Week 2 Criminal Justice 03/28/09

Intro to Criminal Justice 1
This week in Into to Criminal Justice 1 we looked at the five types of laws

• Case law
• Procedural law
• Administrative law
• Civil law
• Criminal law

Case law,aka "precedent" is the practice of considering finding in previous court rulings and applying them to future cases. Sort of unwritten guidelines to follow to keep the courts consistent in their rulings.

Procedural law is the law that governs the way police and courts handle the gathering of evidence and processing of offenders in the criminal justice system.

Administrative law is the laws that govern individuals,business and industry. Tax laws, health codes and motor vehicle laws are common examples of administrative law.

Civil law is the law that deals with relationships between parties and is usually more focused on liability issues where people are seeking monetary damages rather than criminal.

Criminal law deals with people who have committed a crime against the state or society. These are usually the most severe crimes and carry a prison sentence. Victims of criminal law may also use civil law to receive monetary compensation resulting from an act against them of the criminal law.

In the class discussion we discussed the difference between "mala in se" and "mala in prohibita" offenses. "mala in se" refers to crimes that society generally excepts around the world as being wrong without having to have laws to tell them it's wrong. Things like rape and murder are common examples. "Mala in prohibita" refers to crimes that some people don't see as wrong other than the fact that the law says it is, drug use and prostitution are common examples. Some students wanted to draw the line between big crime/ little crime, but I don't think it's quite that simple. One person offered DUI as an example of what he though was "mala in prohibita" offense,but I disagreed, I think people should know that drinking and driving is going to put their lives and others in danger without the government telling them,which would make it a "mala in se" offense in my opinion.

In our text book we were given an example from Iraq where troops were at a hospital and detained a man who was beating his wife, after realizing how badly he beat her he decided to take her to the hospital for treatment,but while waiting he continued to beat her until the troops intervened. He demanded he was exercising his right under Islam law to beat his wife because she attempted to stop him from having sex with their 14 year old daughter. There was nothing the soldiers could do besides call the woman a taxi and send her to her mothers house because the man had not violated any law,it's not illegal to beat your wife or sleep with your daughter under Islam law.

The soldiers,having grown up in an American society, reacted instinctively when they saw a man beating a woman to protect the woman, why do you think nobody else tried to stop the man assaulting his wife in a public place? Because they did not see anything wrong with it most likely.

As hard as it may be for us to grasp here, domestic violence and incest are "mala in prohibita" offenses,due to the fact that other parts of the world practice them on a regular basis without knowing that there is anything wrong with it. However despite the lack of laws against it, the mother in case still felt it was wrong and tried to defend her daughter.

In the written assignments for this class I was given five examples of laws and had to classify each one by it's type and explain why I came to that conclusion.

Intro to Police 1
This week in our reading we went back to the very beginning of policing in the world beginning with Sheriff's dating back to 1066 in England. The office of Sheriff still exists in England today but has little police power since the 19th century. Believe it or not there are American Sheriff's offices today that have little police power. The Denver county sheriff in Colorado for instance has the responsibility of running the jail and all other common functions of a sheriff's office, serving papers and working the courts system, but has no patrol division at all. In some counties in America you will see agencies called "county police" which is essentially a patrol division that would handle what a sheriff's would normally,but the sheriff in that county does not have any police power therefore they can not have a patrol division.

Then came the constable,which began in England around the reign of Edward I until the creation of the office of Justice of the Peace(JOP) around 1200 which limited the constables to making warrant arrests issues by the JOP. Parliament eventually abolished the office of constable in 1856. In the US however the office still existed,although still without pay. By the 1930's twenty one state constitutions provided for the office of constable. The position fell into disfavor because they were seen as untrained and wholly inadequate officials in the law.

The office of coroner appeared in England by the end of the twelfth century. It was an elected official with duty of overseeing interests of the crown. Coroners were given the responsibility also of determining causes of death and the party responsible for it. Coroners were not compensated, but elected for life.Eventually they were allowed to charge fees for their work.
The office was introduced to America but was slow in gaining recognition because the duties were already being performed by Sheriff's and JOP. From the early twentieth century the duties of this position fell primarily into finding causes of death.

The JOP came to England as far back as 1195 and was nominated by the king to preside over criminal trials. Early JOPs were wealthy landowners and eventually removed power from sheriff's and constables.The office has been plagued with public disfavor and during the sixteenth century they were referred to as "boobies"(not to be confused with Bobbies,which we cover later) and "scum of the earth" due to the caliber of the people who held this office, who's only requirement was to be a wealthy landowner and be able to buy their ways into office.

England in the early twentieth century abolished the landowner requirement and the office was focused on extensive but strictly criminal jurisdiction. However in the American system JOP's were given jurisdiction in civil and criminal matters. As in England, many of the JOPs in America were not required to have any legal training or experience at all, and most did not. JOPs today are seen as lay and inexpert upholders of the law.

Until 1829 police were unpaid and often it was seen as a duty in which people were forced by the government to take their turns providing night watch in their communities. In the nineteenth century urbanization and industrialization brought new challenges to England and America as crime was on the rise and a lack of a willing and compensated police force gave little help in addressing the problem. Parliament finally came to Sir Robert Peel in 1829 willing to listen to ideas that had tried to be introduced in 1748 but with no success. He reformed the Metropolitan Police of London with what has come to be known as "Peel's principles of Policing" which is the foundation of modern day America policing. Early officers then became known as 'Peelers','Bobby' and 'Roberts'

• The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.
  
  
• The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.
  
  
• Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.
  
  
• The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.
  
  
• Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.
  
  
• Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient.
  
  
• Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence
  
  
• Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.
  
  
• The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.

The idea's were implemented in 1841 in New York City, and the NYPD and modern policing in America were born. However we somehow managed to screw up a good system by trying to tweak it in our own ways, and the system was not finally put into success until the 1980's and is still in use today nationwide by a campaign known as 'Community Policing'.

Thing's on the American frontier were quite different however during the nineteenth century, much wide open land fell into the hands of federal marshals, but their main goal was law enforcement of federal crimes on federal land, such as the railroads. Policing was left up to people
to take into their own hands. Once a state was granted statehood it could then elect county sheriff's.

In class discussion we talked about the effect of Sir Robert Peel on policing, and for the written assignment I wrote a report on how modern police and forensics could have captured the elusive 'Jack the Ripper' the world's first serial killer from nineteenth century London.