativeness of their ideologies (Drew, 2020). According to the theory of Cohen, it can be said that any ki9nbd of major state crime is the consequence of union with the youth of the state. It is their involvement in subcultures that result in the domination of deviant culture and moral values. Although the above-mentioned statement is ergonomical towards the movement of the youth, the final aspect that drives them towards ruthless crimes is the aspect of eloquent frustration.

The aspect of frustration transforms their views from society towards the anti-social indentation of the government. This leads to a major effect on the youth of the nation that transforms them to implement terrorism on the fact of the deviated motive. It is the fact that they are blinded by the motive and do not give the effort to understand the opposite side of the story. In many practical cases, it has been observed that the youth of the state fight against the anarchy form of the government by the adoption of unethical methods that harm common humans (Schoultz and Flyghed, 2020). Cohen also blemishes on the fact that the rest of the major state crimes have their cause in the process of denials towards a specific group of individuals. It is the denial of basic amenities and the ill-treatment that has been going on against them over a long time that has transformed them to fight for ethical freedom. Cohen helps understand that the criminals acting against the state have been the results of the actions of the government towards specific people based on their religion, caste, and ethnicity (Hewitt et al. 2018). It is the detrimental carry away of the freedom of those communities that have transformed them, to achieve criminality for freedom. The process also boldly states against the government that the state criminals are legitimate to the actions of the government and are a result of the same.

It has been ideally subjected that the community youth that has taken up weapons to carry out state crimes are the ones that have been denied by the government and also devoid of their birthrights by other supreme individuals. The African slaves present in Europe, fall under this category and their fight has always been against the British Government. Another similar aspect that has been a major issue in the 20th century has been the effect of Israel. In this case, the Palestinians have been subjected to multiple crimes over a decade by the Israelis. The studies say that there have been over 7 million Palestinian victims that have been facing issues over a long time (Clancy et al. 2022). It is this effect of this victimization that the Palestinians have been bound to carry out weapons against the Israelis to pertain to their respective self needs. There has been the aspect of unlawful killings, restrictions of movement freedom based on nationality, forced displacement, and discrimination based on in-humanity. The aspect of state crimes has always been the wrong use of power to deprive a community of its basic rights. It is with the advent of this discrimination that the solitude of togetherness amongst human beings is hampered and the youth of the nation take up weapons to fight for their freedom.

Implementation of Colonialism

State crimes are associated with the inability of the state to provide adequate safeguards to its subjects to not adopt criminal activities. In the 20th century, due to colonialism, the state was not accountable to the people resulting in non-transferability of the state activities. This conspicuous approach of the state creates anxiety and a threat to the people of the country. This escalated further criminality among the people of the colonised state. The same implication was noted in the 21st century. Various pieces of literature depicted that the 20th century was the initiation of criminal activity among the people and the 21st was the consolidation of the same (Kurlychek and Johnson, 2019). According to Norman Lowe, criminality is the consequence of the inability of the state to perform its duty to welfare its subjects. This criminality of the state can be mapped into various segments such as economic exploitation, political restriction for representation in the law-making bodies, various natural calamities and state killing of the innocent people of the colonised state. In the following, these segregate have been described.

Now, consider the economic aspects that implicate state crimes. Here, due to different kinds of economic burdens imposed by the ruling entities. Ruled people were unable to trade in independence and the ruling state-provided permission to it (Kovera, 2019). For example, the merchant class of China, which was a colony of the UK, has to take special references or acceptance from the ruling authority to trade tea with India. Other than that, they are also compelled to pay different kinds of non-ethical charges. For instance, in Egypt, people have to pay transportation fees to the security provider called the British navy, despite the Suez canal being under the Egyptians (Završnik, 2020). These non-just and non-ethical economic aspects compelled the people to adopt criminal means to acquire their justifiable rights from the colonisers.

Colonised people were restricted to represent their claims in the law-making bodies of the colonised state. This restriction along with the consciousness of rights learned from the western states, created a sense of oppression under the colonisers. This creates mass movement by those likeminded people who uphold their basic rights above their lives. Taking an example in this regard such as in India, China, Vietnam and other colonies of the British, people were organising rallies, picketing, boycotting foreign goods and others (Bright et al. 2021). These peaceful means of protest against the foreign rule sometimes take the form of non-peaceful movements. Methods of these movements were killing the officials, official revenues, robbing the high class who were supporting the colonisers. These non-peaceful aspects of the protest can be pronounced as state implicated crimes.

