Actus reus, mens rea…A guilty crime, a guilty mind. These words ring true for and crime, whether it is a simple misdemeanor, or as bad as a felony. Crimes can be any manner of things, from crimes against the person to crimes against property and against justice. The law has the extent of inchoate offenses, or “planning” to do a crime. These include an attempt at serious crime, conspiracy, incitement, or solicitation of services. Each of these is viewed differently in the eyes of the public and the eyes of those who interpret the law. In the United States, crime was at one of the highest rates in the world in the 1990’s, but has since decreased steadily. However, through massive amounts of mainstream media, the public is now far more aware of crime that does happen. The U.S. now spends far too much money and time focusing on legislation involving capital punishment, allowing jails to become over crowded with too-small crimes such as possession of marijuana, allowing ridiculous amounts of money to be spent on jails and prisoners.
Capital punishment is a hot topic throughout the United States. It is controversial and has vastly differing opinions throughout the U.S., with many states voting is out of law and others voting to keep it as law. It is a long and grueling legal process which eventually puts the criminal to death for their crime(s). Amnesty International considers most countries abolitionist (Abolitionist 2010); overall, the organization considers 140 countries to be abolitionist in law or practice, meaning that these countries have abolished the death penalty in some way, though this number is highly biased. Despite this number, the death penalty must stay in place throughout the United States.
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...the United States, and those who are meant to be making good and proper decisions for the public are choosing lazy and inefficient ways to spend taxpayer dollars. The United States has been and is still 1st in the world for the number of people we incarcerate and the amount we spend on these people is no better. In California alone, the difference in spending on a student and on an inmate in 2012 was $38,000. The United States focuses far too much on things like capital punishment and the legalization of marijuana, when these issues could be resolved very quickly and easily. A death row inmate should not be in jail for years, they should be there for days. An inmate shouldn’t get free health care and housing, this should be for the students, the future, of the United States. And lastly, marijuana should have been legal a long time ago. These issues must be resolved.
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.
Today, half of state prisoners are serving time for nonviolent crimes. Over half of federal prisoners are serving time for drug crimes. Mass incarceration seems to be extremely expensive and a waste of money. It is believed to be a massive failure. Increased punishments and jailing have been declining in effectiveness for more than thirty years. Violent crime rates fell by more than fifty percent between 1991 and 2013, while property crime declined by forty-six percent, according to FBI statistics. Yet between 1990 and 2009, the prison population in the U.S. more than doubled, jumping from 771,243 to over 1.6 million (Nadia Prupis, 2015). While jailing may have at first had a positive result on the crime rate, it has reached a point of being less and less worth all the effort. Income growth and an aging population each had a greater effect on the decline in national crime rates than jailing. Mass incarceration and tough-on-crime policies have had huge social and money-related consequences--from its eighty billion dollars per-year price tag to its many societal costs, including an increased risk of recidivism due to barbarous conditions in prison and a lack of after-release reintegration opportunities. The government needs to rethink their strategy and their policies that are bad
Criminal profiling, first undertaken within the nineteen-seventies, has been used throughout thousands of police investigations from bureaus all over the globe, currently some question their practicality in police investigations. This essay argues the utility of offender profiling in police investigations. Police Investigations utilize Offender and Criminal Profiling methods because it narrows the field of investigation, needs diminutive physical evidence to begin investigations and uses victimology to predict future actions of the offender.
Criminology as a genre is defined as the scientific study of crime, as well as its causes, law enforcement interaction, criminal behavior, and means of prevention. In its own way criminology is the history of humanity. As long as people have been on earth there has been criminal activity. Much like most other work atmospheres, it was a male dominated field. A woman seeking to work in criminology was unheard of. Men filled the jobs as police officers, lawyers, judges, and politicians. However, in the 1860s Belva Lockwood became determined to pave the way for women in criminology. As a women’s rights activist, she became one of the most influential women in criminology.
The media is a dominating aspect of American culture. The way the media depicts crime and criminal behavior has an effect on the way society views crime and criminals. Television series such as CSI, NCIS, Law and Order, Criminal Minds and countless others, have become very popular in our society today showing that our culture has an immense interest in crime. It is clear that there is a fascination with criminals and why they do the things they do. To analyze the way crime dramas represent crime and criminal behavior, I completed a content analysis of one episode of Criminal Minds. The episode I chose was season one; episode eight, which first aired in 2005, titled ‘Natural Born Killer’.
