JIFFORD D.

ROSQUETA
LLB - 4

POLICE OR LAW ENFORCEMENT

OBSERVATION

Criminal Justice System, when I asked this to the police officers they just
smile at me and it seems that it is hard for them to give an answer about it. It is
really difficult for them to describe how our criminal justice system works. The
criminal justice system is the set of agencies and processes established by
governments to control crime and impose penalties on those who violate laws.
How the criminal justice system works in each area depends on the jurisdiction
that is in charge. Law enforcement officers take reports for crimes that happen in
their areas. Officers investigate crimes and gather and protect evidence. Law
enforcement officers may arrest offenders, give testimony during the court
process, and conduct follow-up investigations if needed.

A police force is a constituted body of persons empowered by
the state to enforce the law, protect property, and limit civil disorder. Their
powers include the legitimized use of force. The term is most commonly
associated with police services of a state that are authorized to exercise the police
power of that state within a defined legal or territorial area of responsibility.
Police forces are often defined as being separate from military or other
organizations involved in the defense of the state against foreign aggressors.

One police officer said that for him the image of the police officers
regarding our criminal justice system is that the treatments given to the parties
concerned were unequal. According to him, some of the police officers were like
that, they give more importance and concentration to cases when the parties
involved are rich and influential to a certain community. The so-called equal
protection of the laws was not really observed, it is still the powerful people who
really dictate the enforcement of our criminal justice system. In short, this is in
contrary with the poor people should be given more law. It is an unfair system
that we cannot really stop and the rich people have more laws.

In our community, one problem also is that we have and insufficient
numbers of police officers who will safeguard and protect the people. The police
officer said that because of various cases that they are handling they cannot really
divide their time to give attention to all of these cases referred to them, because
they lack in numbers who will investigate the same. As a result, justice delayed,
justice denied.

Another predicament on the part of our criminal justice system, based
from the police officer that I interviewed, he raised the problem on alcoholism on
the part of some law enforcement officers which results to an inefficient just and
quality service to the people. Its really disheartening on the part of the police
officers who are really sincere and committed with their duty and responsibility as
a law enforcer. People see majority of the police officers are like that, which in
turn people do not trust them knowing that they are drunk when performing their
function.

The police officer pointed out of what we called police corruption. For
him this is the worst problem why our system and justice slowly achieve or never
achieve. Police corruption is the misuse of police authority for personal gain.
Examples include extortion (for example, demanding money for not writing
traffic tickets) and bribery (for example, accepting money in exchange for not
enforcing the law). Police corruption carries high costs. First, a corrupt act is a
crime. Second, police corruption detracts from the integrity of the police and
tarnishes the public image of law enforcement. Third, corruption protects other
criminal activity such as drug dealing and prostitution. Protected criminal
activities are often lucrative sources of income for organized crime.

Police corruption destroys the image of our criminal justice system, he
said that how can we help the people who are asking with us for the bestowal of
justice, if in the first place the problem is not really the people, but it is within the
poor performance and due to the corrupt practices of some police officers.

Therefore, it is really hard for the sincere and responsible law enforcers to
get the full trust of the people and to get away from their bad image because of
these harsh and unreasonable acts made by other law enforcers.



Based from the answers or statements given by the police officers
regarding criminal justice system, it is hard to admit and accept it that in our
country, we have a poor criminal justice system because of the foolish acts of
some police officers that really affect the image of their efficiency in the strong
promotion of our criminal justice system. For this reason, all blames were put on
the part of our law enforcers, which is really unfair for those who are honest and
responsible members of the law enforcement department. The duties and
responsibilities on the side of the police officers is really pertinent in our
community, the peace and order lies on them, they carry all the time the safety
and the security of the people. Thats the reason why, crimes are committed
because of this weak performance or lack of commitment by our law enforcers in
our community, thus criminal justice system has not been in our hands at this
moment.

