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The Role of a Prosecutor
QUESTION
Discuss The Role of Prosecutor
| Subject | Law and governance | Pages | 2 | Style | APA |
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Answer
The Role of Prosecutor
The TED’s talk, A prosecutor's vision for a better justice system by Foss Adam that can be retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1fvr9rGgSg&feature=emb_logo discusses the roles of prosecutors in criminal justice and their ability to transform the society. According to Adams, prosecutors have the ability to change lives of most people, especially petty offenders. I enjoyed listening and watching the video since the speaker talks out of experience and highlights the significance of well-equipped prosecutors in criminal justice system. In its summary, Adam emphasizes that with well-resourced prosecutors, the society can be reformed.
The first point that stood out for me is the priority of criminal justice system in the United States of America. The system invests so much money in keeping one person in jail for the next 50 years but does little in ensuring that criminal activities are prevented. According to the speaker, American justice system is one of the most funded system not to prevent criminal activities but to keep petty offenders in jail for a long period of time. Adams suggests that instead of incarcerating individuals for minor felonies, such villains should be financially, emotionally, and intellectually empowered so that they can be of importance to the society. According to him, most individuals in prisons have committed trivial crimes that do not warrant convictions but need programs to prevent them from committing such wrongdoings in future as they venture on how they can be useful to the society.
Another important point that has stood out for me is how prosecutors handle cases after profiling people based on their income status. While they are ready to listen carefully to wealthy and popular individuals in the society, they rarely listen to individuals of low income, who apparently are the majority offenders in prisons due to petty offenses. According to Adams, the prosecutors have the power to change lives instead of ruining. For example, charging a young girl in court because of prostitution without creating programs that can help them to survive does not help the society because after serving the jail terms or fine they embark to prostitution again. It is in this context that I support the speaker by echoing that that instead of taking several months prosecuting petty offenses, criminal justice system can do better by looking for ways of preventing such offenses through empowering the offenders.
Lastly, another point that the speaker has highlighted but remains a concern to me is how people of color still remain the majority convicts in jails. According to him, in corridors of courts, the majority of people who says “not guilty” are brown and black in color. According to him, most of those individuals have not committed crimes but it is the perception of several individuals including prosecutors who believe that black people are criminals.
In conclusion, having watched and listened to Adam’s speech, I agree with him that reforms are not only about the police, people should also protest about the roles of prosecutors in ensuring cases that are in court deserve punishing. Apparently, some of them only need education and financial aids in order to positively transform the society.