Paper Topic:

The Future of Criminal Justice

Future of Criminal Justice : Toward a Privatized Criminal Immunity and Constitutional Crisis

Introduction

The future of criminal justice , for everyone except the wealthy , is increasingly bleak . Numerous problems arise from the fact that crime is an extraordinarily nuanced social concept that is not precisely defined that violent crimes are deemed more serious when committed by individuals than when committed by corporate actors , and that ostensible constitutional protections fail to treat the poor and the wealthy similarly . Crime is not defined in a manner capable of creating a consistent and uniform

approach to socially destructive and undesirable behaviors because wealthy and powerful individuals are able to escape basic criminal definitions by hiding behind powerful corporations in ways that allow them to escape criminal culpability for apparently criminal types of acts . This is especially true when one examines traditional distinctions between violent and non-violent types of crimes more particularly , individual acts that result in physical harm are frequently defined as crimes in the criminal law whereas corporate acts that result in physical harm are instead frequently defined as non-violent or white-collar types of crimes . The criminal law therefore creates a perverse type of incentive to commit crimes through corporate shells because the corporate structure in many ways shields individuals from criminal liability or diminishes the type of punishment . Such disparate criminal consequences , for example , can be seen in criminal cases involving Ford Motor Company 's decision to produce the defective Ford Pinto which resulted in multiple deaths and fatalities back in the...

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