Primary Reason For The High Cost Of Justice Essay, Research Paper

The Primary Reason for the High Cost of Justice. In a country that is plagued with crime from the tip of Maine to the shores of California, the federal government needs to take measures to decelerate the rising crime rate of this country at any expense. If a person were to think of it, there are multiple agencies that fight the war on crime everyday. There are employees at the local level, state level, and federal level, all requiring various means of equipment from guns to helicopters. This system of crime puts a serious dent in the wallets of taxpayers. If one were to study the 2000 fiscal year budget of all the criminal agencies in pursuit of justice in this country, one would conclude that the rising crime rate is the primary reason for the high cost of justice in America today. You have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you . Sound familiar? As Americans, by right, we are all guaranteed representation in a court of law by an attorney, whether we can afford one or not. With all of the poverty-stricken criminals across the country, when they get their day in court, they need a lawyer to defend them. This system becomes very high-priced after a year. This year alone the tab for representing impoverished criminals in America weighed in at an astounding 1,217,788,000 dollars. This phenomenal fee encompasses all of the necessary expenses of the Offices of the United States Attorneys, including intergovernmental and cooperative agreements. To further prove the thesis of this argument, if one were to take a drug case for example. Subsequent to the lawyer fee, the common six-year drug sentence costs 150,000 dollars a year to imprison a narcotics offender. Take into consideration the concept of recidivism and when this offender gets out it will tally up more expenditures for the government to take care of. All of these cases are brought to court by criminal justice agencies involved in the war on crime that prove to be expensive in their daily routine, the Federal Bureau of Investigation proves to be one of them.

The necessary expenditures for the Federal Bureau of Investigations to run their agency costs a whopping 3,002,876,000 dollars annually. This includes the 1,648 passenger vehicles needed to transport these federal officers from place to place. This fee also covers the automated data processing to run criminal profiles of individuals right on the spot. To investigate criminals undercover, the yearly tab calls for no more than 1,000,000 dollars. All this high tech equipment may seem like a squandering of the federal budget. Criminals are getting smarter so it is obligatory of a federal crime agency to stay on top of their game with as much knowledge and high-tech tools of the trade as possible. All this equipment used to put offenders behind bars isn t the only part of justice that costs a lot, what about rehabilitation for drug offenders after they are through with their sentence. Not only is drug abuse bad for a person, studies also reveal that there is a directly proportional relationship between people who use drugs and crime. Rather that see these individuals go through the same criminal process all the time, the government provides rehabilitation for abusers. Fundamental outpatient treatment costs a little under 5000 dollars while a more extensive, more involved rehabilitation process may range from 5000 dollars to 15,000 dollars. It is a shame and a waste of money to see individuals go through treatment and end up back on the streets again. On the other hand if it helps individuals get back on their feat, crime will go down. Crime proves to be a costly issue in society to deal with. There are multiple agencies on every level that have financial requests to fulfill their daily routines. There are also government rehabilitation programs that need funding as well. Even though the pursuit of justice has been and always will be an expensive and incessant journey, we can t give up, if the tax dollars makes for less crime and safer streets it is money well spent.