The film, Kill the Messenger directed by Michael Cuesta, portrays a journalist by the name of Gary Webb who discovers that the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in the importation of large amounts of cocaine into the United States. The vast amount of cocaine was aggressively sold in ghettos across the country to raise money for the Nicaraguan Contras rebel army. After the discovery, Webb was pressured not to go public with his story and expose his evidence found against the Central Intelligence Agency. Regardless of this situation, he decided to follow through. As a result of this disclosure, Webb was forced to experience a vicious campaign using false accusations to discredit his work and so was forced to defend his own integrity, family, and life. Initially he was celebrated, then investigated fully, until his work was finally considered flawed. Newspaper companies produced holes in his story while government officials claimed he was crazy. This eventually led to his death, or as the officials ruled it, with two self-inflicted gunshots. …show more content…
Because of its affordability, crack cocaine is often said to be found in urban, low-income communities. In the later years of the 1980’s, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. This law specified that conviction for possession or distribution of 5 grams of crack cocaine would mean a mandatory 5-year sentence with no parole (Clear, Cole, and Reisg 2013:88). Any greater amount than that and it would be considered a life sentence with no parole. This of course led to an increase of amount of incarcerations during the year of 1989. By the year 2008, about 20,000 prisoners were serving because of crack cocaine and about 82% of them were part of a minority group. Compared to the sentences of powder cocaine, it soon became clear that there was in fact a racial disparity and therefore a possible income disparity as
In “The Most Dangerous Game” the author creates two strikingly similar characters that blur the line of ethics. Rainsford, the protagonist, meets his adversary and leader of an exotic tribe, Zaroff, after falling off of a yacht and swimming to the nearest island. The short story then explores the events that transpires between the strangers – focusing on Zaroff's bloodthirsty hunt against Rainsford. Yet even with the two men on opposite sides of a loaded gun, they both share many common interests and views pertaining to their similar backgrounds, hunting methods, and desired end result.
The majority of our prison population is made up of African Americans of low social and economic classes, who come from low income houses and have low levels of education. The chapter also discusses the amount of money the United States loses yearly due to white collar crime as compared to the cost of violent crime. Another main point was the factors that make it more likely for a poor person to be incarcerated, such as the difficulty they would have in accessing adequate legal counsel and their inability to pay bail. This chapter addresses the inequality of sentencing in regards to race, it supplies us with NCVS data that shows less than one-fourth of assailants are perceived as black even though they are arrested at a much higher rate. In addition to African Americans being more likely to be charged with a crime, they are also more likely to receive harsher punishments for the same crimes- which can be seen in the crack/cocaine disparities. These harsher punishments are also shown in the higher rates of African Americans sentenced to
stated his hope that "the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities" (King 980-981). Unfortunately, upon analysis of the drug war, it is found that those dark clouds remain suspended above America,and that fog is as blinding as ever. Research into drug usage and selling has found that "drug use and selling are comparable across racial lines" (DPA). In light of this fact, it logically follows that arrest rates would be fairly even across racial lines, however, this is not the case. In fact, "African Americans represent 12% of the total population of drug users, but 38% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offense" (NAACP). There are many contributing factors that lead to these statistics, but the most prominent among them is the heavy scrutiny of poor, mostly minority neighborhoods. To make matters worse, sentencing for drug crimes also has a high racial discrepancy. According to the Sentencing Project, "African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months)"(NAACP). Another example of this is the disparity in sentencing is the comparison of those caught with powder cocaine and those caught with crack cocaine. Despite being essentially the same substance, "federal penalties for
Crack has been given federal guidelines for minimum sentencing including ten years if convicted of having fifty grams or more(Provine, 2007 pg 1).This mostly had a negative effect on young, uneducated, poor black males. When a young black male who is already poor and uneducated receives ten years in prison and turned into a felon decreases the ability of getting employment drastically as well as other factors like finding a place to live and receiving financial aid for school. These factors create even less ways to legally make a living and increases the likelihood to continue to be involved in criminal activity.
Just as with “All The President’s Men”, one can investigate the ethical issues in accordance to the SPJ Code of Ethics. Set in 1992, during the besiegement of the capital of Bosnia, Sarajevo, American and European journalists risked their own lives to report on the tragic and horrific incidents that took place. Flynn, an American journalist, and Henderson an English journalist, are the two main journalists who are featured in the film. Since the journalists are in the middle of a war scene, their lives were inherently in constant jeopardy. In order to report on the incidents that are occurring, they often found themselves in the middle of a shooting or in the aftermath of dead bodies lining the streets. Flynn and Henderson are both passionate about their work; Flynn especially is determined to catch the best story at all costs. Whereas, Henderson begins to find himself emotionally attached to one of the victims in Sarajevo. In the midst of life threatening chaos and terror, both Flynn and Henderson sought the truth and reported it. They were both courageous and respected the lives of whom they were
The article explains that the majority of women involved in the prison system are poor single mothers. The same majority of poor single mothers are all serving sentences for nonviolent drug-offenses. This article as well as many others, place a significant amount of blame for the increasing prison population on the War on Drugs. The authors explain the correlation between poverty and the implication of mandatory drug sentencing laws.
