Travis J. Maciejewski, Reforming Justice

Reforming Justice

by Travis J. Maciejewski The laws in the United States rely solely on the people and the government to work in unison for everyone to receive equal treatment in the justice systems. To start the process, the government hires and trains police officers and judges to enforce the statutes created within each state. What happens when the laws are not equally enforced from case to case? This creates disparity and allows officers to handle situations on their own terms and implement their own solutions that may not always follow protocol. In last the few years, more and more reports of crooked police officers have been exposed and reported to the media. Then, judges are supposed to dole out fines and prison sentences based on severity, but that is not always the case. Most of the time, the inconsistencies root from improper training and prejudice. The justice system in the United States needs reforming because of police corruption, sentencing discrepancies, and lack of training justice system employees properly. Police receive the authority to enforce the law as soon they are awarded their badge. Their job entails protecting and serving the citizens of the nation. They play a crucial role in keeping the United States under control from crime running rampant through the streets. Although, in any group, abuse of power and corruption always occurs. A prime example of this problem is often portrayed as racial bias towards certain minority groups. Umsted (2014) reported that, “police officers— and prosecutors— can, and frequently do, use their discretionary powers in a racially selective manner. Because the criminal justice system currently provides little institutional protection against discriminatory exercise of police and prosecutorial discretion.” Police possess the discretionary power to decide whether they will use ethics and uphold the law when reporting incidents. Many times, African Americans fall victim to their discretionary power. A plethora of studies were conducted to observe the behavior of law enforcement while they patrolled. Worden and McLean (2017) concluded that police officers displayed less corruption when the citizens comply with their commands. The research explained that officers are more likely to handle a situation less ethically if the citizen is intoxicated or mentally unstable. There were also many correlations of police officers treating African Americans unfairly compared to other races (Worden and McLean, 2017). Racism may be one of the roots that police misconduct stems from. For mistreatment to cease, police departments need to watch their officers carefully for how they handle routine encounters with citizens. Next, a common issue in the court system occurs with sentencing discrepancies between races for committing similar crimes. The laws in the United States seem black and white; consequences are issued if one commits a crime. But as always, grey area between right and wrong appears when the justice system fails to enforce the law equally at every instance. Umsted (2014) revealed “that African Americans were nearly four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than White Americans despite virtually equal marijuana usage between the two races.” In most cases, racial profiling appears to be prominent in drug related crimes. Police recognize the patterns between drug use among the population, but they choose to drastically chastise African Americans more. The court systems are the crucial deciding factor for the final sentencing of criminals. Their job entails examining all the evidence and determining an appropriate consequence for the wrongdoing. Rehavi & Starr (2014) revealed that black male defendants receive up to three and a half more years of prison than a white male defendant for committing the exact same

crime. In some cases, judges have been found to be racially biased in the court room. This prejudice transcends to African Americans receiving a higher rate of incarceration among the entire nation. White Americans will almost always receive a lesser sentence compared to black Americans. This statistic is frightening because the courts focus mainly on stopping black crimes instead of stopping crime altogether. Although there appears to be no clear solution on how to eliminate this statistic unless a large reform is conducted within our justice system. For everyone to receive equal treatment in the eyes of the law, the government needs to implement more in-depth training for the justice system employees and make it standard for the entire nation. It is clear to say that lawyers understand the laws better than police officers. Police attend training for the average of two years and lawyers study the law for the average of seven years. Police are expected to know all the laws they are supposed to enforce in a third of the amount of time. They also receive training on how to handle common situations they might experience while on the job. Two years of training may not cover all the necessary material considering the amount of misconduct, violence, and corruptness surfacing in recent times related to law enforcement. Longer training for law enforcement would be beneficial to themselves to keep them safe and as well as to keep everyone else safe. Reform seems inevitable if the nation wishes to have equality across the justice system. Simmons (2008) warned that “the culture of police violence is tightly woven into the institutional fabric of the police organization itself. Therefore, police reform efforts should address not only the conduct of individual police officers but should also address systemic problems within police departments that contribute to police misconduct.” Police departments across the United States need to be surveyed from an outside source to record any misconduct preformed while officers are on duty. The research will be beneficial to the nation because it will help determine the root cause for the misconduct. Other countries around the world have experienced these issues and corrected them with minimal obstacles. Ekker (2016) reported that Sweden and Norway have conducted successful reform on retraining their emergency service personal and law enforcement. Their government utilized online web tools to better train their workers to become more engaged and clearly understand their responsibilities (Ekker 2016). The United States should look to other nations for guidance on how to begin to solve their problems with injustice. To start the reform, they need to increase the salary of police officers. It may draw in more possible recruits to join the force. As of now, officers make a comparable wage to schoolteachers. A higher salary might balance out the workload and stress that occurs while on the job. Police officers should be required to study their duties for at least four years before they can start their career. Their training should consist of real-life simulations of situations that are most seen while on patrol. Then the trainees should observe a full-time officer to learn how the knowledge from the classroom is applied to the real world. This would greatly improve the competency of most police because they participated in extensive in-depth training. In the big picture, there are a lot more caring and courageous police officers employed in the United States than there are corrupt ones. It appears the media only highlights misconduct and bad behavior observed by the public. This can create a biased opinion and lead society to believe that police are untrustworthy, and they only create trouble for others. In reality, police can be trusted to handle and appropriately respond to high stress situations. More praise should be awarded to the officers that put themselves in harms way to secure the safety of others.

The United States needs to reform their justice system polices because of police corruption, sentencing disparities, and lack of adequate training for justice system employees. The government does their best to keep citizens happy and free. In recent times, that may not be the case. Some police officers have infringed on the rights of the people and taken away their ability to feel equal in presence of the law. Some have received harsh punishments and served more time behind bars just because of the color of their skin. Officers of the law need sufficient training to properly perform their job. As of now, the justice system possesses a great deal of discretionary power to handle situations however they see fit. The utmost effort needs to be drawn forward for equal treatment of all citizens on the streets and in the court room.

References

Ekker, K. (2016). Emergency management training: Handling rich qualitative and quantitative data. Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, 31(2), 939–948. https://doi.org/10 .3233/JIFS-169023 Rehavi, Marit M., & Starr, Sonja B. (2014) Racial disparity in federal criminal sentences. University of Michigan Law School. https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=2413&context=articles Simmons, K. (2008). The politics of policing: Ensuring stakeholder collaboration in the federal reform of local law enforcement agencies. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), 98(2), 489-546. https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/ Umsted, Z. A. (2014). Deterring racial bias in criminal justice through sentencing. Iowa Law Review, 100(1), 431–453. https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/ Worden, Robert E. & McLean, Sarah J. (2017) Mirage of police reform: Procedural justice and police legitimacy. Oakland: University of California Press. https://www.ucpress.edu/