Stop Snitching
When you hear the word “Snitching”, people think of a child telling on their brother or sister of their wrongdoings to the parent. The term “Snitching has taken on many different forms and meanings over the course of the years. The problem is, in today society, “Snitching” is considered, basically, a death sentence, or some type of harm will come to the person helping law enforcement solve a crime.
I.STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Urban communities are suffering with from the backlash of “Snitching” and not reporting vital information to law enforcement, which leads to increased crime rates in these communities. When a witness reports vital information to law enforcement, they face a difficult dilemma of being labeled as a snitch or some type of informant to the police.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
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On reviewing the article “Stop Snitching: Exploring Definitions of the Snitch and Implications for Urban Black Communities”, Authors Rachael Woldoff and Karen Weiss elude “Snitching” in urban communities may invoke violence to the innocent witnesses that want to report vital information to the police.
They go from into the relationships between the informants and the police to how “Hip-Hop” has a play into the anti-snitching message. They also view how police has inside snitches and how the prison inmates are encouraged to snitch to receive a lenient sentence. They also look into the black communities and how how the anti-snitching code exacerbates the crime problem by weakening social
control. III. HYPOTHESIS It is unclear if there is an hypothesis. The authors analyze various ways a snitch appears to be an important person in reporting information, but suffer the consequences as being labeled a snitch. IV. METHODS The authors utilized Secondary Analysis and Analysis of Documents and provide further proposal to future research. V. DATA ANALYSIS In the data analysis, the authors stated that the African American remain disportionately poor and often live in black neighborhoods with high crime rates. They also found that blacks represented 13% of the population ,but constituted 39% of violent crimes. For homicide, blacks make up of 51%. Also violent victimization rates was at 32.7 per 1,000 blacks compared to 23.2 for whites. VI. CONCLUSION Snitching, tattle tale, rat, has been around for some time. We were raised from our parents to tell if someone does wrong. It exist in the work environment, where co-workers tell on their peers, hoping that they will move up the career ladder. It exist in music, where singers, rappers tell on each other about their crime or wrong doings, sending out subliminal messages is their lyrics. It starts from prison where the inmate has to live within “Inmate Code of Conduct”, if they snitch, their life is at stake. They parole and bring it into these poor communities where the code lives on. I personally believe now, in 2015, that the inmate code has stretched from ethnicity to another. I do not think that the code does not pertain to specifically “Black” people. It exist in all cultures and police need to arrest these criminals and have more protection for these communities. References Weiss, Karen G., and Rachael A. Woldoff. "Stop Snitchin': Exploring Definitions of the Snitch and Implications for Urban Black Communities". Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 17.1 (2010): 184-223. Web. 20 Sep 2015
Cop in the hood is a book about Peter Moskos experience as a police officer in the eastern district of Baltimore. First, as a sociologist at Harvard, he was very curious about the job of Policing. There is a lot of misconception and myth about the job so what a better way to learn than become one? His coworkers were at first wary of the Harvard liberal, expecting him to do a poor job due to being primarily concerned with his research. Police culture is naturally untrustworthy of outsiders as most citizens have no idea what the job is actually like.
This book also has the perspective of the police, which show the gang violence as a more black and white or good versus evil issue, and their militant approach to gang reformation. Jorja Leap holds a view that to stop gang violence, the same members that were once gangbanging need to divert the youth away from the same lifestyle.
Criminology. The. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Print. The. Shakur, Sanyika.
Solutions used to deter and prevent crime in the film End of Watch (Ayer, 2012) focused on police and the duties officers perform while on patrol. In the movie police officers played a central role in the capture of many gang and drug cartel members. This was told through the perspective of officers Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala. Therefore, the solution to crime concentrated on the police involvement, in this case Taylor and Zavala, through their presence, protection, arrests, and investigations. This solution could be generalized and would be possible through the hard work of dedicated police officers.
Chapter one focuses mainly on the patterns of punishment expressed on Black and Hispanic boys. He begins the chapter by describing a young Hispanic boy’s negative experiences on the streets of his neighborhood with the police as something that occurs
The book Punished: Policing the lives of Black and Latino boys by Victor Rios is about the Latinos and African Americans in poor parts of the city joining gangs, do violence, and ending up in prison. It is also add how the police are handling the situation differently in these areas. The researcher is Victor Rios and the goal is to change how the police should handle in these poor communities and to have trust to prevent a crime that is unrelated with African Americans and Latinos. Additionally to develop new programs to help these young people out of prison to be productive, to be part of society, and to create a brighter future for these young people and their community. This is
This book review covers Policing Gangs in America by Charles Katz and Vincent Webb. Charles Katz has a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice, while Vincent Webb has a Ph.D. in Sociology, making both qualified to conduct and discuss research on gangs. Research for Policing Gangs in America was gathered in four cities across the American Southwest; Inglewood, California, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Phoenix, Arizona. This review will summarize and discuss the main points of each chapter, then cover the relationship between the literature and class discussions in Introduction to Policing and finally it will note the strengths and weaknesses of book.
