Free Research Paper On Flaws In The Criminal Justice System: Corruption

Over the course of time, there has been a general agreement among scholars and experts that the American Criminal justice system is hugely flawed. Although it is said to be the fairest and the most-justice oriented in the world, a thorough investigation and look into this system reveals a massive rot. There are several flaws that are identifiable in this system with the most prevailing one being racial discrimination. Data and statistics on issues such as criminal convictions and incarceration show that the system has not been fair to members from minority communities and consequently the system has been accused of being discriminative against minority communities, for example, by being quick to pass the guilty verdict and also giving harsher punishments to offenders from these minority groups (Neubauer, David, and Henry Fradella. 45). This is not, however, the only flaw that the criminal justice system has also been exhibiting. Corruption is the other major flaw affecting the criminal justice system.
Corruption seems to have proliferated across various departments of the criminal justice field including the police and the courts (Glaeser, Edward and Raven 1056). The police are particular notorious for perpetuating corruption. Cases are heard of officers receiving bribes from suspects so as not to arrest them. This includes drug dealers where drug kingpins buy out entire police department so that they can be allowed to continue with their drug selling within a certain precinct without the fear of being arrested. In other occasions, the police use the power and authority vested in them in order to extort money from the public or even obtain favors from public members with the threat of arrest (Glaeser, Edward and Raven 1060). There have also been cases of police being bribed to commit atrocious acts such as arresting innocent persons or even killing. Obviously, the police are meant to serve the interest of society and when they fail to do this and start receiving bribes to alert the course of justice then, they are not fulfilling their roles and should be disbanded (Fijnaut, Cyrille, and Huberts 81).
The court system has also been infused with a lot of corruption in recent days. Although most judges still reserve their honesty and total dedication to the stipulations of the constitutions, cases of judges being influenced in monetary terms to pass certain types of judgments are too common. The situation is even worse with lawyers and prosecuting attorneys. The prosecution is one of the most important persons in nearly all legal proceedings and depending on his or her argument, it translates into the imprisonment of offenders or their release. Therefore, prosecutors always seem to be bribery favorite from many who would like to escape the clenches of justice (Fijnaut, Cyrille, and Huberts 78). Prosecutors are being bribed left, right and center to present weak arguments that can exonerate specific offenders. This is obviously very sickening and worrying.
Corruption has also been thriving in prisons and correctional centers. There are stories of prisoners and guards running multimillion dollar businesses from and within prisons. For example, a drug lord may bribe prison guards to allow him to distribute drugs to the rest of prisoners or even worse still, plan an escape.
Corruption in the criminal justice system is very rife even today. If this vice is not curbed immediately and if strategies to completely eliminate corruption in the law enforcement are not put up, the future of the nation does not look so bright. Criminals will no longer have any worries about this system, and they will continue wreaking havoc on the rest of society members know that they can easily get evade arrest and conviction by using bribes.

Works Cited

Fijnaut, Cyrille, and Leo W. Huberts, eds. Corruption, integrity and law enforcement. Dordrecht: Kluwer law international, 2002.
Glaeser, Edward L., and Raven E. Saks. "Corruption in America." Journal of Public Economics 90.6 (2006): 1053-1072
Neubauer, David, and Henry Fradella. America's courts and the criminal justice system. Cengage Learning, 2013.
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