The Three Branches of Government

There are three branches of government, The Executive branch, The Legislative branch, and The Judicial branch. I know this can be a bit confusing because we think that corrections are police, courts and prison systems, and we are right. However all the laws these branches are sworn to protect comes from someplace.

It all starts with the constitution, the people who make the laws, and then the people that enforce them. The legislative branch (congress) makes the laws, the executive branch (President, Vice President and Cabinet) carry out the laws, and the judicial branch (Supreme Court and Court systems) evaluates and rules on laws.

The President’s powers give him the abilities to veto laws passed by congress. Congress confirms or rejects the Presidents appointments and has the power to remove him from office. The Supreme Court can overturn laws that they feel are unconstitutional, the justices are appointed by the sitting President.

Our forefathers were very smart in the way they set up this country; because these are broken down it specific branches they set into place a system that has checks and balances. No one entity has more power than the other. Therefore it doesn’t leave much room for corruption at the higher levels of the system.

The role of the correctional system has three main goals punish, protect the population, and rehabilitate. Corrections are also broken down, when we convict a person there are three ways to go, Jail, which consists of short term confinement in a local facility, this is mainly utilized for the first time offender, or minor infractions. Prison systems are used for the more violent, and for those who serve longer sentences. Once an offender is released we move to probation or parole, these works to ensure the offender does not continue to participate in things of a criminal nature.

We also have house arrest, which can be used in two different ways. One way we can use this method is to place someone on house arrest until...