American Criminal Justice System

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Origins of American Criminal Law Keith Barham Dr. P.M. Lynch-Epps LEG 320: Criminal Law July 16, 2012 Strayer University Origins of American Criminal Law Abstract This paper covers four different parts that are crucial to the origins of American criminal law. The first part will consist of one Amendment of my choosing that is related to the protection of people, their property, or criminal law itself. The second part is on the specific powers that the federal government has been granted with to make criminal laws versus those our state governments have been granted with. The third part will define, compare and contrast the four main goals of our criminal justice system. The final part will explain what is meant by police power and…show more content…
To discourage and deter people from committing crimes means that something must be done to prevent this action. This is done via corrections; when people see what happens to people who commit crimes, people will have a tendency to shy away from it (Gardner, T. & Anderson, T., 2012). Protecting the society from dangerous and harmful people is the job of law enforcement. They hit the streets, the waterways, and the air to ensure the citizens are protected from criminals (Gardner, T. & Anderson, T., 2012). Punishing people who commit crime is the job of the prosecution lawyer; they attempt to put the violators behind bars (Gardner, T. & Anderson, T., 2012). Rehabilitating those that have committed crimes is also the responsibility of the corrections. During their stay in the jails/prison, the violators can be subject to programs to help reform them to be productive citizens once they get out of jail/prison (Gardner, T. & Anderson, T.,…show more content…
& Anderson, T., 2012). The limitation of such powers are that there must be a “compelling public need to regulate the conduct”, cannot infringe on the rights given to the people by the U.S. Constitution, and the language of the statute must clearly state what to do and not to do and the statute only condemns that particular act (Gardner, T. & Anderson, T., 2012). With that said a state must be careful in how it enacts a law; a law cannot be made a law just because someone does not like something. There are guidelines that must be met in order to make it a valid law and therein lies the limitations of police

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