Internship Report: Sacramento Sheriff Child Abuse Bureau

This internship showed me how much time detectives spend in the office. They have a lot

of paperwork to do. A lot of people think that law enforcement spends most of their time on the

field, looking for criminals, but that is not true. There are a lot of different departments and they

each have their own jurisdiction. I was an intern for the Sacramento Sheriff Child Abuse Bureau.

There were seven detectives. Most of the time, they would be on their computer. They would be

writing reports, making phone calls, and setting up interviews with the parents, the suspect and

the victims. Since the victims were at the child abuse bureau were under 18, they would have

special rooms to interview them. There was a kids room that was for younger

I knew that there are many different

branches in the criminal justice system, such as law enforcement, corrections and judicial. But I

did not know about jurisdictions. I learned that the Sheriff’s department has jurisdiction over the

unincorporated areas, and some cities like Rio Linda and Rancho Cordova. I view the criminal

justice system as a team of extremely dedicated people who do their best every single day to

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ensure the safety of the public. They work long hours to put criminals in jail and protect the most

vulnerable citizens, the children.

I have taken many criminal justice classes throughout my years at Sacramento State

University and they did prepare me for this internship. I knew beforehand that police work

involves a lot of paperwork. It is mostly paperwork. I had a professor for CRJ 160 who told me

that the job of a law enforcement officer is 90 percent paperwork and 10 percent action. While

the media portrays law enforcement officers as people who run after criminals and are always

out in the field. That is not true. While law enforcement officers do have to physically fit

We have to data enter reports that involve child abuse under

the age of 18 years old. Some of those reports were sexual abuse reports. In the sex offender

class, I heard a lot of cases that were quite graphic and disturbing. Luckily, I did not read any

reports that were as disturbing as I heard in class. Which means that the people of Sacramento

aren’t as quite as horrendous. I have had to read reports about sexual assault against children to

fill out the synopsis and establish where the incident happened. I have skimmed quite a few of

these reports to find out the information that I needed. I usually did not read the entire summary

unless it was only a paragraph or less.

The criminal justice classes that I took emphasized how important it was to document

evidence. Evidence is everything when it comes to a case. Evidence makes the whole process

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easier for everyone. Eyewitness testimonies are seen as very important in the United States but

eyewitness testimonies are not always accurate. Eyewitnesses can forget things and