Abortion has been a political, social, and personal topic for many years now. The woman’s right to choose has become a law that is still debated, argued and fought over, even though it has been passed. This paper will examine a specific example where abortion is encouraged, identify the Christian world views beliefs and resolution as well as the consequences of such, and compare them with another option.
The movie Blow is about a man named George Jung who Johnny Depp plays furthermore he made the cocaine market in America in the 1950’s-1970’s. In this movie, you see the horrific effects that can take place to you and the people that closest to you, George was apart of the war on drugs and it caught up to him quick. He moves to California as a child in which he became wealthy for selling marijuana and expands his market but eventually you see him turn careless and gets caught by the police. George ends up meeting a man named Diego Delgado in jail, and was now introduced to the drug Cocaine, which was now a way for him to become wealthy again, be became a cocaine dealer.
Let’s talk about how fair these laws are. Many say that these laws are used to profile African Americans and inner-city minorities primarily by the sentencing difference in rock and powder cocaine. There is a difference in the two forms and how they’re sold. Cocaine can be bought and sold as powder or rocks, also known as crack or crack cocaine. The effects of each are essentially the same. People will get the same effects with powder as w...
How has the War in Drugs impacted low-income people and communities of color, particularly African Americans? The war on drugs have made it difficulties for people to find jobs and be able to survive. When your arrested for drugs your label as a felon, making it difficult to receive benefit that everyone should have such housing, employment, food stamps, and licenses. This also doesn’t allow them to vote for 12 years or forever. Which then lead people back to the street with nothing and or selling drug to survive or make a living. Then it just become a cycle of drugs and jail, over and over again. “According to a bureau of justice statistics study, about 30 percent of released prisoners in its sample were rearrested within six months of release. Within three years, nearly 68 percent were rearrested at least once for a new offense.” (Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. pg. 94) Since they are una...
In his chapter on “Assessing the Prison Experiment”, he explained that the increase in crime rates is not the sole reason that mass incarceration occurs, it was also because courts and legislature did indeed get ‘tougher” on offenders (Currie 14). Under the circumstances of the war on drugs, which was launched by President Richard Nixon, the incarceration rate and sentence longevity increased dramatically, as Currie discussed in his chapter. Currie also pointed out that the war on drugs had a huge influence on the incarceration rate of African American inmates. “between 1985 and 1995, the number of black state prison inmates sentenced for drug offenses rose by more than 700 percent” (Currie 13). Some of these offenders were sentenced to more than ten years without parole, which releases prisoners before the completion of their sentences.
Bobo and Thompson stated that blacks are almost 34% involved in drug-related arrests, though only 14% of those are among regular illegal drug users. Among drug-related convictions, African Americans make up half of the cases, whereas only 26% of the white population is convicted. As Bobo and Thompson stated, “Illegal drug consumption seems to be a race. Incarceration for drug-related charges, however, is something visited in a heavily biased manner on African Americans.” The war on drugs is greatly concentrated on cocaine and even more so on crack cocaine.
In the media the “war on drugs” is depicted as extremely dangerous and full of foreign cartels. But, this isn’t necessarily the case. Almost half of U.S. prisoners are convicted for nonviolent drug-related offenses. These crimes come with the longest sentences for nonviolent offenses. Instead of persecuting large cartels or dangerous drug rings, the police are arresting petty drug dealers, who are usually men of color. Latino and African-American men are These long sentences are uncalled for, while also being a detriment to the incarceration system. The longer the nonviolent offenders are there and the more the police continue their “war on drugs”, the more overcrowded the prisons
Since the Reagan officials tried harder to stop the Drug Enforcement Administration from exposing the illegal activities that were taking place, the more violence was being caused in these inner city neighborhoods, which lead to more arrests for possession. Now, Michelle explains how the War on Drugs has the most impact on African Americans in these inner city neighborhoods. Within the past three decades, US incarceration increase has been due to drug convictions, mainly. She states that, “the US is unparalleled in the world in focusing enforcement of federal drug laws on racial and ethnic minorities.”(Alexander2016). The percentile of African American men with some sort of criminal record is about 80% in some of our major US cities(Paul Street, The Vicious Circle: Race, Prison, Jobs, and Community in Chicago, Illinois, and the Nation (Chicago Urban League, Department of Research and Planning, 2002). MIchelle referred to these becoming marginalized and calls them “ growing and permanent undercaste.” (Alexander2016, pp
Under Reagan and Bush's term, heavy mandatory minimum prison sentences were introduced. These lengthy mandatory minimum sentences were part of the new state and federal laws that affected drug offenders that would distinguish between major dealers or petty users. The “war on drugs” had led to the expansion of the US prison population to “unprecedented levels.” “Under President Reagan's campaign, annual drug arrests inside the United States doubled from 569,000 in 1977 to 1'155'000 in 1988; moreover, just 3/4 of these arrests were just for the “mere” possession of drugs, inclu...