Criminal Justice

Introduction

 History is always filled with significant events that mark memorable and unforgettable moments. Such special moments in time makes us remember exactly where one was at the time the event was taking place. Some can clearly remember the time when John F. Kennedy was assassinated while others can clearly remember the time when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. Also, others will remember the event for September 11, 2001, when the Islamic terrorist group attacked the United States causing the falling of the World Trade Center Towers.

The common thing about such watershed moments is that they always become a signal for change. For instance, there was the ballooning of the number of Secret Service agents offering protection to the presidents of the United States after the death of JFK. The Challenger tragedy forced NASA to overhaul its apparatus of decision making, and finally, there have been major improvements in strategies for countering terrorism after 9/11. The same evolutions have also taken place in the criminal justice field. These events range from the war against organized crimes by Bobby Kennedy to the shootouts with cowboys by Wyatt Earp to the forensic facial reconstruction inventions. The events have marked historical moments which have forever changed the course of criminal justice. Through hindsight, we can recognize the vital nature of these moments, and through reflection, we can appreciate the significant trails that they have blazed.

            The first detective agency was founded in 1850. It started when Allan Pinkerton developed the National Detective Agency in Pinkerton in 1850 in Chicago. Through this agency, he was able to uncover a plot for assassinating Abraham Lincoln that marked the agency’s ability to be nationally recognized in 1861. Pinkerton was also able to assist in organizing the federal secret service at the time of the civil war and was promoted to the chief of the federal secret service. Pinkerton National Detective Agency has had a major impact in the modern times. The Sweden’s Securitas AB did acquire Pinkerton in 1999 and went ahead to acquire other six American security firms. The Securitas AB has changed its name to become the USA Securitas Security Services which is the largest provider of security services all around the world.

Another historical event that has significantly impacted on the criminal justice system is the invention of the “indeterminate sentencing,” also known as the parole. It was created in 1861 but became well known after 1877 when Brockway Zebulon highlighted this concept while he was serving as a warden in Detroit House of Corrections and used parole concept while serving in New York’s Elmira Reformatory (Eisenstadt, 2005). 

He lobbied the Prisons Association of New York to abandon “ time sentences “and to adopt reformative approaches that focused on giving rewards to inmates who were committed to reform by shortening their sentences. These rewards included joining rehabilitation programs for those who showed evidence for good behavior. This invention has had a significant impact in modern criminal justice. By the end of 2011, there were approximately seven million inmates who had been enrolled in a program based on adult correctional supervision as per the Bureau of Justice Statistics. This number is equivalent to 2.9 percent or one in 34 inmates of the whole prison population in the United States (Bureau of   Justice Statistics, 2012)

 The solving of murder cases using fingerprints was invented in 1892. Juan Vucetich who worked at the Central Police Department in Argentina La Plata created the use of fingerprint classification system as the first one in the world. The classification system was derived from earlier experiments carried out by Sir Francis Galton who was an English Scientist. Vucetich referred to the system as “the comparative dactyloscopy” which he used to identify a bloody fingerprint which he found on the scene of a gruesome murder of two young kids in 1892. He established that the fingerprints at the scene belonged to their mother. The mother finally admitted that she committed murder after being presented with the evidence. Since that time the Vucetich’s system has been improvised to over one hundred different variants of fingerprint patterns. The FBI uses all these variants in their Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) that has become the worlds’ biggest biometric identification system that stores over 103 million fingerprints of domestic subjects and 73,000 suspected and known terrorist from all over the world.

            Another historical event that has shaped the criminal justice system of America was the formation of The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1920. ACLU is a non-partisan, non-profit organization that was established to defend the Constitutional liberties and rights of all Americans. Nash Baldwin who is a well-known author and pacifist in collaboration with the law proffer Nelles Walter and the feminist layer, Eastman Crystal, are credited for forming this organization. They formed the ACLU as means of responding to the Palmer Raids. The raids aimed to arrest thousands of anti-war protestors simultaneously. A. Mitchell Palmer, the attorney general and Edgar Hoover termed this group of protestors as the “suspected radicals and anarchist.” After the arrest of these suspects, they were not charged or questioned since they lacked representation. The FBI only deported those with overseas ties. ACLU has today become the law firm that has gained the largest public interest. It has grown to have over half a million members with autonomous affiliate offices and staffed by a network of all the fifty states. Over one hundred staff attorneys of ACLU work collaboratively with 2,000 volunteer attorneys in handling approximately 6,000 cases on an annual basis.

 Dr. Alec Jeffreys, a geneticist at the University of Leicester, contributed to the use of biological identification in solving crimes using DNA. In September 1984, Jeffreys found what he termed as a smudgy, horrible blurry mess” on the slide that had biological material of Foxon Jenny, his assistant. With the close study of the sample, he managed to identify the sample’s family group and made the realization that he could distinguish the three categories belonging to the family members of Foxon using the inheritance sample pattern. Using this technique in APIL 1985, Jeffreys was able to solve a complex issue of immigration that finally contributed to the uniting of a young boy from Ghana to be with his family living in England. Also in 1986, Jeffreys made use of the DNA of a suspect who had been arrested and convicted of raping and murdering two young school girls. Today the DNA is used by the criminal justice system to solve criminal cases.

 By December 2012, the the National DNA Index (NDIS contained over ten million profiles of offenders, forensic profiles totaling to 467, 000 and 1.3 million arrestee profiles as per the FBI statistics. The metrics that guide the effectiveness of the NDIS are the number of investigations recorded in the database which has been of great help. The Combined DNA Index System (Codis) by 2012 had produced over 198,000 hits and assisted in investigations totaling to 190,500 (CODIS, 2012).

 In June 2010 there was the founding of the highly sophisticated computer worm that targeted five nuclear facilities of Iran. The Stuxnet virus was designed with the purpose of destroying centrifuges that helped in enriching the uranium found at the Iranian facilities. President Obama in June 2012 ordered the Stuxnet attack as part of continuing the strategy of George Bush of sabotaging the nuclear program of Iran (Sanger, 2012).

It is reported that the U.S worked for hand in hand with Israeli on this attack. Stuxnet had spread in all parts of Iran before being discovered a year later in 2010 as reported by the chief researcher of the computer security provider F-secure, Mikko Hypponen. He also added that the worm had taken almost ten years in writing is as a result of its code’s complexity. Stuxnet was one of the first governments sanctioned as a way of maintaining cyber attack of the adversaries’ infrastructure. Computer security researchers from Hungary, Russia, and Iran, in May 2012 undertook a joint discovery of the Flame which is a new type of malware that targeted the oil fields of Iran. A Hungarian researcher called the malware as one of the most complex malware that he had ever seen. In June 2012, The Washington Post reported that the Flame Malware was a product of the cooperation between Israel and the United States and it has identical elements with those of Stuxnet (Goodin, 2012).

Conclusion

 From the formation of the FBUI to digital warfare and use of DNA and fingerprints has become part of the basic code of the U.S law enforcement of protecting and serving the people. All theses milestones discussed in this essay have one thing in common which is their ability to break new ground in law enforcement. Thus they have forever changed and will continue changing the future of the criminal justice.

References

 

Goodin, D. (2012) Confirmed: Flame created by US and Israel to slow Iranian nuke program.  

Sanger, David.  (2012). Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran. New York Times. 

 

 Eisenstadt, P (2005).  The Encyclopedia of New York State1877 Brockway.  P 213

CODIS (2012) National DNA Index (NDIS) Statistics.  

Bureau of   Justice    Statistics (2012).  One in 34 U.S. adults under correctional supervision 2011.   

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in write my essay online if you need a similar paper you can place your order from write my essay for me services.