Criminal justice jobs can cover a whole variety of different professions. The criminal justice system is often broken down into three areas: law enforcement (policing), the courts (lawyers, judges etc.) and agencies for detaining those who have been sentenced for breaking the law. Yet jobs can extend further than these three areas. In this article I will give a few examples of jobs that work with people once they have left prison, and help toward their path of rehabilitation.
One of the most obvious jobs is the role of a probation officer. Your main role would be to make sure offenders you are responsible are following the rules of their probation after release. You may be asked to recommend certain actions and approaches toward these offenders depending on your level and/or the situation. You would meet periodically, and have to make regular reports on how the offender is doing, highlighting any warning signs, or making the courts aware if an offender has failed in one way or another to stick to the terms of their release, which can vary massively from case to case.
Another role is working with young offenders. In many ways this is similar to a probation officer, apart from the clientele being of a younger age. And a lot of the time they will not have served jail time unlike those you will work with as a probation officer. Instead you will be making sure their problems are not escalating and that they are making positive steps in their life to move away from their previous actions. The level of support may also vary if you are working with children rather than adults too.
The final example I want to share with you is working as a substance misuse worker. It isn’t necessarily the case that this would always be involved as part of the support network within the criminal justice system. As sometimes this would come under random spot checks for institutions and companies. This would involve administering drug tests in form of dry blood spot testing and/or urine tests, depending on what needs to be tested for. You will then provide assessments of these results, and then advise how cases should proceed.
I’m hoping this shows another aspect of criminal justice that is integral to the justice system as a whole. It might not be what is first thought of when thinking about criminal justice, but without them, the path of rehabilitation would be a lot more precarious and put more pressure on the other aspects of the system, due to unsuccessful reforming of character.
