2.1: Administration of Justice
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- Susan Rahman, Prateek Sunder, and Dahmitra Jackson
- CC ECHO
Studying Administration of Justice can lead to a career in law, law enforcement, or corrections. Students at the college where this book was written who are considering this field are asked, “Are you committed to upholding justice?” Administration of Justice includes how laws and the legal system help provide public safety and maintain order (College of Marin, n.d.).Due to the problematic history of law enforcement, this field is prone to be tainted by the structural racism that was built into the original goal of policing in the United States. This field is also known as Criminal Justice or Criminology, both of which lead students into fields that deal with issues connected to the legal system.
The first criminal justice program was established at the University of California, Berkeley, by Berkeley Police Chief August Vollmer, in 1916.In the 1920s, criminal justice emerged as an academic discipline. The criminal justice system includes three distinct components: (1) Law enforcement; (2) The Judiciary; and (3) Corrections. All of these parts operate independently as well as together under the Rule of Law(City of Berkeley police, n.d.).
To study this system effectively, a student must know the racialized history of the creation of the United States as a decreed democracy. Without this knowledge, the tasks surrounding the administration of justice cannot be carried out effectively. The history of policing in the United States developed unique characteristics specific to the institution of chattel slavery via the creation of rules and punishments to maintain racial segregation. Its roots can be traced to some of the earliest forms of white supremacy, in the enforcement of rules and punishments associated with slavery by the use of slave patrols (Lepore, 2020). During the mid 1800s to the early 1900s, police were white men armed with guns who used their power to kill Blacks,Asians, indigenous Indians and Mexicans in the name of their laws (Lepore, 2020). Policing as an institution was created to maintain the structural order of white supremacy and some may argue that nothing much has changed since its inception. The use of the law as a tool of oppression applies to the other fields under which Administration of Justices falls as well, the legal system and corrections. In her book,The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color blindness, Michelle Alexander, 2010 discusses the ways in which the system is designed to trap people of color in a cycle of legal battles that strips their ability to participate fully in the democratic system their white counterparts thrive in. Our legal system is historically rooted in these slave patrols and the creation of this nation was built in the enforcement of this hierarchy. As most versions of American history point out, slavery formally ended just over one hundred and fifty years ago except as stated in the Thirteenth Amendment, as punishment forcrime.We then moved into the Jim Crow era which purported separate but equal which it never was. After the Civil Rights movements, Professor Alexander identifies the New Jim Crow era as mass incarceration, yet another iteration of the Administration of Justice (Alexander,2010). As students flocked to these fields that promised safety for their communities and a good paying job, they often failed to learn the racialized history of the field. Alexander’s work became a prominent read for those studying the sociological branch of criminology and further discussions of this information can be found in certain fields within Administration of Justice,yet there still remains a deep financial tie to the roots of government funded U.S. policing once known as slave patrols.“Academic criminology became more sociological while applied criminology became more administrative. Criminal justice university programs increasingly grew by the middle 1960s because of federal monies from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration” (Morn, 1980). Understanding this backdrop allows us to identify ways in which programs centered around public safety are also tied to upholding racial bias.
A glance at U.S. incarceration rates as compared to the U.S. population at large demonstrates that there is a disproportionate amount of Black and Brown people incarcerated and the lasting effects of a criminal record make pursuit of the American dream nearly impossible. As a tool for oppression, the law serves to sustain racial hierarchies.“No area in American life is more volatile than the point at which charges of racial injustice intersect with the administration of criminal law” (Smelser, Wilson, & Mitchell, 2001).