Frank Schmalleger's Criminal Justice

What is justice? It is such a simple question yet such a hard thing to describe. However, the book Criminal Justice A Brief Introduction tries to explain it to us in a more simplified way. In the book the author Frank Schmalleger defines Justice as the principal of fairness and the ideal of moral equity. In other words, it is the act of giving each individual a fair an equal chance but I think there is more to justice than fairness and equality. My definition of justice builds on the books version and would also specify that when seeking justice, you are basing the crime and the punishment on what society and the individual believes is ethical or right and wrong. I don’t think justice was served though because both brothers agreed to take each other’s lives when they individually believed it was ethical. When the pills didn’t work and Mike was already out of it and Dale did what he had to do to get Mike out of his pain. In other words, society decided that when Dale was trying to do right by his brother by helping out of his misery he was not being ethical or morally right but on the individual basis Dale thought he was doing the right thing both morally and ethically. I do …show more content…
I would not consider Dale a threat to public safety. To me someone who is a threat to the public safety is someone who is a repeat offender or has sever crimes such as rape, child molestation, and very gruesome ways of murdering people as well as serial killers and mass murders. But there is always a silver lining and not everyone who murders people is going to be a threat to the public safety ever again. Just because he shot someone once out of fear doesn’t mean he is some mass murderer or serial killer who just kills for fun. All he did was freak out when the plan had failed and decided that instead of Mike suffer till he died he would make the process quicker but Dale shouldn’t have decided such a major decision for