Criminal Justice Trends

Criminal Justice Trends

There were a lot of directional and functional alterations in the American corrections during the last sixty years. These changes had occurred mainly as a result of trends. Starting from mid 1950s, socially inspired efforts had resulted into trends like the rehabilitation period of American corrections, creating different justice system for the minors, treatment-oriented ideas to reduce crime, community-based options to imprisonment, programs in which a criminal is conditionally released from jail for a trial period and legislative activity which increasingly supports public views. The transference of correctional services has been changed by some programmatic reactions to these trends. Some of these changes had troublesome effects on the criminal justice system. The future of the criminal justice system depends on the budgetary, routine, managerial and functional reactions to the current issues of it. Hence, the desired future of American criminal justice system should be reflected by the adjustments to the corrections (Champion, 2007).

Correction trends of the past

In the history of American corrections, the 60s were busy and momentous. The development of a different justice system for the juveniles was a very important event in the imminent correction trends. Organizations providing different options for imprisonment start appearing in the private sector with the base in juvenile justice methods. Such plans concentrate on therapy and care rather than punishment (Champion, 2007).

Rehabilitation is comparatively a new idea (Foster, 2006, p. 372). American corrections did not include Social works and behavioral sciences until 1950. According to many specialists, the juvenile court created a path for the rehabilitative methods in corrections in order to supervise the youths in danger. The habit of supervising children, who found guilty of an offense, set the platform for different types of imprisonment programs such as probation and parole programs. The rehabilitation practices in adult prisons became common especially after Second World War. This marks the beginning of rehabilitation era. During the next twenty years, corrections has adopted new inventive principles and executed programs which significantly changed the life of many prisoners. Self-improvement and amusement are among those principles and programs. Prisoners got opportunities to improve themselves by the programs which provide treatment, educational training and chances to join some religious groups. The principle of recreation supports the opportunity to read and write, to explore arts, to participate in sports and to engage in other relaxing activities. Despite of the fact that, these new principles and programs of corrections were very effective and helpful in improving the prisoners, the rehabilitation era came to an end in the mid of 1970s (Foster, 2006).

Many government insane asylums had been closed during the period 1960 to 1970 because the societies thought that the asylums could not work properly, and hence many ex-mental patients became prisoners. The general public thought that imprisonment was the best way of isolating the mentally ill people from the society. Imprisonment of both criminals and mental patients had resulted into large increase in the number of prisons and jails during the next 30 years (Hooks, Mosher, Rotolo & Lobao, 2004).

In 1990s the people started claiming for political representation for powerful positions concerning the criminal justice system. Earlier the public held positions concerning crime and punishment, but still they did not pressurize the politicians to impose more cruel and rough punishments. The public wanted the justice system to be more effective in controlling criminals. The criminal justice system and the legislation of imprisonment had changed according to the public demand (Carlson, 1998).

During the period 1980 to 2009, the number of adults in the correctional population was increased by an amount 5,385,400. Figure 1 shows the results of the correctional population survey analyses conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2010.

Figure 1: The Adult Correctional Population

Year

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2009 Probation

1,118,097

1,968,712

2,670,234

3,077,861

3,826,209

4,166,757

4,203,967 Jail

182,288

254,986

403,019

499,300

613,534

740,770

760,400 Prison

319,598

487,593

743,382

1,078,542

1,316,333

1,448,344

1,524,513 Parole

220,438

300,203

531,407

679,421

723,898

780,616

819,308 Total

1,840,400

3,011,500

4,348,000

5,335,100

6,437,400

7,045,100

7,225,800

The above table includes the populations of adult transgressors sentenced to both state and federal correction programs. If during the time of the survey, juveniles were "kept in adult places in the six states which run the integrated jail-prison systems" then the adult correctional population figures may not be totally accurate (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010).

Current Corrections Trends

Nowadays also the criminal justice system is mainly affected by the public opinion. Public continues to demand for more inflicting punishment for all type of criminals. Since many parents wanted some