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As discussed throughout the text, most of our ideas about crime and justice come from the media and many of these messages are misleading or wrong. The media tend to oversimplify complex issues, and crime and criminal justice are no exception. This chapter makes us aware of how we all should be mindful of the future of our criminal justice system, as we will all be directly or indirectly affected by changing police practices, court reforms, laws, and the effectiveness of correctional systems.
Given the nature of the jobs and the personnel working within the criminal justice system, there is bound to be diversity, mistakes, and misconduct. Fortunately, the scrutiny of justice systems personnel by internal and external watchdogs, advocacy organizations, ombudsmen, and the media has increased. Accountability and transparency in the criminal justice system are some of the changes that have occurred as a result. The ironic consequence of this increased scrutiny is that it has contributed to our lack of faith in the criminal justice system and criminal justice personnel. Working towards building a justice system that respects victims, provides due process protections to offenders and protects all of us in a fair and unbiased manner is what we all should be striving to achieve.
The chapter endeavors to make future predictions on the state of Canadian criminal justice. This is a difficult endeavor, but one that must happen in order to reduce the uncertainty that confronts criminal justice organizations (especially when it comes to forces that are external to the agencies). The PESTEL analysis was presented in order to paint a big picture of how external factors will impact the operations of justice organizations. Political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors shape both the way we define what constitutes a crime and how the justice system should respond to these acts. Although rarely is there agreement on how these factors impact the CJS and to a greater extent, what the priorities of our CJS should even be, we should always be moving towards utilizing evidence-based practices in order to increase the efficacy of our CJS.