In criminal justice, decision making helps to choose between various available legal options. Various essential features affect the decision-making process in the entire criminal justice organisation. These items include distinguishing case decisions and policies, explicit policies and rules of the accord, creation of feedback systems that provide assistance for decisions and help in the evaluation of the agency efficiency (Neubauer & Fradella, 2018). Other features also include determination of the degree of the crime, prior offender’s criminal conduct and the intimate relationship between the perpetrator and victim of the crime. This reflection focused more on the offender’s prior criminal conduct, discernment of case decisions and policy, decision rules, and explicit policies.
Discussion
I have gained knowledge and skills concerning the criminal justice system as a part of the course learning process. The skills and knowledge concerning policing, court, and correction at different ranks, both internationally and nationally, concerning justice administration are some important information that I have potentially gained in this course. I have also learned that all criminal justice system components face scenarios where effective, legal, and even rational decisions must be made (Gaines & Miller, 2021). It is also clear from this course that law enforcement is a significant pillar of criminal justice since it is a system that most individuals first encounter whenever they go against the existing laws.
In criminal justice, decision-making is an important process involving more than learning rules and their applications to various cases. Choices depend on discernment, whereby people explore different alternative actions or courses in exercising judgment. Making decisions always arise when a choice has to be made by the police whether to arrest, investigate, search, or even imply force (Mayeux, 2018). The same applies in court, where the prosecutors must exercise their judgment by choosing if a person should receive a plea bargain or criminal charges. The judges choose whether and when the bail should be set, whether to reject or accept a plea, rule, and sentence. The decision on whether and when criminals, after serving their sentence, should be released from prison is decided by the parole board. In all these systems’ decisions are influenced by the offender’s prior criminal conduct, discernment of case decisions and policy, decision rules, and explicit policies.
While making such decisions, all information about the subject matter should be collected, and then the cons and pros of every decision should be weighed. An insight of useful focus is made while examining various fundamental aspects of criminal justice in the process of decision-making. In concurrence with Bachman et al. (2017), the choices in criminal justice are often made within various constructs of discretion and, therefore, not as clear. Therefore, the areas of discretion must be researched efficiently by exploring different methods available to obtain information or data about the matter in question.
Conclusion
I strongly believe that at any criminal justice level, decision-making is very crucial. The decision-making process is mostly made by probation officers, science technicians, fraud investigators, crime scene investigators, police officers, judicial agencies, detectives, marshals, lawyers, correctional officers, and other avenues in the judicial and law enforcement agencies. In all these levels, the previous criminal records of the offender in question, discernment of the case decisions and policies, decision rules, and explicit policies always affect the decision-making process, which can either be rational or legal.
References
Bachman, R. D. & Schutt, R. K. (2017). The practice of research in criminology and criminal justice. (6th ed.). Sage.
Gaines, L. K., & Miller, R. L. (2021). Criminal justice in action. (11th ed.). Cengage Learning.
Mayeux, S. (2018). The idea of the criminal justice system. American journal of criminal law. 45, 55-93.
Neubauer, D. W., & Fradella, H. F. (2018). America’s courts and the criminal justice system. (13th ed.). Cengage Learning.