The Justice System By Aubra Warner and John Anderson

The Justice System Elements: Population Economy Law enforcement Criminals Courts Prisons

Interconnections: Crime Money

Purpose: Reduce crime Improving civil order Stability in the prison system

Stock and Flow Model of the Justice System: Monitoring the Prison Population in Washington State 2010

Graph Breakdown: The graph shows that over a period of sixty years, assuming the values stay the same, the population of the prisons in Washington State would decrease.

Values of the model: Prison Population – {people} New Prisoners – Prison_Population*Crime_Rate*Repeat_Offender {people} Released Prisoners – Prison_Population/Average_Sentence/Early_Release {People} Repeat offenders – {people/month} Crime Rate – 39.8/Population {people} Population – {People} Average Sentence – 42 {month} Early Release – 0.6 {people}

The Feedback loops within the Justice system As prisoner population increases, early release increases, release of prisoners increase and prison population decreases.

As prison population increases, early release increases, repeat offenders increases, new prisoners increase making prison population increase. The Feedback loops within the Justice system

Shocks to the System and Surprises from the clouds Shock to the system is economic downturn leading to higher unemployment rate, which increases the crime rate to 4.1 per thousand Washingtonians, which results in more people headed to prison. The system handles it by reducing the average sentence length and promoting early release (balancing feedback loop), which keeps the stock (prison population) stable Surprises from clouds could be a mass immigration of prisoners from other states, or increased sentence length from surrounding states, or a combination of both as well as a worldwide economic downturn, which would affect flows because in reality, the world is a big continuum with no real boundaries.