Natural calamities such as drought and flooding created several famines in the colonised period. In those circumstances, in some areas colonisers prompted timely measures to counter the natural hazard and in some places, colonisers did not respond to such natural challenges at all. Therefore, a sense of disrespect to the coloniser has been engendered among the people of the ruled state. This disrespect was sometimes reflected in the criminal acts among the people (Nowotny et al. 2020). They started vengeance on their assumed officials accused of not maintaining prompt action for corrective measures. This creates a class of criminals who were trained in different kinds of lethal weapons which can be used against the oppressive colonisers. Apart from that, the killing of innocent people in the name of restricting crimes also impacted the people of that time. These killings of officials were in the name of official measures for checking rising criminal activities among the subjects. All these can be considered as the implication of 20th and 21st-century state implicated crimes.

Critical discussion of modern criminal justice systems

The modern criminal justice system includes a set of processes that vary from one nation to another. Some general steps of the modern criminal justice system are law enforcement, prosecution, defence, the court system and corrections. The first step is controlled and maintained by the agency called police, military, economic enforcement agencies, and intelligence agencies. These agencies are responsible for the primary reflection of the crimes and also responsible to identify the perpetrator. They are then framed by the perpetrators on various laws which have been broken by him and brought to the prosecution (Završnik, 2021). After the initial enquiry has been made by the law enforcement agencies, the next is to handover the case credentials to the prosecutors. This step is of utmost importance as the whole justice delivery system is based on the consideration of the charges that are constructed by the enforcement agency and then argued in the court by the state prosecutor. They are the eyes and hands of the enforcement agencies in the court. All the enquiries done by the enforcement agencies have to be represented in the court by the public prosecutor only. No other person can be entertained by the court unless they or those are essential witnesses or evidence respectively (Rappaport, 2020). Therefore, adequate comprehension of the case and the evidence herein can punish or exonerate the accused. It should be noted here, the modern justice system is not only time consuming but also negatively impacts the confidence of the people in the justice delivery system of the country. Bribery, corruption and inappropriate representation of the cases due to the shirk of the public prosecutor are some of the elements due to which people generally hesitate to go to court.

The modern criminal justice system also includes defence lawyers who represent the accused in court. The objective and primary duty of the defence lawyer is to exonerate the client by presenting counterarguments to the state prosecutor. This lawyer crossed checked all the witnesses and evidence of the public prosecutor before the judge and strove to prove that some or all the evidence and witnesses are false and must reject while delivering the judgment (Wolfe and Lawson, 2020). This way, defence lawyers either help reduce the sentence or fine incurred on the client or exonerate the client completely. Therefore, the role of a defence lawyer is also taken into the consideration by both the enforcement agencies and public prosecutors. The next step is the court where all the arguments, deeds, evidence and witness has to be presented. Similarly, defence lawyers also counter the above elements before the court after or simultaneously with the public prosecutor. This way, the court gets adequate exposure to the case and related arguments. After evaluating all the credentials related to the case in the light of modern jurisprudence, laws and existing verdicts or case laws, the judge announces the judgment.

After the judgment has been passed, a system of correction is also a step of the modern criminal justice system. This is because any judgment can be biased with the subjectivity of the judge and therefore, allow adequate room for appealing to other courts or sessions under another judge (Hetey and Eberhardt, 2018). If the same judgment is upheld, then there are no other options for the accused but to face punishment or a fine. All these aspects of the modern criminal justice system were either missing or inadequate during the colonial era. People of the colony did not get adequate safeguards of the law or courts. The legal protection called habeas corpus was missing which is considered as the basic human right. Other than that, laws passed in the colonial states also did not reflect the aspiration of the people of that country (Winkelman et al. 2018). Due to pervasive poverty resulting from the economic exploitation of the ruled people, they were unable to pay the court fees and defend themselves by subscribing to a lawyer. Therefore, the criminal justice system of the colonial period was inadequate to ensure justice for the ruled subjects.

References

Journals

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