Although, Huntsville Police annually brings in the most drug arrests for the state, it’s not the city’s main priority to meet an arrest quota. Instead, the police force usually catch these offenders after stoping them for traffic violations. When an officer stops an individual for reckless driving and suspicion of driving under the influence, he or she will often smell a mixture of alcohol and marijuana. With probable cause, the officer will then search the vehicle and often times finds the individual in possession:
To begin with an article title “digest crime control” it is said it that a chronic juvenile male or female offender can be tried in adult court depending on how violent the crime is. This was decision was made by the 8th circuit based on case that took place in the district of Nebraska. To summarize the case, it involved a mail offender who beats someone and let him die. When the autopsy came it was proven that 12 hour after he got beaten he could have been saved. The defense team for the juvenile said that the boy was mentally ill and didn’t know what he was doing. But when the circuit looked into his record they saw that this was his first offense with the law and that he had multiple battery charges filled against him for battery. So they circuit had to make the decision that if this wasn’t your first offense for the same type of crime you will be taking into adult court and get tried as an adult.
The foundation of our legal system rest upon the single philosophy that humans hold their own fate. Even though, we perceive in our daily lives the persistence of causation and effect. Even children understand the simplistic principle that every action will have a reaction. Despite this obvious knowledge, we as a society still implanted the belief that our actions are purely our own. Yet, with the comprehension of force that environmental factors impact our development, we continue to sentence people for crimes committed. Moreover, uncontrollable environmental influences are not the only deterministic factors we ignore in our societal view of crime. One’s biological composition can work against any moral motives that they
Crime statistics can be inaccurate and not useful due to; the high quantities of unreported crime, imbalances of how crimes are reported over time and crime obscured within authorities. However, despite the inconsistencies crime statistics has, it remains existent to aid the criminal justice system due to its efficiency. Unreported crimes for e.g. sexual assault and domestic abuse cases are underrepresented due to the lack of offenders reported. On the institutional aspect, many criticize that crime statistics cannot be reliable due to discretion and leniency towards violations by police officers and white collar corporations.
The first issue that I would like to address is the overcrowding issues in prisons. In my opinion, overcrowding issues are the biggest issues in our correctional system that concerns every citizen. Running a prison required money, resources and manpower, with overcrowding issues, the government would have no choice but to increase the number of correctional facilities, privatized prisons and increasing manpower. According to (Levitt, 1996), “The incarceration rate in the United States has more than tripled in the last two decades. At year-end 1994 the United States prison population exceeded one million. Annual government outlays on prisons are roughly $40 billion per year. The rate of imprisonment in the United States is three to four times greater than most European countries.” (p.1). Overcrowding issues are not only affect prisons but the society as a whole as well. The reason is simply because prison population directly refl...
Classical Criminology is credited with initiating the shift away from rather barbaric forms of torture. In classical criminology, the naturalistic approach of social thinkers had challenged the way of the spiritualistic approach. During this time, the spiritualistic approach was the base for all policies in Europe. This means that every crime had as spiritual meaning for which it was committed. St. Thomas Aquinas, a contributor to the topic, argued that people had a natural tendency to be good rather than evil. He also argued that because they committed a crime it did not just hurt other, it would hurt them.
The accuracy and reliability of criminal statistics is something that has been of great discussion through criminology for decades. Whilst some believe that crime statistics are a misuse of time and resources, others believe that there is some use for them within the criminological community. The inaccuracies of criminal statistics are highlighted in abundance within academic articles and research, many of which highlight the main source as the dark figure of crime. Many also suggest other inconsistencies within official statistics to be influenced by law enforcement agencies and society. But whilst there is much research to suggest that criminal statistics are unreliable and of no use, there are some that suggest that this may not be entirely
The world will always be full of crime, thus it is necessary for scientist to grow along with the gruesome and increasing amount of violations. Due to this it sparked scientist to develop crime theories in which emerged to explain why crime is caused by individuals. Some of the few theories that have advanced over the past century and provided many answers to why crimes are committed are biological theories, psychological theories and learning theories. These theories provide an insight to its first use and change in order to provide answers.
Sociologists have been examining crime and its causes for over 150 years, and through several researches, various explanations have been used to describe crime and deviance. Crime is a behaviour that goes against all formal written laws of a given society (Haralambos, Smith, O 'Gorman, & Heald, 1996). Laws in different societies differ, so do crimes i.e. what may be considered as a crime in one society may not be in another different society. For instance, while same-sex relationship is accepted in some countries like the United States, United Kingdom etc. it is illegal in countries like Nigeria, and most Arabic countries. Other examples of general crimes are theft/robbery, murder, kidnapping and others. Once a crime is committed, sanctions
Reflection Paper Hendrix (2013) states, “Criminal justice refers to the structure, functions, and processes of those agencies that deal with the management of crime –the police, the courts, and corrections” (p. 22). Therefore, these subsystems are responsible for the protection, prevention, and punishment of crimes. These subsystems can also be approached from a biblical viewpoint as well. Our perceptions of criminal justice can also change based on new ideas and even new knowledge. The first category involves the police force.