All of us rely on the criminal justice system to keep us safe and maintain
order. We expect it to meet the fundamental aims of our criminal laws: to separate
the guilty from the innocent, to incapacitate truly dangerous individuals, and to
promote deterrence and retribution for those who violate law. We also expect the
criminal law and the criminal justice system to be fair and even-handed and to
rehabilitate criminal offenders. And we expect the criminal justice system to assist
offenders who have completed their sentences to reenter the community as
productive citizens and to avoid commission of crimes in the future. Establishing
public safety is among local governments fundamental obligations to its citizens.
The safety of ones person and security of ones property are widely viewed as
basic human rights and are essential to the communitys overall quality of life.

Local government units should always monitor and oversee the
performances of our law enforcers. We can just eradicate police corruption,
tardiness, lousy performance if only our local government units strictly mandate
our police officers to observe their duties and responsibility honestly. Our
problems in criminal justice system will be given solution only, if the police
officers will start first from their selves. Its a matter of dedication and discipline
towards themselves, because their visibility and performance as law enforcers
caries the safety and security of the people.

The police can and should do more than enforce the law in trying to
achieve their multiple objectives, police have at their disposal a wide variety of
tactics and strategies. Although many people think that the main way police
achieve their public safety objectives is to enforce the law, in fact, police
commonly do things other than just enforce the law. In most interactions with the
public, police do not issue a citation or make an arrest.

Indeed, even where it is possible for police to fully enforce the law which
it is not it is unlikely that most communities would tolerate such a thing.
Sometimes strict law enforcement is neither fair nor effective; indeed, sometimes
it is counterproductive to public safety, as, for instance, when it provokes such
widespread public hostility as to engender even more widespread disorder and
lawlessness. Police officers are suffering right now from weak public judgments
regarding their performances because of the rampant crimes that occur every day.
All this problems and blames were all received by them, their efficiency, and
quality of service that they are giving are being questioned every time. The trust
bestowed to our law enforces is slowly fading because of the recorded increases
of crimes, foolish behaviors, corrupt practices and unending unequal treatment to
everyone.

If we really want to have a peaceful living and make our lives secured, we
should help and cooperate also to the police officers, because if they were just the
ones who are working, law breakers or culprits will always prevail. Hence, all of
us should make or own ways to protect ourselves, family, relatives and the
community; we should help and participate into programs on how to prevent
crimes. The solution to our dilemma is within our own hands, own control, not
only with the aid of our law enforcers but with the help of the public.






















































































The Police Can and Should Do More Than Enforce the Law
In trying to achieve their multiple objectives, police have at their
disposal a wide variety of tactics and strategies. Although many people
think that the main way police achieve their public safety objectives
is to enforce the law, in fact, police commonly do things other than
just enforce the law. In most interactions with the public, police do
not issue a citation or make an arrest. Indeed, even were it possible
for police to fully enforce the lawwhich it is notit is unlikely that
most communities would tolerate such a thing. Sometimes strict
law enforcement is neither fair nor effective; indeed, sometimes it is
counterproductive to public safety, as, for instance, when it provokes
such widespread public hostility as to engender even more widespread
disorder and lawlessness.
Essential to fair and effective policing is the need to expand the range
of viable alternatives to criminal law enforcement so that police have
multiple tools from which to fashion effective responses to quite varied
public safety problems.
Examples of alternatives to criminal law enforcement police commonly
use to address particular public safety problems include the following:
Mobilizing the community (as witnesses, to patrol the community,
for advocacy)
Requesting that citizens exercise informal social control over one
another (e.g., parents over children, employers over employees,
coaches over athletes, teachers over students, military commanders
over soldiers, lenders over borrowers, landlords over tenants)
Using mediation and negotiation skills to resolve disputes
Conveying information (e.g., to reduce exaggerated fear, to generate
public awareness, to elicit conformity with laws that are not known
or understood, to show citizens how they contribute to problems
and ways to avoid doing so, to educate the public about the limits
of police authority, to build support for new approaches)Effective Policing and Crime
Prevention
14
Altering the physical environment to reduce opportunities for
problems to occur
Enforcing civil laws (e.g., nuisance abatement, injunctions, asset
forfeiture)
Recommending and enforcing special conditions of bail, probation,
or parole
Intervening short of arrest (e.g., issuing warnings, placing people in
protective custody, temporarily seizing weapons, issuing dispersal
orders)
Advocating enactment of new laws or regulations to control
conditions that create problems
Concentrating attention on those people and circumstances that
account for a disproportionate share of a problem (e.g., repeat
offenders, repeat victims, repeat locations)
Coordinating with other government and private services (e.g., drug
treatment, youth recreation, social services).
When one views policing in light of the objectives and methods
described above, it becomes more sensible to acknowledge that
enforcing the law is not an end in itself, but rather is one means among
several available to the police toward the objectives previously described.
The Criminal Justic




