In this course, you will learn about The Criminal Justice (CJ) System. The CJ system is made up of three major parts: Law Enforcement, Courts, and Corrections. Within each of these parts, many processes occur. “CJ processes” include such things as a crime being reported to police; them arresting a suspect; that person being prosecuted in court; and, if found guilty, imprisoned. These processes are interlinked in that one leads to the other. The CJ process continues until a suspect/convict is “out of the system” due to not being investigated or arrested by police, prosecuted in court, found guilty, or no longer being punished.
A great way to visualize the CJ system is by looking at and studying the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ “Criminal Justice System Flowchart,” below.
A problem with this flowchart is it doesn’t give definitions of each CJ system process. So for this course, my colleagues developed an interactive version of the flowchart that includes definitions of each process. To see it, click here: BJS Flowchart. To see the definition of a process, click on the bubble and you’ll see it pop up at the bottom of the page.
Instructions: To ensure you can identify the major parts and processes of the CJ System, you will take a quiz. Before taking the quiz, you should review the information on this page; the BJS Flowchart; and the Wikipedia article on the Criminal Justice System, which you will also annotate (see Course Schedule). After, you are ready to take the quiz. Go to D2L and click on the “Week 1, Section: The Criminal Justice System” folder. Then, click on the Criminal Justice System Quiz. The quiz is 20 randomized questions consisting of multiple choice, true/false, multi-select, matching, and ordering. You have 30 minutes to complete it and get one attempt. Once finished, submit your quiz.