Crime Among Social Groups
Why are crime rates higher among some social groups than the others? Are some groups more prone to crime, or are they in situations more conducive to crime? Many factors can influence a person to commit a crime, but is there a common trait that leads people down the road to actually committing a crime. Some traits that can influence criminal behavior are: Families, Economic status, Gender, Race, and Age.
Married life domesticates but also can cause strain and difficulties. There are new conflicts that arise from people getting married. Often it is the first major decision of one's life and soon there are more bills, more relatives, conflicting plans, children, your spouse might die, and annoying habits that your spouse may have emerge, in most relationships these can all be overcome in time as divorce stats indicate, society is not yet to the point where for every marriage there is a coinciding divorce. "A correlation rises from low incomes, increased uncertainty and fear, and increased personal frustration. These factors put family life under a strain and lead to an increase in child and spouse abuse."1 If these new challenges cannot be overcome then a broken home is the most common result. A broken family can generate in different ways, death, separation, divorce. These are the most common but not all possible reasons for a broken home. There are two ways to observe a break in a family: Husband-wife and Parent- Child. "In addition, less than one-third (31%) of the inmates were married at the time of admission to a correctional facility, compared with almost two-thirds (63%) of adults aged 18 and over in the general population."2
The death of a partner can cause an unstable mind in a surviving spouse and their children. Widowed people are chiefly older, so crime is a smaller more limited problem with the survivors. Younger widows tend to migrate to different cities, females generally moving west and males moving east. This migration, as we will call it, of widowed women overcrowding cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington cause desperate males to follow women to these cities. Knowing that widows are usually left with money through life insurance policies and inheritance from their deceased partners, less fortunate people envy the cash and see the dense population of female widows as being easy victims. Th...
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...d Bade, Robin Macroeconomics Canada in the Global Environment Addison - Wesley Publishers Limited Don Mills, ONT. 1997 pg. 505
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Sinclair, Roberta L. and Boe, Roger Male Young Offenders in Canada: Recent Trends Research Branch Correctional Services Canada. 1998
Taylor, Jo-Anne and Atkins, Christine Models of Family among Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal Offenders. Correctional Research and Development Correctional Services Canada. 1993
Tierney, John Criminology: theory & context Prentice Hall/ Harvester Wheatsheaf Hertfordshire 1996
Uzoaba, Julius H. E. Managing Older Offenders; Where Do We Stand? Research Branch Correctional Services Canada. 1998
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Author Unknown A Profile of Inmates in Adult Correctional Facilities Statistics Canada, The Daily, Thursday, June 4, 1998 http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/980604/d980604.htm#ART2
Inventing the Savage: The Social Construct of Native American Criminality. Luana Ross. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1998.
Every civilization in history has had rules, and citizens who break them. To this day governments struggle to figure out the best way to deal with their criminals in ways that help both society and those that commit the crimes. Imprisonment has historically been the popular solution. However, there are many instances in which people are sent to prison that would be better served for community service, rehab, or some other form of punishment. Prison affects more than just the prisoner; the families, friends, employers, and communities of the incarcerated also pay a price. Prison as a punishment has its pros and cons; although it may be necessary for some, it can be harmful for those who would be better suited for alternative means of punishment.
the Canadian justice system(Brizinski,1993,395) it has over and over again been stated that the present justice system has and is failing Aboriginal people. It is not suited for their cultural needs and does nothing to rehabilitate offenders but rather does the offender more harm then good. It does not address the underlying conditions causing criminal behavior or in assessing what specific needs must be addressed to rehabilitate.
The current criminal justice system is expensive to maintain. In North America the cost to house one prisoner is upwards of eighty to two hundred dollars a day (Morris, 2000). The bulk of this is devoted to paying guards and security (Morris, 2000). In contrast with this, community oriented programming as halfway houses cost less than the prison alternative. Community programming costs five to twenty five dollars a day, and halfway houses although more expensive than community programs still remain cheaper than prison (Morris, 2000). Tabibi (2015c) states that approximately ninety percent of those housed in prison are non-violent offenders. The treatment of offenders in the current system is understood to be unjust. By this, Morris (2000) explains that we consistently see an overrepresentation of indigenous and black people in the penal system. Corporate crimes are largely omitted, while street crimes are emphasized (Morris, 2000). This disproportionately targets marginalized populations (homeless, drug addicted and the poor) (Tabibi, 2015c). The current system is immoral in that the caging of people is highly depersonalized and troubling (Tabibi, 2015c). This is considered to be a barbaric practice of the past, however it is still frequently used in North America (Morris, 2000). Another moral consideration is with the labelling of youth as offenders in the criminal justice system (Morris, 2000). Morris (2000) argues that we should see youth crimes as a social failure, not as an individual level failure. Next, Morris (2000) classifies prisons as a failure. Recidivism rates are consistently higher for prisons than for other alternatives (Morris, 2000). The reason for this is that prisons breed crime. A school for crime is created when a person is removed from society and labeled; they become isolated, angry
Youth crime is a growing epidemic that affects most teenagers at one point in their life. There is no question in society to whether or not youths are committing crimes. It has been shown that since 1986 to 1998 violent crime committed by youth jumped approximately 120% (CITE). The most controversial debate in Canadian history would have to be about the Young Offenders Act (YOA). In 1982, Parliament passed the Young Offenders Act (YOA). Effective since 1984, the Young Offenders Act replaced the most recent version of the Juvenile Delinquents Act (JDA). The Young Offenders Act’s purpose was to shift from a social welfare approach to making youth take responsibility for their actions. It also addressed concerns that the paternalistic treatment of children under the JDA did not conform to Canadian human rights legislation (Mapleleaf). It remained a heated debate until the new legislation passed the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Some thought a complete overhaul was needed, others thought minor changes would suffice, and still others felt that the Young Offenders Act was best left alone.
