Dissolving Myths About America's Criminal Justice System

Throughout my college career, all of my preconceived notions about the Criminal Justice System have been shattered. In the beginning, I was astonished to hear that only 10% of crimes are cleared in the United States. I would have liked to believe, and did believe before a course in the subject, that in the end, the bad guy gets caught and goes to prison to pay for his sins. I have learned that this is just not reality. I majored in Criminology hoping that someday I would be able to catch the criminal through fingerprints, DNA, and microscopic fibers found at a crime scene. The criminal would then be arrested and go to prison to serve his full sentence. Again, I was ignorant of the facts. I do not like to be ignorant, and therefore, these facts have helped enlighten me and open up the door to the truth behind how Criminal Justice System really works.

I have learned that the Criminal Justice System has little access to crime. Police rarely catch the criminal through investigations, forensic or otherwise. In most cases, someone has to tell the police who committed the crime for there to be an arrest made, and the crime to be considered cleared. The Funnel Effect shows how very little criminals make it all the way through the Criminal Justice System. At the top of the funnel, all of the criminals committing crimes enter, and as they pass down through, many are filtered out for numerous different reasons. Perhaps the crime was never reported, allowing those criminals to escape the system. Maybe someone did report the crime, but an arrest was never made because police investigations turned up unsuccessful. Those criminals now also escape. Another filter could be that the judge throws out a case because he or she finds that the search and seizure of evidence by the police was unlawful, allowing those criminals to be filtered out of the funnel. In the end, the smallest part of the funnel, few criminals actually make it to prison because of all the different reasons that crime is not able to be solved.