The criminal justice system is the set of agencies and processes established by
governments to control crime and impose penalties on those who violate laws. How the
criminal justice system works in each area depends on the jurisdiction that is in charge








The costs of police corruption

The causes of police corruption
According to the rotten apple theory, corruption is the work of a few, dishonest, immoral police officers.
Experts dismiss this theory because it fails to explain why so many corrupt officers become concentrated
in some police organizations but not others. Another explanation pinpoints U.S. society's use of the
criminal law to enforce morality. Unenforceable laws governing moral standards promote corruption
because they provide criminal organizations with a financial interest in undermining law
enforcement. Narcotic corruption, for example, is an inevitable consequence of drug enforcement.
Providers of these illegal goods and service use part of their profits to bribe the police in order to ensure
the continuation of criminal enterprises.
Rooting out police corruption
When police controls break down and a scandal occurs, special investigating commissions can mobilize
public opinion and rally public support for anticorruption and antiviolence reforms. Commissions get
information from the police department, pinpoint where the internal controls of the police have failed,
and recommend changes in policy. The problem with these commissions is that they usually disappear
after finishing their reports. Paul Chevigny asserts that continuing independent auditors would be more
effective than commissions. He envisions the function of such auditors as investigating a range of police
problems, including corruption and brutality.









Seven Ways to Fix the Criminal Justice
System

Our present methods of dealing with criminals have not made society safer and crime-free, rather
they have made the problems worse. A leading American prison reform activist tells what we can do
reverse this trend.
by Bo Lozoff
How can we reduce the frightening levels of crime and violence that plague out society today? The
usual answer from politicians and the media is that we have to be tougher on crime. If we had the
guts to crack down like, say, those Singaporeans, then we'd straighten this country out.
But that's just a myth, and a dangerous one, because it is actually preventing us from solving the
crime problem. Here's the reality: America now locks up prisoners at a rate five times greater than
most industrialized nations, a rate of incarceration second only to Russia. The number of inmates in
state and federal prisons has more than quadrupled, from fewer than 200,000 in 1970 to 948,000 in
1993. Prisoners currently sleep on floors, in tents, in converted broom closets and gymnasiums, or in
double or triple bunks in cells that were designed for one inmate. I have visited about 500 prisons
and, I can tell you, they are not country clubs (though they certainly are a luxury item: The average
new prison cell costs $53,100 to construct). For the most part, they are terrifying and miserable
places that will seem as shameful to us in a hundred years as the infamous nineteenth-century
"snake-pit" insane asylums seem to us today.
Approximately 240,000 brutal rapes occur in our prison system each year, and most of the victims
are young, nonviolent male inmates, many of them teen-age first offenders. After being raped, or
"punked out," many of these young men are forced to shave their body hair and dress effeminately
so they can be sold among "roosters" as sexual slaves for packs of cigarettes. This sometimes
continues for the entire length of their incarceration. They are traumatized beyond imagination.
Michael Fay's caning in Singapore was child's play compared to the reception he would have had in
nearly any state prison in America. We are not soft on criminals.
The above, however, should not lead you to believe that our prisons are teeming with violent,
dangerous people. Just the opposite: More than half of all US prisoners are serving time for non-
violent offenses. Please let that sink in, because it's probably not the image you've received from the
media. Instead, we've been led to imagine a legion of dangerous criminals cleverly plotting to get out
and hurt us again. The truth is that most prison inmates are confused, disorganized, and often
pathetic individuals who would love to turn their lives around if given a realistic chance. Unfortunately
many of those nonviolent offenders will no longer he nonviolent by the time they leave prison.
But perhaps the most pervasive myth distorting our view of criminal justice is that increasing arrests
