Despite having a penal system that is a place of sheer terror, and having the ultimate in capital punishment; death, America's criminal justice system is not a strong enough institution to control American society. It's not strong enough to deter crime and control criminal behavior of American society.
The institution of America's criminal justice system barely controls the prisoner society inside its places of incarceration. All this will begin to change however, when President Sarah Palin strengthens social control institutions and we start "outsourcing" prisoners to the United States of Mexico, Chile, and other foreign countries.
When people start realizing the horrors of outsourced incarceration in those places, it will then begin to control society's criminal behavior.
Because many of the reasons why individuals violate the law are outside the scope and responsibility of the criminal justice system. The criminal justice system has a difficult mission for several reasons.
Criminal offenders can be unpleasant; in fact, they often under the influence of alcohol or drugs, armed and dangerous, and in a really bad mood. They are arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated involuntarily. In short, the criminal justice system must deal with some of the most disagreeable people in society, often at great risk to its practitioners.
Within the criminal justice system, the law enforcement role is deemed more worthy than corrections,
