Reference no: EM133758036

Assignment

A. How much discretion should judges and parole board members have in administering the criminal sanction? What justifies latitude given these individuals? Please provide one case as your example for justifying your position.

B. Suppose you are a state legislator. What considerations will influence your vote on the process by which criminal sanctions are set? Please provide one case as your example for justifying your position.

C. What difficulties might you as a correctional officer, foresee in attempting to run your unit of the institution while at the same time upholding the legal rights of the prisoners? Provide one case as your example for justifying your position.

D. What role should public opinion play in categorizing various offenders for the purpose of punishing them?

E. Discuss the role judges play in both protecting the community and protecting the offender's rights: Should bail determine whether a defendant should be released or not? Is the ability to pay bail a fair method of determining who will be release prior to trial? What are the alternatives to bail, and are they a fairer method of determining release?

F. Discuss specialty court programs such as drug courts, gang supervision, and re-entry courts, domestic violence courts? Have these specialty courts been productive and worthy of their cost to the courts? Should these specialty courts be expanded to include more specialty areas?

G. Imagine you are a new prisoner. What are your immediate concerns? How will you handle them? What problems do you expect to face?

H. Imagine you are the administrator of a women's correctional facility. What are your immediate concerns? What problems do you expect to face that are characteristic of female inmates? How will you handle them?

I. Examine bail as applied in U.S. Courts. Is bail antiquated as a method of pre-trial release of defendants? What is the history of the bail system in the U.S. and the United Kingdom? Does bail discriminate against the poor in favor of the rich?

J. Imagine that you are incarcerated in a double-cell prison that is over capacity. What might be some of the factors that will influence the way you serve your time?

K. Discuss the concept of video arraignment versus being arraigned in court in-person? What are the advantages of video arraignment? Can video arraignment replace in-person arraignment? How prevalent is video arraignment?