Module 1 Lesson 1 and 2
Module 1 Lesson 1 and 2
LESSON 1: Terminologies
Learning Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, the student should be able to:
1. Explain the terms related to the concept of the criminal justice system.
2. Analyze the concept of the criminal justice system using the related terms used.
Concept/Discussion:
In the field of Criminal Justice System, the following are the common words being used
in understanding its concept. Please understand the terminologies.
Criminal Justice System – The machinery which the society uses in the prevention
and control of crimes. It may also refer to the totality of the activities of the law
enforcers, prosecutors, judges, and corrections personnel, as well as those of the
mobilized community in crime prevention and control.
● apprehension,
● prosecution,
● trial,
● conviction,
● sentencing and
Goals of CJS
1. Prevention of crime
4. Suppression of criminality
1. Criminal
- It refers to any person finally convicted by a competent court in violation of law.
- pertaining to, or involving, crimes or the administration of penal justice. An
individual who has been found guilty of the commission of conduct that causes social
harm and that is punishable by law; a person who has committed a crime.
(The Legal Dictionary)
- A person can be branded as criminal under the following circumstances:
1. He must have committed a crime.
2. He must have been apprehended and investigated by the police.
3. By virtue of sufficient physical evidence and testimonies of witnesses,
he must have been arrested.
4. Due to the presence of prima facie evidence, the case was remanded to
the court by the prosecutor for trial.
5. There was arraignment.
6. There was trial.
7. The offender was found guilty.
8. A sentence was rendered by the court.
9. The convict was conflicted in prison.
10. The convict has fully served his sentence in prison.
2. Justice
- Principle of dealing with fairness; equality in the application of law.
- The idea of giving each person his or her fair due as a matter of right.
3. System
- A process; a coordinated body of method; organized way of work.
- orderly combination or arrangement, as of parts or elements into a whole
specifically, such combination according to some rational principle, any
methodical arrangement of parts.
5. Act - Any bodily movement tending to produce some effect in the external world.
6. Omission- is meant inaction, or the failure to perform positive duty which one is
bound to do.
7. Accused - A person or persons formally charged or implicated in wrongdoing but not
yet convicted of a crime.
12. Felony - A crime that is punishable by imprisonment of more than one year.
13. Guilty - A verdict of a judge or jury that a person accused of committing a crime did
commit it.
14. Judge - A person who hears and decides cases for the courts.
15. Misdemeanor - A crime that is less serious than a felony and that is usually
punishable by a fine, penalty, forfeiture, or imprisonment of less than one year.
17. Plea - An accused person’s answer to a criminal charge. For example: not guilty,
guilty, or no contest.
18. Plea Bargain - The agreement a defendant makes with the prosecutor to avoid a
trial. Usually involves pleading guilty to lesser charges in exchange for a lighter
sentence.
19. Warrant - A court order directing a law enforcement officer to make an arrest, a
search, or a seizure.
20. scales - It is a symbolic of using just weights for measuring goods and of having
balanced options. It is a symbol of justice. It is a symbolic of using just weights for
measuring goods and of having balanced options. It is a symbol of justice.
Concept/Discussion:
Throughout the history of criminal justice, evolving forms of punishment, added rights
for offenders and victims, and policing reforms have reflected changing customs,
political ideals, and economic conditions. In this lesson, the development of criminal
justice system will be discussed in order to appreciate how the past events affected the
present situation. Primates often have notions of fairness and sharing, with violations
punished by exclusion
or banishment from social groups. In human history, prior to agriculture, more nomadic
cultures had systems of punishment for behavior or resistance. With the development of
agriculture, which led to more closely populated cities and cultures and behavior to
address fears of persons taking advantage of or causing harm to others, more formal
systems of punishment for crimes
developed, independently around the world, or based upon other cultures, including
those developed in the early Babylonian laws of Hammurabi and the Hammurabi Code.
The codes have served as a model for establishing justice in other cultures and are
believed to have influenced laws established by Hebrew scribes, including those in the
Book of Exodus. Hammurabi’s Code is one of the most famous examples of the ancient
precept of “lex talionis,” or law of retribution, a form of retaliatory justice commonly
associated with the saying “an eye for an eye.” Under this system, if a man broke the
bone of one his equals, his own bone would be broken in return. Capital crimes,
meanwhile, were often met with their own unique and grisly death penalties. If a son
and mother were
caught committing incest, they were burned to death; if a pair of scheming lovers
conspired to murder their spouses, both were impaled. Even a relatively minor crime
could earn the offender a horrific fate. For example, if a son hit his father, the Code
demanded the boy’s hands be “hewn off.” For crimes that could not be proven or
disproven with hard evidence (such as claims of sorcery), the Code allowed for a “trial
by ordeal”—an unusual practice where the accused was placed in a potentially deadly
situation as a way of determining innocence. The Code notes that if an accused man
jumps into the river and drowns, his accuser “shall take possession of his house.”
