Treatment of Law Enforcement in Todays Society Essay

Treatment of Law Enforcement in Todays Society - Essay Example Many of the different approaches to dealing with crime comes out of various assumptions and values. For countries or systems that believe a criminal is a product of his or her environment, it is more likely that money will be spent on rehabilitation and treatment, with much less of an emphasis on jail time. For these sorts of people law enforcement can be as simple as footing the bill for an Alcoholics Anonymous session. But for those who believe people are responsible for their own actions and intend to commit crimes (indeed intention or mens rea is required in all common law systems in order to convict someone of a crime), the emphasis is likely to be on punishment or locking up the criminal. Law enforcements in this case is about protection and to some extent about retribution. People from both sides of these arguments treat law enforcement differently. Clearly these concepts require a great deal of unpacking—which will be done in the course of this essay. The key things to examine are the various explanations for why people commit crimes, be they biological, psychological and sociological, and how law enforcement should deal with these criminals. In the law enforcement system there are two opposing modes of looking of how to deal with criminals. The first is the due process model. The gist of this model is that an individual can never be deprived of basic human rights no matter how horrible a crime he or she has committed. Even for the police or DA to put someone in prison is to take away the criminal’s inalienable right to liberty. In the course of this system there must be many appeals and a thoroughly scrutinized process to ensure that everything is done by the book (Samaha, 22). At its heart the due process model would rather see nine guilty people on the street than one innocent person in prison. The end result of this mode