“System” doesn’t immediately give you much information about what the “criminal justice system” actually is. That’s the idea of using the word rather than something like “institution,” because nothing other than a system can encompass the range of police, courts, prisons, and people that criminal justice involves.
“A system is a set of things—people, cells, molecules, or whatever—interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time. The system may be buffeted, constricted, triggered, or driven by outside forces. But the system’s response to these forces is characteristic of itself, and that response is seldom simple in the real world.” (Meadows 2)
Understanding the definition of a system can be disheartening. Identifying the causes and implications of injustices within the system requires parsing through tons of data. Creating solutions to those injustices is even harder. One piece of legislation or one just person in a powerful position can’t solve all the problems in the system, nor can they even make a dent. But I don’t think I need to say that it’s not useful to have the mindset of trying to fix the criminal justice system entirely so that everyone receives an objectively just amount of time for their crime and no innocent person is ever sent to suffer in prison and the police always use adequate force to prevent crime in our communities.
Knowing the system is required to change the system. Spreading awareness is thus a powerful tool. Awareness changes how you think, how you pray, what you buy, who you vote for, and affects why you should care. Hopefully this blog can spread awareness and keep issues that are important to the Catholic faith in the public eye.
I am not even close to an expert on criminal justice related. But I can still spread awareness by learning from Scripture, Catholic Social Teaching, and people much smarter than me (like what we just did with the systems above). And by spreading awareness, we are taking the first steps in making changes to the daunting criminal justice system.
Further Reading:
Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer. https://wtf.tw/ref/meadows.pdf
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