What Are The Major Components Of The Criminal Justice System Essay Example

The criminal justice system consists of different agencies and processes that the government established to prevent and control crimes and to impose the necessary penalties for its commission and for violating the law. The criminal justice system has three major components namely the law enforcement agencies, the court and the corrections. While each of these components are independent, they make up the whole criminal justice system process in a manner that they are inter-related in function.
The primary function of the law enforcement agencies is to deploy authorities for crime prevention, perform arrest to the violators of the law and to maintain peace and order in the community. The court has the sole function of prosecuting crimes, determine the offender’s liabilities and to impose the appropriate penalties while the correctional system provides the supervision of convicted offenders whether in prison, in jail or on parole. The major responsibility of correction officers is to secure the correctional facilities and maintain its order and to keep the prisoners safe.
The three major components of the criminal justice system can significantly affect each other’s functions. If the law enforcement agencies for instance will arrest several offenders the resulting effect is the rising number of docketed cases in the court. This in turn will give the court tremendous burden of prosecuting and hearing many cases everyday. In every conviction, the offender will then be sentenced to serve the penalities for their crime in the correctional facility. With several decided cases and convicted criminals, the correctional facility will tend to become overcrowded which in turn can add significant burden on maintaining the correctional facilities with increase in the expenditures spent for its maintenance.
These three major components of the criminal justice system thus affect one another and are the important pillars of an effective integrated criminal justice system. Therefore, these three major components need to be complementary with one another in terms of their distinct responsibilities to make an efficient criminal justice system as a whole.