Procedural and Restorative Justices Changing Jail Time.

As offenders are getting released from their prison and re-integrating into the community, the issue at hand now is how the judicial branch and/or community can keep them from reentering the correction system. This re-entry issue may be the effect of society labeling offenders as â€Å"dangerous individuals,† once they have committed a crime. In the criminal justice system, the focus is publicizing the criminals’ wrongdoings and punishing those behaviors. The defendants’ crime is then spread throughout the community from attorneys to the courts then to the media. As a result of this spreading, people’s attitudes change towards the offenders--treating them like they are not human--and people start to distance themselves from the offenders making them feel like outcasts in their communities. This societal isolation caused by labeling can result in re-entry. Classical theory of labeling suggests that formal societal reaction to crime can be the cause of the development of one’s criminal career; however, modern theorists have predicted that several different processes cause the involvement of offenders in crime and deviance to increase. [1] Base on these theories, in recent years, the procedural and restorative justice approaches have been working on demolishing the stigma associated with offenders. Procedural justice is the process of making and implementing fair decisions, so parties involved in the matter can feel affirmed with the outcomes, [2] while Restorative justice is aShow MoreRelatedPrison Reform Topic Paper : Prisons6604 Words   |  27 PagesLaw Review, 2010). Which approach is the most effective for a society that decides to punish? What do we do about those who commit crimes? This questions seems to have a more definitive answer in the US. The last four decades of American criminal justice have been shaped by the public appeal to get tough on crime (Colgan, 2006). Since the mid-1970s, the United States has engaged in a race to incarcerate that has resulted in a prison population expanded to a level previously unknown in any democratic