and imprisonment is an effective strategy for reducing crime. Again, here's the shocking reality: The
rate of violent crime hasn't significantly increased or decreased in the past fifteen years. And yet, the
prison population in the US more than doubled during the l980s. What's more, the threat of prison
does not seem to deter criminal behavior. Around 62 percent of all prison inmates nationwide are
arrested again within three years. Prisons are not scaring criminals away from crime; they are
incapacitating them so they are hardly fit for anything else.
In other words, the criminal justice system that we're paying for so dearly simply isn't working. And
yet we keep on throwing more money into it. So how do we start fixing what's broken? Here are
seven places to begin:
Learn to recognize the influence of socially sanctioned
hatred.
What I mean by socially sanctioned hatred is simple: We human beings seem to have a built-in
temptation to objectify other groups of people in order to feel superior to them or to find a scapegoat
for all our problems. It's reflected in language, in words like "nigger," "Faggot," "slant-eyes," "gook,"
and so on. Certainly, among most of us, that kind of prejudicial speech is not acceptable. And yet,
among decent people, from liberal to conservative, it is still socially acceptable to call criminals
"scum," "sleaze bags," or "animals." We hear that one demented soul kidnapped and killed a little
girl, and a few weeks later, when a teenager steals our car radio, we are ready to strap the two of
them together in the gas chamber. "I'm sick of these animals," we say. "They're all alike. Let them
fry."
People who break the law are not all alike. They are an enormously diverse group of human beings.
Make drugs a public health problem instead of a criminal
justice problem.
Drug cases are clogging our nation's prisons. Some 61 percent of federal prison inmates are there
for drug offenses, up from 18 percent in 1980. And all this incarceration is doing nothing to solve the
drug problem. Many wardens, judges, and other officials know this, but it has become political
suicide to discuss decriminalization.
We need to insist upon a more mature dialogue about the drug problem. Keep in mind that the high-
level drug dealers aren't cluttering up our prisons; they're too rich and smart to get caught. They hire
addicts or kids, sometimes as young as eleven or twelve, to take most of the risks that result in
confinement.
But it's not the dealers who create the drug problem anyway. Among the poor, drugs are a problem
of alienation and isolation, of feeling unknown, unimportant, powerless, and hopeless. Among the
affluent, they are an attempt to keep up with or escape from an insanely frenzied lifestyle that has
almost nothing to do with simple human joys such as friendship or hearing the birds sing.
We need to address these issues in ourselves, our families, and our communities. At the same time,
we must press for changes in drug laws. I'm not advocating that we "legalize" all drugs, because it's
not that simple. But we do have to "decriminalize" their use, treating the problem as the public-health
issue it is. Doing so would have tremendous benefits. Without drug offenders, our prisons would
have more than enough room to hold all the dangerous criminals. As a result, we wouldn't need to
build a single new prison, saving us some $5 billion a year. And if we spent a fraction of that money
on rehabilitation centers and community revitalization programs, we'd begin to put drug dealers out
of business in the only way that will last -by drying up their market.
Separate violent and nonviolent offenders right from the
start.
It's inconceivable that we routinely dump nonviolent offenders in prison cells with violent ones, even
in local jails and holding tanks. What are we thinking? I know one fellow who was arrested for
participating in a Quaker peace vigil and was jailed in lieu of paying a ten-dollar fine. In a forty-eight-
hour period, he was savagely raped and traded back and forth among more than fifty violent
prisoners. That was twenty years ago, and since then he has had years of therapy, and yet he has
never recovered emotionally. His entire life still centers around the decision of one prison
superintendent to place him in a violent cellblock in order to "teach him a lesson."
Most nonviolent offenders do in fact learn a lesson: how to be violent. Ironically; we spend an
average of $20,000 per year, per inmate, teaching them this. For less than that we could be sending
every nonviolent offender to college.