However, if the gods spared the man and allowed him to escape unhurt, the accuser
would be executed, and the man who jumped in the river would receive his house.
Ancient China
Law enforcement in Ancient China was carried out by "prefects". The notion of a
"prefect" in China has existed for thousands of years. The prefecture system developed
in both the Chu and Jin kingdoms of the Spring and Autumn period. In Jin, dozens of
prefects were spread across the state, each having a limited authority and employment
period. In Ancient China, under the rule of Dang Lin Wang, a new judicial system
emerged. This new system had prefects appointed by local magistrates, who in turn
were appointed by the head of state, usually the emperor of the dynasty. The prefects
oversaw the civil administration of their "prefecture", or jurisdiction. Prefects usually
reported to the local magistrate, just as modern police report to judges. Some prefects
were responsible for handling investigations, much like modern police detectives.
Eventually the concept of the "prefecture system" would spread to
other cultures such as Korea and Japan. Law enforcement in Ancient China was also
relatively progressive, allowing for female prefects. In ancient China, when minor judicial
incidents such as robberies occur, the client reports
to a police officer (a.k.a. constable) at the prefectural office. To catch a thief, a
constable can arrest another thief by baiting him with a forged opportunity and use the
thief's same-field knowledge to predict the one in question. The assisting thief would still
be punished for robbery but since he assisted the officer his punishment would be
lowered. By Ming law, police officers have a strict time schedule to arrest the criminals.
They usually have thirty days to arrest the issued criminals. If officers have not captured
their assigned
criminals after thirty days or assigned deadline, they would subject to physical
punishments. Successfully arresting criminals earns police officers’ promotions.
However, this method was often subject to abuse in order to quickly earn promotions.
Police officers were appointed by the
head officials from the populations.
Pre-modern Europe
For the most part, crime was viewed as a private matter in Ancient Greece and Rome.
Even with offenses as serious as murder, justice was the prerogative of the victim's
family and private war or vendetta the means of protection against criminality. Publicly
owned slaves were used by magistrates as police in Ancient Greece. In Athens, a group
of 300 Scythian slaves was used to guard public meetings to keep order and for crowd
control, and also assisted with dealing with criminals, manhandling prisoners, and
making arrests. Other duties associated with modern policing, such as investigating
crimes, were left to the citizens themselves. The Roman Empire had a reasonably
effective law enforcement system until the decline of the empire, though there was
never an actual police force in the city of Rome. When under the reign of Augustus, the
capital had grown to almost one million inhabitants, he created 14 wards, which were
protected by seven squads of 1,000 men. If necessary, they might have called on the
Praetorian Guard for assistance. Beginning in the 5th century, policing became a
function of clan chiefs and heads of state.
During the Middle Ages, crime and punishment were dealt with through blood
feuds (or trial by ordeal) between the parties. Payment to the victim (or their
family), known as wergild, was another common punishment, including for violent
crimes. For those who could not afford to buy their way out of punishment, harsh
penalties included various forms of corporal punishment. These included mutilation,
whipping, branding, and flogging, as well as
execution. Västgötalagen specifies exactly how much to pay, if anything, depending on
who was slain. The primary form of state-administered punishment during ancient times
and the Middle Ages was banishment or exile. Though a prison, Le Stinche, existed as
early as the 14th century in
Florence, incarceration was not widely used until the 19th century. Rather, it was used
to detain prisoners before trial or for imprisoning people without judicial process. The
Anglo-Saxon system of maintaining public order was a private system of tithings, since
the Norman conquest led by a constable, which was based on a social obligation for the
good conduct of the others; more common was that local lords and nobles were
responsible to
maintain order in their lands, and often appointed a constable, sometimes unpaid, to
enforce the law.
Colonial America
When early colonists first came to America, they did not include trained lawyers or other
law-knowledgeable persons. Many parts of the criminal justice system in colonial
America were similar to those in England, France, and the Dutch Republic. Gradually
French and Dutch influences disappeared in the islands. What remained was the basic
idea many had of the English
common law system. This system was the best-known to seventeenth-century colonists.
