Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Criminal justice
Summary
Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have been accused of committing crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions. Goals include the rehabilitation of offenders, preventing other crimes, and moral support for victims. The primary institutions of the criminal justice system are the police, prosecution and defense lawyers, the courts and the prisons system.
The criminal justice system consists of three main parts:
Law enforcement agencies, usually the police
Courts and accompanying prosecution and defence lawyers
Agencies for detaining and supervising offenders, such as prisons and probation agencies.
In the criminal justice system, these distinct agencies operate together as the principal means of maintaining the rule of law within society.
Law enforcement
The first contact a defendant has with the criminal justice system is usually with the police (or law enforcement) who investigates the suspected wrongdoing and makes an arrest, but if the suspect is dangerous to the whole nation, a national level law enforcement agency is called in. When warranted, law enforcement agencies or police officers are empowered to use force and other forms of legal coercion and means to effect public and social order. The term is most commonly associated with police departments of a state that are authorized to exercise the police power of that state within a defined legal or territorial area of responsibility. The word comes from the Latin politia ("civil administration"), which itself derives from the πόλις for polis ("city"). The first police force comparable to the present-day police was established in 1667 under King Louis XIV in France, although modern police usually trace their origins to the 1800 establishment of the Thames River Police in London, the Glasgow Police, and the Napoleonic police of Paris.
Police are primarily concerned with keeping the peace and enforcing criminal law based on their particular mission and jurisdiction.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.