implementation of punishment.
If arrested in another country I would prefer that country to be Denmark. Utilizing a descriptive approach, I would want the system to be familiar and therefore reasonably predictable, objective and impartial, and fair in its implementation of punishment. Denmark’s criminal justice system is similar to ours in that has a legislative branch to create laws, police service to enforce those laws, a court system (District Court, High Court, Supreme Court) to determine a defendant’s innocence or guilt, and correctional institutions for the implementation of punishment (The Danish Parliament, n.d.).
Regardless of the structure of the system, in my opinion the most integral and essential elements to a criminal justice system is objectiveness and impartiality. Objectiveness and impartiality are crucial for fairness in judgement and punishment. An alternative way of viewing objectiveness and its importance is through its antonym, corruption. According to Reichel (2018) “At the most basic level, corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. Often the power abused is that attached to a public office that one holds as a result of election or assignment.” The theory and structure of a system is important, but those systems are run by people, and there is potential for fallible people to be entrusted with the responsibility to be objective and impartial within the system. Therefore, the objectiveness and absence of corruption is probably one of the more challenging elements to balance and control, but one of the most vital components. The World justice Project, Rule of Law Index identifies several markers to categories and rank 139 countries criminal justice systems. One of their markers is the absence of corruption, in which Denmark ranks #1 (The United States ranks 23rd) out of the 139 countries (The World Justice Project, 2021).
Ultimately, Denmark ranked #1 and the US ranked # 27 in the overall rule of law, when averaging all of the World Justice Project’s identified markers (The World Justice Project, 2021). Comparative criminal justice between the US and Denmark also has the potential to discover avenues for improvements within the functional elements of the systems. For instance, Denmark’s correctional facilities focus on rehabilitation efforts, including sentencing at treatment facilities, job opportunities while serving sentences, leisure times and leaves from the facilities (Kriminal Forsorgen, 2012). The US correctional facilities do have rehabilitative programs; however, they are a lesser concern compared to the focus on punishment. The Denmark correctional institutions would be a better place to serve a sentence with the opportunities to be involved in the programs available to inmates, as opposed to the strictly the punitive nature of the US system.
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Question # 2
The short answers to if I agree with civilization theorists who suggest that crime declined as civility (e.g., eating with a knife and fork, refraining from urinating in public) increased in a society, is yes. Murder rates have decreased throughout seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries (Reichel, 2018).
Although it may seem counterintuitive to those whose historical perspective has been warped by the twenty-four-hour-news cycle, levels of conflict, both in terms of number and magnitude, have been dropping steadily since the end of the Cold War. A series of empirical analyses done in the United States and Canada have consistently shown that the number of wars of all types—interstate, civil, ethnic, revolutionary, etc. —declined throughout the 1990s and into the new century. The risk for the average person of dying violently at the hands of enemies has never been lower. (Fettweis, 2024).
Therefore, I agree with the theory in that it appears to be correlational, however, I believe the theory is too broad to show causality.
I believe that there is value in examining the relationship between civility ad crime rates, but there is a tremendous challenge in extrapolating critical elements of civility and then determining how they are causal with crime rates. Unfortunately obtaining current affairs from the modern news sources gives the indication that civility is declining, and the crime rates are increasing. However, fortunately, I do not experience those in my everyday life. I live in a medium sized US city and the people that I interact with seem to have similar experiences.
If we are to believe that civility has increased throughout our history and therefore crime has decreased. Then we can deduce that as we continue to evolve, we will continue to become more civilized and therefore continue to reduce crime. Although there are fluctuations from year to year, I believe we will continue to see reductions in crime when looking at the long term.
Reference List:
Fettweis, C. J. (2024). The World is Actually Safer than It Used to Be … And It Keeps Getting Safer. History News Network. https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/the-world-is-actually-safer-than-it-used-to-be-and /
Kriminal Forsorgen, (2012). The Danish Prison and Probation Services – In Brief. prisonstudies.org. https://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/inbrief_updateddec.2012.pdf
Reichel, P. (2018). Comparative criminal justice systems: a topical approach (7th ed.). New York Pearson.
The Danish Parliament (n.d). The Courts of Justice. https://www.thedanishparliament.dk/en/democracy/the-courts-of-justice
The World Justice Project, (2021). Rule of Law Index 2021. https://worldjusticeproject.org/our-work/publications/rule-law-index-reports/world-justice-project-rule-law-index-2021
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