Most young offenders get into trouble with the law only once. But the younger children are when they first break the law, the more likely they are to break the law again (Statistics Canada study, 2005). The Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) attempts to acknowledge that different youth need different sentences within the justice system, while ensuring that it is fair and equitable for them. Many people, both in Canada, and around the world, believe that youth are not reprimanded harshly enough for the crimes they commit and that they are, in general, are able to squeeze through the justice system without punishment. Others, believe that the justice system does not treat youth fairly and punishes them without acknowledging that rehabilitation
Both males and females amongst the aboriginals are overrepresented in the various levels of secured custody. However, based on the enormity of the native involvement in the Canadian Penal System, there have been a number of commissions meant to resolve the dilemma regarding the aboriginal people (Crnovich 2005 : 8). While both the premises of the aboriginal and also the contemporary models related to justice have been identified as being mu...
Butler, Frank (2010) ‘Extinguishing All Hope: Life-Without-Parole for Juveniles’, Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 49: 4, 273-292
The system in place is completely unsuitable and unhelpful for Native people and it shows just how indifferent Canada is to First Nations peoples’ well-being. Zimmerman explains in his article “Outcomes” that it is a well-known fact that Aboriginal people are overrepresented in the prison system (1992). There are so many reasons why this is so, and the majority of those reasons are because of the terrible way that Canada has interacted with them. They are isolated in their reserves, they are haunted by their residential school experiences, leading to alcoholism, domestic violence and neglect, and they face discrimination and a lack of social support from the government. Once an Aboriginal person finds themselves in the clutches of the prison system, the indifference begins. Canada’s criminal justice system is indifferent to an Aboriginal person’s cultural, spiritual, and individual needs that separate them from the average convicted person (Zimmerman, 1992). The criminal justice system ignores the unique idea of justice and restoration that First Nations peoples have, making it extremely irrelevant and unhelpful for them. First Nations peoples have linguistic and cultural barriers and a lack of counsel and understanding of the criminal processes and, therefore, have misguided rulings and inaccurate proceedings. Canada has not provided the cultural training and
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.
Studies have shown that in-prison education curriculums decrease recidivism while refining the eminence of life. However, majority of extra-curricular classes in prison have been eradicated, additional customs of job preparation have reduced, and access to exercise equipment and educational resources such as books is progressively limited. In the past five years the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) has increased the federal budget by 40 per cent to $2.6 billion, majority bei...
Canada is a country where rehabilitation has been a formal part of sentencing and correctional policies for an extended period of time (Andrews & Bonta, 2010). Furthermore, a group of Canadian researchers have examined the methodology and effectiveness of rehabilitation, and are principal figures in the correctional rehabilitation field (Cullen & Gendreau, 2000). However, despite rehabilitation being a central aspect of Canadian identity, there has been a shift in the justice system’s objectives. The rise of the Conservative government and their omnibus bill C-10, Safe Streets and Communities Act, has created a move towards retribution. Bill C-10 was passed on March 12, 2012 (Government of Canada, 2013) and was a proposal to make fundamental changes to almost every component of Canada’s criminal justice system. Law changes included new and increased mandatory minimum sentencin...
Youth and juvenile crime is a common and serious issue in current society, and people, especially parents and educators, are pretty worried about the trend of this problem. According to Bala and Roberts, around 17% of criminals were youths, compared to 8% of the Canadian population ranging from 12 to 18 years of age between 2003 and 2004 (2006, p37). As a big federal country, Canada has taken a series of actions since 1908. So far, there are three justice acts in the history of the Canadian juvenile justice system, the 1908 Juvenile Delinquents Act, the 1982 Young Offenders Act, and the 2003 Youth Criminal Justice Act. In Canada, the judicial system and the principles of these laws have been debated for a long time.
Taylor, A. (2003, February). The International Child and Youth Care Network. Retrieved 8 14, 2010, from CYC Online: http://www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cycol-0203-offenders.html
Though inconclusive, there are numerous other socio-biological factors that present individual risks to criminality. These include gang related peer influence, low IQ levels and hormones; especially cortisol and testosterone.