The Criminal Justice System: A Step Forward

As Craig DeRoche, a former member of the Michigan Legislature, stated, “the United States criminal justice system was created to keep communities safe, to respect and restore victims, and to return offenders to society as self-sufficient and law-abiding citizens.” Apart from the number of dollars spent, the growth in criminalization has led to no measurable decrease in recidivism, the rate of reoffending, despite increasing the prison population tenfold. The current justice system focuses on retributive justice, which is defined as a system of criminal justice based on the punishment of offenders. Central to retributive justice are the notions of merit and desert. This means people deserve to be treated in the same way that they voluntarily choose to treat others. Thus, allowing the wronged to feel a primal sense of justice. A significant flaw that arises is the failure of the central idea of retributive justice, deterrence which can be seen by the staggering recidivism rate that is over 70%. The need for reformation of the justice system is imperative but what is open to discussion is the approach in fixing the problem. One option is to make it harsh and strict for prisoners comparable to the treatment of prisoners in Russia or the rehabilitative approach as in Norway. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a successfully proven rehabilitative program, is a psychotherapeutic approach that addresses dysfunctional emotions, maladaptive behavior, cognitive processes and contents through a number of goal-oriented, and explicit systematic procedures. Studies indicate that CBT guarantees a lower recidivism rate, especially for moderate risk individuals to recidivate. Since the current implementation of retributive justice is ineffective, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy should be required in correctional sanctions to those who are moderately at risk to recidivate to increase social productivity.

The current criminal justice system is no longer effective. The justice system is based on the theory of deterrence, which holds two crucial assumptions: the first is that the punishment inflicted upon the offender will deter them from committing future crimes; the second is that the fear of punishment itself will deter others. Considering that over half of the offenders commit crimes again, the foundation of retributive justice is broken, and therefore, the whole infrastructure of the system is ineffective. Once a defendant is found guilty, one or more sentences are administered by the court judge and are as follows: the death penalty, incarceration, probation, “Scarlett-letter” punishment, asset forfeiture, and etc. None of the sentences including any educational, counseling, or treatment programs address the core of the problem, the deep rooted psychological reason as to why the offender committed the crime in the first place. Although correctional agencies have rehabilitative programs sometimes including CBT, prisons do not all singularly follow a particular code or standard by which they exercise on their prisoners. Analyzing the recidivism rate reveals that the main issue of the criminal justice system is the implementation of punishment