What happens after someone is arrested under the charge of any felony or misdemeanor? Is that just the end of it or does something happen to these people. Like I said in early blogs a cop charges you with a said crime but you are never actually convicted and label a criminal until after you attend court and a judge rules you as such. Everybody looks at the people who are arrested and taken in by the police officers and goes that is a criminal and end of story but there is a complete system to govern the criminal justice system. Besides the police there is the courts and then the corrections part of it. Police are just the ones you make and arrest and start the criminal justice process. The most strenuous part of the criminal justice system is the courts process because that is where the hearings and charges are formally presented and a person’s guilt or innocence is determined and if the person is guilty then they would receive the corresponding penalty for their actions. Then what follows is the corrections part of the system which is parole, jail, prison, capital punishment, and everything in between there. These is where the guilt persons pay their debt to society and hopefully get reformed by their time in prison or various other punishments for their actions.
Most people who are charged with a crime by the police end up going through the courts process but the court process was made to help filter out minor crimes, those you plead guilty and take a plea, or crimes that don’t have enough evidence to prove guilt. Think of it as a kind of funnel that as you get closer and closer to the final steps of the courts process less and less people charged with a crime complete it and get sentence by a jury. And the part that most people forget is that the charges that the cop places on a person way not be the charges that the person is presented with by the prosecutor because the prosecutor is the one who makes the final charges. So most the time half the charges that a person is presented with by a cop are dropped if the prosecutor doesn’t believe they are necessary or prevalent. And it is in this part of the criminal justice system that a person is granted there fifth and sixth amendment right with is a right to counsel and a fair trial by their peers.
The last part of the system is corrections. The part that handles all of those who have been proven guilty and are a harm to society. The job of this part is to help return these people to society with a redeemed statues and the idea to never commit crime. That is why certain crimes depending on the degree or seriousness have certain mandated federal minimum sentencing. There isn’t much to corrections that most people don’t know or haven’t heard of.
In the end this is the process that the people go through when they are charged with a crime by the police. And at any point a person can be removed from the system as quickly as they were put in if new information comes out or a person in proven innocent during the court process. There is a whole complicated process that many people over look but this is just a brief over look of the criminal justice system. Do you believe in the system? Is it what you thought it was? Do you want to change the system and if so what do you think should change in your opinion?
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