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do social inequalities cause crime
Crime Causation
Crime Causation
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For this assignment I will be summarizing chapter 7 titled “Crime without Punishment” from Kleiman's When Brute Force Fails . This chapter is broken into different short topics, I will be summarizing the chapter in the that order. In the introduction Kleiman begins with the statement that “punishment is costly to inflict and painful to undergo” (p. 117). The introduction states that we need to find ways to reduce crime without increasing punishment and hurting people. He says that crime accompanies social disadvantage and that those who commit crime have bad decision making skills and lack of self command. The conclusion he draws at the end of the introduction is that “crime is a cause and consequence of social disadvantage” (p.117).
The first topic of the chapter is the two “root causes” claims which focuses on the question of why just improving social conditions is not enough to solve the problem of high crime rates. The conclusion that he draws is that there is a correlation between socio-economic conditions and crime rates however, they are not dependent on one another which is why just improving social conditions is not the best method to lower the crime rates. The evidence for this is “the crime collapse of the 1994-2004 period” which was not a period of greatly improved conditions (p.118). The second topic in the chapter is cost- effectiveness and targeting which focuses the question of why we do not just spend more money on social programs instead of expanding the criminal justice operations. This topic also discusses target efficiency which means to deliver help where there is an apparent problem. The conclusion states that we should place some responsibility on large systems like health care with large budgets instead ...
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...e. I think there should have been more evidence and analysis added to this section to support the policy conclusion.
To conclude I want to discuss the section that was the most confusing for me, the lead and environment issues sections. I understand that small amounts of lead can make changes in the brain and can lead to poor decision making which can lead to criminal activity. What I do not understand is why lead is considered a big deal, because there are other things that can lead to flawed decision making such as drugs and alcohol so why does Kleiman emphasize lead. I am still confused how small amounts of lead makes such a big difference maybe adding some scientific evidence or explanation would make this section more clear. Overall chapter 7 was a very good chapter and I did learn a lot of ways to address crime without using punishment which was the main idea.
The central element of calculation involves a cost benefit analysis: Pleasure versus Pain, (5) Choice, with all other conditions equal, will be directed towards the maximization of individual pleasure, (6) Choice can be controlled through the perception and understanding of the potential pain or punishment that will follow an act judged to be in violation of the social good, the social contract, (7) The state is responsible for maintaining order and preserving the common good through a system of laws (this system is the embodiment of the social contract), (8) The Swiftness, Severity, and Certainty of punishment are the key elements in understanding a law's ability to control human behavior. Classical theory, however, dominated thinking about deviance for only a short time. Positivist research on the external (social, psychological, and biological) "causes" of crime focused attention on the factors that... ... middle of paper ... ...
Throughout history, it has become very clear that the tough on crime model just does not work. As stated by Drago & Galbiati et al. In their article: Prison Conditions and Recidivism, although it is...
Mass incarceration has caused the prison’s populations to increase dramatically. The reason for this increase in population is because of the sentencing policies that put a lot of men and women in prison for an unjust amount of time. The prison population has be caused by periods of high crime rates, by the medias assembly line approach to the production of news stories that bend the truth of the crimes, and by political figures preying on citizens fear. For example, this fear can be seen in “Richard Nixon’s famous campaign call for “law and order” spoke to those fears, hostilities, and racist underpinnings” (Mauer pg. 52). This causes law enforcement to focus on crimes that involve violent crimes/offenders. Such as, gang members, drive by shootings, drug dealers, and serial killers. Instead of our law agencies focusing their attention on the fundamental causes of crime. Such as, why these crimes are committed, the family, and preventive services. These agencies choose to fight crime by establishing a “War On Drugs” and with “Get Tough” sentencing policies. These policies include “three strikes laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and juvenile waives laws which allows kids to be trialed as adults.
Crime has always been a hot topic in sociology. There are many different reasons for people to commit criminal acts. There is no way to pinpoint the source of crime. I am going to show the relationship between race and crime. More specifically, I will be discussing the higher chances of minorities being involved in the criminal justice system than the majority population, discrimination, racial profiling and the environment criminals live in.
