Criminal Justice System: A Case Study

When a judge releases an offender on their promise to appear at the next court date, the order shows that the judge is serious that the offender is not to contact the victim. If the judge releases the offender without an order in place and the offender in turn hurts or kills the victim would not sit well in the public eyes. Another reason that order is routinely placed into effect is to prevent the victim from having to debate with the court on why they want an order. When a victim requests a protection order, the “criminal justice system process often victimizes them further" (LaViolette, & Barnett, 2014, p.76). Mrs. Lentz was very helpful and supportive to the victims who had no knowledge of the court process. Even though they did not …show more content…
The female was in her jail jumpsuit sitting in the in-custody box of the courtroom. The female obviously had some mental issues and kept interrupting the judge and prosecutor. The judge appeared to not pick up on the mental illness cues and spoke to the woman like he was scolding a small child. At one point, he had her removed from the courtroom. The issue debated was that the woman needed a mental evaluation before the case could go forward. However, case law requires that a mental evaluation of a person in-custody needs to be completed within eight days. The woman had been in jail longer than that, and the next available mental health evaluation could not be done for two weeks. The court had no choice, but to release the woman. Her defense attorney then argued to have the protection order removed. The woman told the court that it is her dad, and she needs to see him. Her request was denied, and the order remained in effect. This was frustrating to all that the woman was released, and everyone knew she would violate the order, to include the woman. The very next day, the woman violated the order by going to her father’s home. The woman was arrested and fought with the police officers. She even took one of the officer’s batons. Our system on mental health is truly flawed, and we are lucky that this woman did not seriously hurt anyone (FIND QUOTE). We have learned in this course that statistics has shown that mental illness can be a contributed factor in domestic abuse. A lot of the statistics were conducted on male domestic violence offenders. In fact “male offenders were 13 times more likely than non-offenders to be mentally ill” (Buzawa, E., Buzawa, C., & Stark 2012. p.94). With my experience and what I saw in that courtroom, mental illness can also be present in woman