In the criminal justice system, there are a lot of different ways that people are treated based on the crime that they committed. If a person commits a mass murder while another person is arrested for forgery which one would get more attention? The mass murder would be the case that attracts more attention because they want to focus on why and who did this compared to a small forgery case. A guy by the name of Samuel Walker (Page 19) developed a wedding cake model of the criminal justice system to show how cases are treated based on circumstances. Four parts to the cake show how cases are treated which I will be discussing.
The first part of this wedding cake is the celebrated cases. These are the crimes that get a lot more recognition than most of the other offenses. For example, the Cleveland kidnapping was talked about nationally because the women were held in captivity for more than 10 years and the guy was labeled insane by the public. A normal kidnapping act doesn't get that much notice. What about the Bill Cosby scandal? His case gets talked about more because of his famous background in acting. The procedures in these types of cases are no different than a normal case besides the fact that more people show up for them and the process is usually filmed and shown nationally. So, it just shows that if you have a famous background or act on a serious wrongdoing it will get more notice than some of the less serious offenses.
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The second part of this cake is the serious felonies. These crimes are usually the ones that are on a more heinous level. The people who commit these acts usually have a reputation for being criminals and they have been in and out of the system most of their lives. Most of the crimes that these people commit are robbery, burglary, assault, domestic violence, etc. The police and the courts involved with these cases try to get these people the most severe punishments and have no chance to get their sentence reduced. They deserve to face the penalty for what they did.
On the third piece of the cake, you will find the lesser felonies. These crimes are typically not as violent and not as serious. The acts are usually committed by people who have little to no criminal history at all. Typically they fall under possession of drugs, check fraud, forgery, or other less violent acts. Most of the time these cases will be resolved through a court appearance and end in a plea deal.
Lastly, the final piece to the cake is the misdemeanors. These crimes are what most people get charged with. They consist of very minor crimes like public disturbance, public intoxication, fighting in public, and so on. Law enforcement usually tries to resolve these by a ticket, or an overnight arrest. If they do happen to go to court it is usually handled by them and ends with either a fine from the court, a plea deal, or even the possibility of jail time.
Now as read throughout the essay you can see why a wedding cake model was created. All different types of crimes are treated differently and they all have different penalties. In some cases it's more severe than others so make sure to think before you act on committing crimes.
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