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Effects the war on drugs have on incarceration rates
Drugs and crime correlation
Effects the war on drugs have on incarceration rates
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Laws and punishments are placed onto society to maintain peace and order. Most laws are defined by a moral code, but there are those who believe laws are in place to suppress the lower class. According to the social reaction theory, “It favors powerful members of society, who direct is content, and penalizes the powerless. . .” (Siegel 190). This theory helps explains how minority street offenders can receive harsh penalties, while white-collar criminals receive lower sentences. According to the author, “And of course, wealthy white-collar criminals are not treated in the same harsh fashion as street criminals even if the social harm they cause is significantly greater” (Siegel 201). Laws related to the war on drugs are an example on how the
In The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison by Jeffery Reiman and Paul Leighton, four multifaceted issues are focused on and examined. These issues are the Unites States high crime rates, efforts in explaining the high crime rates, where the high crime rates originally came from, and the success attained at a high price. The initial key issue that Reiman and Leighton discuss is America’s high rising crime rates with the understanding of the people that believe policy and regulations are the causes of the decrease in crime. The many graphs throughout the chapter represent information that undoubtedly illustrates that specific policy and regulation may cause rates to become stagnate or strike a plateau. While the rule makers make it appear as though their organization is functioning. Later guns and gun control policy are discussed. With the stern enforcement of the gun policy, at the time, crime appeared to decline, or become stagnate resulting in a plateau effect that is illustrated in the graphs. Countless arrests were made with large quantities of people being imprisoned. Du...
The work by Victor M. Rios entitled Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness depict ways in which policing and incarceration affect inequalities that exist in society. In this body of work I will draw on specific examples from the works of Victor M. Rios and Michelle Alexander to fulfill the tasks of this project. Over the course of the semester and by means of supplemental readings, a few key points are highlighted: how race and gender inequalities correlate to policing and incarceration, how laws marginalize specific groups, and lastly how policing and incarceration perpetuate the very inequalities that exist within American society.
In Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, the protagonist is caught in his class position, which brings hopelessness and despair. We see a similar class struggle in Waiting for Lefty. How do both playwrights portray the lower class and their struggle with their daily life?
Law, ?a governmental social control? (Black 2), is a quantitative variable that changes in time and space and can be defined by style: penal, compensatory, therapeutic or conciliatory (Black 5). The brief description of law and its interrelation with social control and deviant behavior can be encapsulated in the following scheme. This concept of law put into the context of social life gives a framework of the behavior of law.
As well as being economically unsound, the death penalty is socially biased. A class system appears to be present in the United States of America this day in age, and the lower classes seem to almost be discriminated against by the higher classes. This is also true of capital punishment. Ed Bishop of the St. Louis Journalism Review , writes on how these members of a lower class can not escape the death penalty. At the height of the...
There are many opportunities in America that can improve one’s wealth and power, thus leading to the mass amount of immigrants coming to American. Most immigrants that come to American usually are categorized as the lower class immigrants, but they take any opportunities to improve their economic status. In an article by Howard P. Chudacoff, it states “immigrants generally chose upward paths that led from manual labor into small proprietorships” (Chudacoff 1982: 104). This explains the reason why immigrants choose to come and stay in America. They start out small as laborers then over time they will work to own a small business. Even though immigrants gets to grow to move from the lower class to the middle class, the natives will be always
When societies finally become comfortable with reality, they begin to abandon the murderous laws that impede their growth. Currently, the social stigma and legislated morality regarding the use of illicit drugs yield perhaps the most destructive effects on American society. Drug laws have led to a removal of non-violent citizens from society- either directly by incarceration or indirectly by death - that is genocidal in quantity and essence.
In The Breakfast Club, Dr. Umar Johnson referred to a particular topic. He stated that when individuals break laws and do not receive a punishment, other people think doing the same thing is fine. Many cases over the recent five years are believed to be correct. Whether with blue collar criminals or even just common people committing these acts. The effects of crime without punishment are a sense of unlawfulness, a context that individuals got away with the crime they can also, and a sense of fear.
In “Mistakes, Misunderstandings, and Misalignments” Jules L. Coleman argues, “there is an inconsistency in how the standard of care is set versus how damages are awarded [in the criminal justice system]” (). Meaning, the law does not abide by the same verdict when punishing as when protecting. When penalizing, the law usually targets the financially unfortunate in this case Hector. Conversely, when protecting, the criminal justice system seeks to defend the affluent, Emily. This creates a double standard in which fear is instilled in the poor while a sense of security is granted to the
My research topic explores the prevalence that economic privilege has on implications of crime. Privilege is a word used often in today's society, but to what extent do we truly understand how privilege is exercised in our justice system. My research topic explores the prevalence that economic privilege has on implications of crime. The economic status of many determines how fair they are treated and viewed by the legal system. People of a higher economic status, sometimes do not understand what it means to have the privilege of wealth on their side. Through the careful analysis of articles and books, I will provide sufficient evidence that points to the mistreatment of the underprivileged in the criminal justice system. The emergence of carelessness
The position of authorities with its values and norms will tolerate only the same or similar cultures because it is matter of preserving power. Presdee (2004, p. 276) argues that crime is the product of imbalanced power relations when subjects compete in the activities during a social reaction. By pushing forward cultural agenda in hidden competition between majority and minority of population can also reveal tensions in society. Different subcultures are criticized for not obeying traditional values and creating alternative beliefs. Competition between cultures often gives doubt what is unusual behaviour and criminal behaviour and what behaviour is acceptable and what is not criminal behaviour. The legislation with its institutions is used
The death penalty might be justified as the lesser of two evils if it could be shown conclusively that, by inhibiting violent crime, it served as a significant protection to society. However, the weight of sociological research strongly suggests the reverse - that lawful violence may actually encourage criminal violence. Since the sociology of...
Crime and criminalization are dependent on social inequality Social inequality there are four major forms of inequality, class gender race and age, all of which influence crime. In looking at social classes and relationship to crime, studies have shown that citizens of the lower class are more likely to commit crimes of property and violence than upper-class citizens: who generally commit political and economic crimes. In 2007 the National Crime Victimization Survey showed that families with an income of $15000 or less had a greater chance of being victimized; recalling that lower classes commit a majority of those crimes. We can conclude that crime generally happens within classes.
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.
Different methods of “dealing” with criminals are used in different societies based upon how the average citizen views criminals. For a society where a majority of the population lives in poverty, the laws may be more lax because the general population may identify more with the criminals and understand why they chose the path of crime. For societies where the general population lives in wealth, criminals may meet a harsher fate because the wealthy will most likely not be able to identify with the criminal and they will view the criminal as stealing from them personally. In using a deterrence method for dealing with criminals, the society most likely believes in more than one chance however, they believe that if a person chooses this path more