None of us, including prison staff, should accept violence as a fact of prison life, and it would be
easy not to. We could designate certain facilities as zero-violence areas and allow inmates to live
there as long as they don't commit-or even threaten to commit-a single violent act. The great
majority of prisoners would sign up for such a place, I can assure you. Only about 10 percent of the
prison population sets the terrorist tone for most institutions, and they are able to do that because
the administration gives no support to the 90 percent of inmates who just want to do their time,
improve themselves in some way, and get out alive.
To make matters worse, in most prisons when an inmate is threatened he or she is the one who gets
locked up in a little cell for twenty-four hours a day, while those doing the threatening remain in the
open population. We must revise this practice and begin to expect prisoners to be nonviolent. And
we need to support them in this by offering conflict-resolution trainings such as the 'Alternatives to
Violence" programs currently being conducted by and for convicts around the country. Such trainings
should be required for all prisoners and staff.
Regain compassion and respect for those who wrong us.
Over the past twenty years, we have increasingly legitimized cruelty and callousness in response to
the cruelty and callousness of criminals. And with the recent elections and new crime bills, we are
rushing even further down this low road. In a number of prisons across the country we have reduced
or eliminated the opportunity for inmates to earn college degrees, clamped down on family visits,
and restricted access to books and magazines. And now there is even a growing public sentiment to
strip prisons of televisions and exercise facilities. It's as if we want to make sure inmates are
miserable every second of the day. We no longer want them to get their lives together. We just want
them to suffer In the long run, however, this approach will not make us happy, nor will it keep our
children safe from crime. In fact, as I see it, this vengeful attitude may actually be leading our young
people toward violence. The peak age for violent crime in America is now eighteen, and it's edging
downward every year. Our children sense that it's all right to be mean and violent toward people they
don't like. They are not learning compassion or reconciliation. Don't expect a youngster to be able to
master the difference between an enemy you define and an enemy he or she defines.
Taking the "high road" does not mean being lenient toward criminals. I'm certainly not advocating
that we open the prison doors and let everybody out. In fact, I feel that there are many types of
behavior that can cause a person to yield his or her right to stay in free society. But we need to work
intensively with people who break the law; we have to structure our responses in ways that show
them that they have value, that we believe in them, and that we need them. We must relegate prison
to the status of last resort after all other measures have failed.
Allow for transformation, not merely rehabilitation.
Our ideas of rehabilitation usually revolve around education, job skills, and counseling. But many ex-
cons have told me they left prison merely better-educated and -skilled criminals. Until they felt their
connection and value to others, nothing ever reached into their hearts. Take this letter from a former
inmate, for example:
Dear Bo, Man, I went through a time of hating you and Sita before I came to my senses. Let me
explain: When you met me in prison and looked into my eyes, you didn't buy the evil son of a bitch
that I portrayed to the world. I believed it myself. But you two looked at me with respect. Man, I hated
your guts for that. I'm serious, I have never felt a worse punishment than your respect. Cops and
cons could beat on me all day long, I was used to that from the time I was a kid But for somebody to
see the good in me--man, that was unbearable. It took a long time, but it finally wore me down and I
had to admit that I'm basically a good person. I've been out for three years now. Not even close to a
life of crime anymore. Thanks seems puny but thanks.
If we forget that in every criminal there is a potential saint, we are dishonoring all of the great
spiritual traditions. Saul of Tarsus persecuted and killed Christians before becoming Saint Paul,
author of much of the New Testament. Valmiki, the revealer of the Ramayana, was a highwayman, a
robber, and a murderer. Milarepa, one of the greatest Tibetan Buddhist gurus, killed thirty- seven
people before he became a saint. Moses, who led the Jews out of bondage in Egypt, began his