The common law system included a set of rules that were used to solve problems in
society. It was based on the history of decisions previous judges had made instead of
lawmaking codes or laws. This system
made a distinction between two basic types of crimes: felonies and misdemeanors. The
legal process, mostly for more serious crimes, involved a grand jury, composed of
members of the community, which decided whether there was enough evidence for
prosecution. However, in these proceedings no district attorneys or public prosecutors
were available. The victim of the
crime was responsible for instigating the prosecution and financing it. It was these
fundamental principles that stuck with the colonists and were used selectively to create
a new and unique criminal justice system. Many factors influenced the colonists’
selection process by which they constructed their
approach to criminal justice. As previously mentioned, there were no professional legal
experts and few law resources available. This left a lot of room for creativity and
mistakes. The colonists were largely left to their own devices concerning the details of
their developing criminal justice system. The new environment the colonists
encountered in the New World, especially the
western frontier, also affected the way the law was shaped. The system was molded to
fit the colonists’ needs as they settled further and further west. Vigilantism was an
inevitable byproduct of the faults of the development of justice in America. Religion,
especially early on in the colonial period, exerted a strong influence on law making.
Legal codes, such as the 1648 Book of the
Figure 3. Detail of 1844 woodcut of a British military flogging. (Hulton Archive/Getty)
General Laws and Liberties of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, contained very strong
biblical references, more so than did the ones in England. Although this religious impact
was felt most strongly in Puritan colonies, similar ideas were evident among other
colonists as well. Many colonial makeshift criminal codes considered lying, idleness,
drunkenness, certain sexual offenses, and even bad behavior to be crimes. These
moralistic crimes stemmed from the relation of crime to sin and sin to crime. Adding to
the religious factor, the colonists held individual liberty in high regard.This later
influenced more contemporary criminal codes.
Development
The first official criminal justice system was created by the British during the American
Revolution, as they created the system to primarily justify hangings to the citizens of
their government. In each selected area or/and district there was a magistrate that in
today's time would be known as a judge. These individuals were in charge of
determining if the Crown or also known as the British government had enough evidence
to hang an individual for a crime. The British would not always hang an individual for
committing a crime, there would also be trials for punishments that would be carried out
by cleaning ships, prison ships, or be locked up on British mainland. During the
American revolution the primary type of punishment was to be hanged or sent to prison
ships such as the notorious HMS Jersey. After the
American revolution the British-based criminal justice system was then adopted by other
developing nations (Such as the United States).
The collective experiences of people shape their response to crime and disorder. To
understand the nature of crime in the Philippines and its criminal justice system, one
must be familiar with its history and its consequences. The foregoing discussion
describes the Development of the Philippine criminal justice system through different
stages in its history.
Pre-Colonial Justice
Human settlements had existed in the archipelago well before the arrival of the first
Spanish conquistador. Early settlers came from the south via Borneo and Indonesia and
from the north from Southern China and Taiwan. Most of them lived by or close to water
and traded with the Chinese, the Cambodians, and the Champans (Francia, 2010).
These pre-colonial societies were based on kinship and were stratified into three
groups: the ruling elite, their peers and followers, and the slaves (Francia, 2010). A
datu, whose authority rested primarily on his physical prowess, wisdom, inheritance, or
wealth, ruled the smallest political-social unit known as barangay. Each barangay
existed autonomously and a centralized government did not exist(Francia, 2010).
- Assisted by the elders of the barangay, the datu legislated laws and acted as judge. All
trials were held in public and litigants pleaded their own case. At times, the datu would
hold trial by ordeal to resolve doubts. People believed that the gods would protect the
innocent and punish the guilty and that the result of the ordeals was a revelation of the
divine truth (Agoncillo, 1994).
Murder, adultery, theft, and insulting a woman were considered great offenses and were
punished by enslaving the offender (Blair & Robertson, 1904). If the
value stolen was great, the offender and his relatives were all fined. Failure to pay the
fine resulted in the enslavement of all member of the family (Blair &
Robertson, 1904). Toward the end of the 14th century, Muslim missionaries reached the
southern islands of Mindanao and converted the natives. This resulted in the creation of
alliances that helped in thwarting the subsequent efforts to colonize southern
Philippines (Abuza, 2003). Islam would have spread northward were it not for the arrival
of European conquistadores beginning in the16th century (Francia, 2010).