Crime is when someone breaks the law by an overt act, omission or neglect that can result in punishment. A person who has violated a law, or has breached a rule, is said to have committed a criminal offense. Society determines crime by 2 ways one by deciding which laws will be used and which could be outlawed. They will also determine the method of punishment. The second is by having that second group of people exercise power by codifying their value systems into criminal laws.
The government has a system in which it deals with the procedure of how things are to be handled if they feel a law has been broken. First the officer may see or suspect a law is being broken and if enough evidence is visibly present then he or she may ask for a warrant from the judge to do further investigations of the crime scene. If enough evidence is present then the person will be booked and held in lock up. Then a pretrial will be held for the accused. The defendant will go before a judge to be sure they understand their rights and what they are being accused of. Then they will do a preliminary hearing to decide if there is enough evidence to proceed with a trial. If there is enough evidence then the case will go to trail and the prosecuting attorney will show how the crime was committed and maybe even a probable cause as to why the crime was committed.
The goals of the judicial system is to keep people safe and show that laws that are broken do not go unnoticed. There are several different ways they reach these goals. One is by deterrence. Deterrence is a goal that seeks to inhabit criminal behavior by fear of punishment. Now there are two ways of doing this. The first is to catch, and punish a person for breaking the law and then upon release the person understands the consequences of breaking the law and won’t do it again. The other is to catch and punish a person for breaking the law and then use them as an example to show others what will happen to those who break the law.
Another goal is retribution. This is also known as an eye for an eye approach. This is done by having the law breaker incarcerated, pay retribution the victims they have wronged, pay fines to public agencies, community services and even public humiliation or embarrassment. Although it is considered ancient many people believe that justice prevails when the perpetrator is punished.
The other possibility is to incarcerate the person. This involves taking away there ability to communicate with the outside world. Doing this will take away the person’s ability to commit another crime as well. There is also the means of rehabilitation. This is when a person needs to be retrained or reformed or under special care in order to live in a
