The Critical Review of Three Basic Approaches towards Maintaining Law and Order - Essay Example

? The Critical Review of Three Basic Approaches towards Maintaining Law and Order The Critical Review of Three Basic Approaches towards Maintaining Law and Order Introduction The purpose and concept of law and order is supported by the public need to live in peace but in modern world of the 21st century, the law enforcement agencies are failing in fulfilling the basic and fundamental reason of their existence. The idea of law and order is known for being supported by three elementary approaches. Nevertheless, the first one is based on the idea of brutal discipline that is originated from the old religious testament that an eye has to be taken for an eye. As the humanity progressed in terms of intellect, they sadly found out that if humans keep on taking eyes for every eye taken then, everyone would end up with an empty eye-socket. The developed nations in the light of abovementioned discovery have recently eliminated death sentence and replaced it with life imprisonment. The notion of preserving human life and basic human rights is at the backend of the decision. According to the supporters of new way of implementing law, everyone has a right to exist in the world as God himself creates them. However, in a few states of America, the death sentence was kept valid in order to keep the crime rate low. The attitude and behavior of the society towards law is highly correlated with educational and intellectual development and growth of the nations. Furthermore, in developing parts of the world, the prisoners are treated inhumanly while; the brutal practice of hanging a human being by the throat is considered justice. Additionally, as the advent of knowledge occurred in the modern era, governments and law enforcement agencies came to realize the importance and value of scientific evidence. The advanced nations are getting more and more committed towards supporting the presence of crime and guilt with concrete empirical data. The presence of witness to the crime is not considered a reliable source of winning a conviction and therefore, prosecution is requested and suggested to backup their claims with evidentiary proofs. The concept of law enforcement is being filled with exactitude and empirical thinking whereas; it was based on human emotions in the past. In an ancient village, somebody killed a man by severing his throat by a shovel and distant tool marks were identified. A wise man recommended that all of the shovels in the village should be deposited for closer inspection and after receiving them, he placed the hardware in the open and in a few days, flies began to gather on a bloody shovel. This incident gave birth to the modern art and science of forensic science of investigation. The journey of criminology from being an emotion-based practice towards becoming a scientific discipline took thousands of years. But, ultimately humans are learning to set aside their emotions and feelings in the process of investigating a crime. The idea of modern criminology has become famous to originate from the overall head of positivism that stated that humans are good in their basic nature and they behave in a wrongful way due to external factors and phenomenon. The governments and law enforcement agencies must focus on removing unconstructive influences in the environment. The modern law and order management is based on treating humans with the humanistic values. Additionally, it is important and valuable to note that developed forensic science is fundamentally empowered in order to give the criminals a chance to experience recovery and grace. The notion of constructivism is the ultimate stage that has been believed to emanate from positivism. The constructivism is conceptualized so that criminal minds must be treated and helped in terms of seeing a positive side of life and they must be impressed towards becoming and transforming into participative humans in the society (Open University K209/Block 1, Youth Justice Board 2010 pp. 17 ). The critical review of all the three known approaches towards managing population in jails found that the developmental process of criminology is tightly linked with humans’ intellectual growth. In the past, criminals were considered undesirable and therefore, they were eradicated in masses. The suspects were also convicted falsely as the justice in those days was painfully based on racism and Niger was suspected to be the usual suspect. However, as the time passed, the education level of public grew in developed nations and so does the quality of criminal justice. The humans are learning new and innovative ways to handle crimes and now the notion of eliminating criminals from the society is not considered as a valid one. The role of courts in fostering scientific criminology should be considered valuable as the Judges refused to entertain any evidence other than the scientific one. Moreover, law enforcement agencies are strictly prohibited from using excessive force in order to extract information and they have been blessed with the right of holding the suspect in the case of legitimate suspicion. In United States and England the law enforcement units are expected to prosecute the suspect within forty eight hours of the detention or otherwise they are free to go. The general idea is to treat the suspects as innocent until and unless proven otherwise. The psychologists’ role is increasing in the process of helping the prisoners to become good and contributive participants of the society. Fundamentally, the classic approach in the direction of criminology stated that criminals must be eliminated from the society because they are significantly responsible for creating chaos in the society. The positivism argued that humans are basically good and they are known to transform into bad guys due to external forces and therefore, government and law enforcement agencies should divert their energies towards elimination of destructive forces in the society. Finally, the constructivism urged that state should and must play a significant role in facilitating the recovery process of the criminals and because of this humanistic and noble belief, the intervention of psychological practices is growing in jails. Interestingly, the group that was considered inhumane and undesirable in the past, is receiving notable attention in the present that is the sufficient proof of human intellectual development. The concept that primarily believes that humans are intrinsically gifted with the ability to serve the community in a positive way, has helped the developed nations to eliminate the need for killing criminals and thusly they are working in terms of rehabilitation of prisoners. Conclusion This paper reviewed and analyzed the present approaches of criminology and found that the science has come far away from racial convictions. The available remedies of the crimes are mild so that the criminals may be given an opportunity to recover. However, it is pleasant to note that old theological belief of justice is melted and now humans do not consider themselves with the authority of eliminating humans of any kind. The scientific method of crime investigation has helped the countries in minimizing racial convictions and the role of courts in this regard should be commended as they have refused to process any racial proof against the suspects. The old judiciary system was notorious for treating a suspect as criminal until proven otherwise. The abovementioned belief gave police the advantage to use excessive force. But, currently the legal system states and identifies suspects as innocent until they are proven guilty in the light of compelling evidence. In developing nations however, the Old Testament is prevailing and therefore, the circumstantial evidences are used to convict. The developing nations will take quite a significant amount of time before learning the true meaning of criminology that is to take a violent person off the street and help him or her in becoming a good individual. References Open University K209/Block 1, Youth Justice Board. 2010. Crime, Youth and Childhood: Understanding Theory and Research Open University, Buckinghamshire. Read More