Welcome! This website was created by Haileih Megale as a final project for Crime and Justice. It contains an abridged explanation of the American Criminal Justice System (abbreviated to CJS throughout) and its processes and an attempt at explaining what role class has in it. Numerous sources were consulted in the writing of these pages.

The Criminal Justice System is a part of the executive branch of America's national government which is meant to handle individuals and other legal entities (i.e. corporations) that commit law-breaking behavior otherwise known as crime. It punishes crime "according" to the gravity of it and attempts to discourage it. In order to accomodate the large sum of behaviors labeled as crimes and ensure that justice is not exacted arbitrarily, the system follows a standard set of procedures, which can end at any time the defendant (the person or business accused of the crime) is proven innocent or guilty without doubt. Crime and Criminal Justice in American Society explains the most common model of this system, which is listed below:

Investigation

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Arrest

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Booking
Making a record of the arrest by fingerprinting, photographing, questioning, et cetera...

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Charging

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Initial Appearance
Defendent is taken to a judge, who informs them of their rights, charges, attorneys. Judge decides if bail is required.

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Preliminary Hearing/Grand Jury
Judge decides if there is enough reason for a criminal trial.

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Information/Indictment
Formal charging document is made by the prosecutor to list charges.

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Arraignment
Defendent hears their charges and may take a plea bargain to avoid a trial.

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Trial

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Sentencing
After being found or pleading to being guilty, the defendent receives their sanctions, which can include "probation, incarceration, fines, and community service." (Shelden et al)

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Appeal
If a court did not follow procedure or violated rights, the defendent can try to appeal the decision.

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Corrections
Prison, probation, community service, fines, et cetera.

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Release

Of course, this is not the only model of the system; but, it is one of the most descriptive. It does not account for recidivism (repeatedly breaking the law and entering back into the system) or assembly-line justice biases, but it's a good working base for discussion.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines class as "a group of people within society who have the same economic and social position." Common divisions of class are lower, middle, and upper. There are plenty of equivalent words for these terms, but the most common are poor, bourgeoisie, and the 1% respectively. Over time, the gap between these classes has grown larger and larger; especially with living wages climbing higher. "15.1% [of Americans] live below the poverty line" (Shelden et al, 13) and that number continues to rise.

Class has a massive impact on one's lifestyle and how they will behave. Similar to caste systems—such as Hinduism's Jāti—a person born into one class is likely to stay in it; very rarely does a poor person make the jump to the upper class. Children living in a "shoddy" neighborhood with poor parents will find themselves exposed to fewer life chances—or, opportunities to advance in economic or social status—than those with middle- to upper-class parents. Good education and safe surroundings—which nurture skills and abilities required to survive in American society—are difficult to come by and stay in.

A common conception is that criminal justice fails due to systemic racism—discriminatory practices embedded and normalized in a part of society—which is unarguably true. When your average person is asked to describe the face they see when they think of criminals or people that damage society, they will likely say a thuggish Black man. (Reiman and Leighton) Very few will describe a prosperous businessman.

An obscene number of people of color face arrest and possible incarceration every year. "In 2014, African Americans constituted 2.3 million, or 34%, of the total 6.8 million correctional population." Latines and Asians came in slightly lesser proportions. The NAACP (the source of the prior quote) expects that "[o]ne out of every three Black boys born today can expect to be sentenced to prison, compared 1 out 6 Latino boys; one out of 17 white boys." Justifiably, many people of color feel targeted by and unsafe around police and correctional officers.

What does this have to do with class?

Systemic racism invariably leads to class issues—namely, disproportionate numbers of people of color living in poorer and poorer neighborhoods. Due to parents having to travel great distances to work, being incarcerated, or being otherwise absent, children are often left without support systems and stability. Small salaries mean that local schools are underfunded and quality education is quite inaccessible. Food and money are hard to come by. People must live paycheck to paycheck, and might be driven to commit what lawmakers define as crimes—usually acts of desperation.

Much of the crime society is worried about is the sort that causes a visible damage or has been highly serialized: murder, (physical or sexual) assault, drug use, larceny (theft.) These are, of course, often "acts of desperation." Poor children and people without support systems to lean on or learn societal norms from find themselves more susceptible to these crimes. Peer pressure gets to a group of adolescents—one bad apple spoils the bunch. It doesn't help that the corrections system quite severely punishes these crimes; that arresting officers overcharge defendants to more easily convince them to take plea bargains; that public prosecution is of poor quality (due to a small staff in comparison to the sheer number of crimes that must be processed.) Rarely, if ever, do arrested people stand trial.

At the opposite end of the youth delinquency spectrum, media depictions of upper (and even upper middle-class) teens throwing large parties, being caught drinking, and receiving "only a slap on the wrist" are quite accurate. Many officers will just take them to the station until their parents come to pick them up. On the other hand, a poorer teen caught drinking would likely face juvenile detention. These early interventions by corrections gets many used to a life of recidivism. It starts from the very beginning, and continues through a person's entire life.

Due to the nature of bureaucracy, there is no immediate solution. One cannot snap their fingers and undo a few hundred years of ingrained laws and codices. Yet, one can lead the charge for change and pave the way for the future. Plenty of Twitter threads and mass media groups exist to inform and protect those who need it. It's a matter of keeping momentum and keeping the movements alive.

SOURCES
Crime and Criminal Justice in American Society (2^nded.) by Randall G. Shelden, William B. Brown, Karen S. Miller and Randal B. Fritzler. ISBN: 1-4786-0765-3
The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Thinking Critically About Class and Criminal Justice by Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton. ISBN: 9780367231798
Schept, Judah, Wall, T., & Brisman, A. (2015). Building, staffing, and insulating: An architecture of criminological complicity in the school-to-prison pipeline. Social Justice, 41(4), 96.
NAACP website

CREDITS
HTML & CSS © Haileih Megale
Background Patterns © Subtle Patterns
Source Serif Pro Font © Frank Grießhammer of Google Fonts

THANKS to my mother and friends for (making an attempt at) keeping me on track with finishing this course and project. I couldn't have done it without all of you you.