spiritual career by killing an Egyptian. If we forget that Charles Manson is capable of transformation,
that doesn't reveal our lack of confidence in Manson, it shows our lack of confidence in our own
scriptures. We must remember that even the worst of us can change.
Over the past twenty years I've had the privilege of knowing thousands of people who did horrible
things and yet were able to transform their lives. They may not have become saints, but I have seen
murderous rage gradually humbled into compassion, lifelong racial bigotry replaced by true
brotherhood, and chronic selfishness transformed into committed altruism. The promises of every
great spiritual tradition are indeed true: Our deepest nature is good, not evil.
Join and support the restorative justice movement.
For decades our justice system has been run according to the tenets of "retributive justice," a model
based on exile and hatred. "Restorative justice" is a far more promising approach. This model holds
that when a crime occurs, there's an injury to the community; and that injury needs to be healed.
Restorative justice tries to bring the offender back into the community; if at all possible, rather than
closing him out.
Whereas retributive justice immediately says "Get the hell out of here!" when someone commits a
crime, restorative justice says "Hey, get back in here! What are you doing that for? Don't you know
we need you as one of the good people in this community? What would your mama think?" It's an
entirely opposite approach, one that, I think, would result in stronger and safer communities.
I'm not saying that every offender is ready to be transformed into a good neighbor. Advocates of
restorative justice are not naive. Sadly, prisons may be a necessary part of a restorative justice
system. But even so, prisons can be environments that maximize opportunities for the inmates to
become decent and caring human beings.
One of the more powerful initiatives within the restorative justice movement is the creation of victim-
offender reconciliation programs (VORPs), which bring offenders and victims face to face. When
offenders come out of those meetings you hear them say things like: "I feel so ashamed now of what
I did, because I never realized how much I affected someone else's life," or "I never meant to do
that. I was just being selfish." Meanwhile, some of the classic responses from victims are: "I really
wanted to go in there hating those guys but I discovered they're just people. They really weren't as
bad as I thought they'd be," or "I was expecting to see someone evil, and in- stead I saw somebody
stupid." Such victim-offender interaction humanizes both the injury and the healing process.
What can you do? If you become the victim of a crime, insist upon meeting your assailant. Insist
upon being involved with the process of his or her restoration. Join or create a VORP in your
community. Tour your local jail or prison to see first-hand what your taxes pay for. Go in with a
church group or civic group to meet inmates. Become a pen pal to a prisoner who is seeking to
change his or her life. Talk to your friends and colleagues about employing ex-cons (in nationwide
surveys, most employers admit they won't hire a person with a criminal record, so where are they
supposed to work?). Please reclaim your power and your responsibility, because the retributive
system you have deferred to is not serving your best interests.
Take the issue of crime and punishment personally.
I first became an activist in the '6Os during the civil rights movement in the South and, I can tell you,
standing up against the Klan was not the hardest stuff. Nearly everybody was against the Klan. The
activism that took the most courage was raising the consciousness of our own friends and families.
The same goes for our attitudes toward prisoners today. If somebody at your workplace says "I'm
glad they fried that animal," you have to have the guts to say "Come on, Bob, that's beneath you to
talk like that." And you have to be willing to be mocked as a bleeding-heart liberal for doing so.
Just as with civil rights, and women's rights, we have to recognize that the national shame over our
prison system is affecting us all, and it's getting worse every day. This doesn't mean that we all have
to become crusaders for prison reform, but we do have to be more mindful of what we say and who
and what we vote for.
We have to realize that we are all a part of this problem. If you vote, if you pay taxes, if you are
afraid to walk alone at night, you are already involved. And so we all must make real changes-not
just political ones, but also in our personal attitudes and lifestyles.