The ‘direct costs’ are the costs arising from the crime taking place, i.e. damage to property. The ‘elimination costs’ include costs to society including funding the police force and the prison service. These costs may be calculated using the principle of opportunity cost. The net economic cost of crime to society is thus the difference between what gross domestic product would be if there were neither criminal nor crime prevention activities, and what GDP currently is, given the present state of crime and prevention (Sharp et al, 1996). Thus, there is an optimal level of crime for society. However, it is very difficult to justify to society that there is an optimal level of particularly devastating crimes like murder.
Many observers have drawn a simple correlation between these two trends. Putting more offenders in prison caused the reduction in crime. The Sentencing project has just completed a study that examines this issue in great detail and concludes that any such correlation is ambiguous at best. In examining the relationship between incarceration and crime in the 1990s the picture is complicated by the seven year period just prior to this, 1984-91. In this period, incarceration also rose substantially, at a rate of 65%. Yet crime rates increased during this time as well, by 17% nationally. Thus we see a continuous rise in incarceration for fourteen years, during which crime rose for seven years, then declined for seven years. This does not suggest that incarceration had no impact on crime, but any such connection is clearly influenced by other factors. A comparison with other nations is instructive in this rega...
Why the decline in crime in the 1990s? Many plausible explanations have been reported (and given short shrift by the authors), including higher conviction rates and longer prison terms which are keeping repeat offenders off the streets, more police and better policing strategies, decline in the crack cocaine trade and higher expenditures in victim precautions like security guards, alarms, car theft devices, etc.
There are different principles that makeup the crime control model. For example, guilt implied, legal controls minimal, system designed to aid police, and Crime fighting is key. However one fundamental principle that has been noted is that ‘the repression of criminal conduct is by far the most important function to be performed by the criminal processes’. (Packer, 1998, p. 4). This is very important, because it gives individuals a sense of safety. Without this claim the public trust within the criminal justice process would be very little. The general belief of the public is that those that are seen as a threat to society, as well as those that fails to conform to society norms and values should be separated from the rest of society, from individuals who choose to participate fully in society. Consequently, the crime control model pro...
Muncie, J., and Mclaughin, E. (1996) The Problem of Crime. 2nd ed. London: Sage Publication Ltd.
A poll was conducted by the Southern States Police Benevolent Association to find the leading cause of crime. They found out that sixty-five percent didn’t think that gun control was an effective method to combat crime (Bejlefeld). Only one percent thought that guns caused crime while forty-eight percent said drug abuse was one of the leading causes of crime (Bejlefeld). Twenty-one percent believed that one of the main causes of crime has to do with the failure of the criminal justice systems (Bejlefeld). This report proves that gun is not the leader in crime and the failure of the justice system is the leading cause of
Rosenfeld, R. (2011). Changing Crime Rates. In J. Wilson, & J. Petersilia, Crime and Public Policy (pp. 559-588). New York: Oxford University Press.
punishment is an asset to society: it is the only punishment that fits the crime, it deters potential criminals
History shows people in ancient times committed crimes which violated social norms and acceptable conduct despite threats of harsh punishment. There are theories regarding causes of crime but that by Emile Durkheim is quite prominent in that anomie arises as result of mismatch between individual or group standards when compared to the acceptable standards of wider society; this mismatch leads to deviance which in turn came from loss of social identity and self-regulation.
Punishing the unlawful, undesirable and deviant members of society is an aspect of criminal justice that has experienced a variety of transformations throughout history. Although the concept of retribution has remained a constant (the idea that the law breaker must somehow pay his/her debt to society), the methods used to enforce and achieve that retribution has changed a great deal. The growth and development of society, along with an underlying, perpetual fear of crime, are heavily linked to the use of vastly different forms of punishment that have ranged from public executions, forced labor, penal welfare and popular punitivism over the course of only a few hundred years. Crime constructs us as a society whilst society, simultaneously determines what is criminal. Since society is always changing, how we see crime and criminal behavior is changing, thus the way in which we punish those criminal behaviors changes.
Social harmony has become a powerful and popular indicator to asset a population’s quality of life. So much so, people’s attitude toward crime rates has shifted from a lukewarm state to a profoundly sensitive level. Accordingly, the public’s increasing fears have translated into more and more restrictive policies to punish crimes. Therefore, crime prevention is considered as a strategic approach to lessen the probability of criminal behaviors in a political community, and to maintain social-control following the heated debates on civilians’ safety.