and be under community supervision such as probation. If it were a more serious offense, they may serve a prison 
sentence and get paroled under community supervision after a specific amount of time. 
 
The funnel is one way to look at the criminal justice system, but we will see later how it can be much 
more complicated then this analogy suggests. It is important to know many crimes are unknown to police, 
which we will often refer to as the dark figure of crime. Additionally, plea bargains are a comprehensive 
tool, especially since it would cost our society so much to prosecute and allow a trial for every individual 
that committed a crime. Costs are a genuine issue that the system faces daily, and if the U.S. were to 
punish everyone for violating the law, there would not have any money left over for important things like 
education, healthcare, repairing highways, and so much more. We would see most of our taxpayers paying 
for just crime control, which may not be the best use of all that money. Again, bringing in the importance 
of discretion in the criminal justice system. 
Sometimes taking away discretion is excellent and sometimes having too much is wrong, but finding that 
balance is very important. Sometimes a judge may use discretion to release a domestic violence offender to 
community probation when an officer did not have the discretion to arrest. The judge’s discretion may cause 
the victim to get revictimized, but it may not. Some offenders may be at a higher risk of reoffending and able 
to determine this is valuable. We will discuss this later when talking about using evidence-based practices in 
the criminal justice system. 
ALISON S. BURKE, DAVID CARTER, BRIAN FEDOREK, TIFFANY MOREY, LORE RUTZ-BURRI, AND SHANELL
SANCHEZ
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