CNN presents the documentary, Homicide in Hollenbeck, spotlighting gang activity in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Hollenbeck. This documentary explores the subculture of gangs existing within Hollenbeck from a several perspectives. The people documented include a mother who lost both of her sons to gang violence, a priest that has tried to help rehabilitate gang members, a police officer that has worked in Hollenbeck for five years in the gang unit, and a current gang member. For a conclusion, Homicide in Hollenbeck focuses on a juvenile exposed to gang life on the cusp of decided where they want their life to lead; gangs or freedom. Problems attributed to the high rate of gang activity and number of gangs in Hollenbeck are the high poverty rate, low employment rate, and broken families that make up the majority of Hollenbeck. The crime most discussed, as per the title of the documentary, is homicide The number of gang related homicides has risen even though the criminal behavior of gangs has ultimately decreased in the neighborhood. In order to fight the overwhelming gang presence, the police believe in increasing the amount of gun power on the streets and number of jailed gang members. The priest who runs Homeboy Industries stated that he feels most gang members are just young men who can’t get out of the gang life. With more funds and opportunities, he thinks the problem could be decreased. In the end, the documentary mentions that the FBI has formed a gang center where local law enforcement agencies can share information to gain more knowledge and to better fight the presence of gangs.
This movie was very sad but depicted the many social problems of struggling black communities in the early 1990’s. We learned in Adler, Mueller, & Laufer how criminal behavior as a result of frustrations suffered by lower-class individuals deprived of legitimate means to reach their goals are
The factor of racial profiling comes into play as federal grant programs award police for rounding up as many people as possible. This very tactic was demonstrated by the CompStat system in New York City and further expounded by Victor M. Rios’s analysis of the themes over-policing and under-policing. These themes focus on how officers, police certain kinds of deviance and crime such as, loitering, or disturbing the peace, while neglecting other instances when their help is needed . Rios also stresses how the accumulation of minor citations like the ones previously mentioned, play a crucial role in pipelining Black and Latino young males deeper into the criminal justice system. Rios implies that in order to decrease the chances with police interaction one must not physically appear in a way that catches the attention of a police or do anything behavior wise that would lead to someone labeling you as deviant . Unfortunately, over-policing has made it difficult even for those who actually do abide by social norms because even then, they have been victims of criminalization . However, since structural incentives like those that mimic CompStat are in place, police simply ignore constitutional rules and are able to get away with racial profiling, and thus interrogate, and search whomever they please. Since these targeted minorities acknowledge the fact that the police are not always present to enforce the law, they in turn learn strategies in order to protect themselves from violence that surrounds them. Young African American Americans and Latino youth thus become socialized in the “code of the street”, as the criminal justice system possesses no value in their
The story, Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh, is a ethnographic study of a Black King Gang in the Robert Taylor community. Venkatesh accidentally stumbles upon the gang lead by J.T. and decided to study them. Throughout his journey he learns from the violence and illegal activity he witnesses that “in the projects it’s more important that you take care of the problem first. Then you worry about how you took care of it”’ (Venkatesh. 2008:164). He witnesses beatings, selling of illegal drugs, and exploitation of residents; but he also gained a lot of knowledge about the community. He works with J.T. and Ms. Bailey, the community leader, closely through his study. J.T. has taken a sociology class and he allows Venkatesh to shadow the gang
As in Small’s lecture slides, the rules of the street revolve around the three R’s (respect, retaliation and reputation). Often times black youths have to engage in conflict to build respect or a reputation that will ensure future safety. However, it is easy to get caught up in this world and no think about future success with the allure of drugs and violence. In chapter six of the cultural matrix, Patterson describes how most youths in the inner city have had friends or family shot in front of them. This culture of fear instills values that promote survival but may not promote stable finical success as would the values instilled in a white suburb. There are the injunctive norms that both communities can understand but there are in turn the descriptive norms of how to behave that ensure
The U.S. criminal justice system should be allowed to use jailhouse snitches but only under very strict regulations. Jailhouse informant’s testimony should only be considered if they are testifying because they want to do the right thing instead of testifying because there it is beneficial to them. If a convicted criminal is testifying for any type of benefit, this criminal has a reason to lie, their testimony should not have as weight because they are criminals and we should not believe criminals one hundred percent under any circumstances. The criminal justice system should not allow for jailhouse informants to receive any type of benefits for their testimony, this will reduce false testimonies which means that jailhouse informants testimony
Shelden, R.G., Brown, W.B., Miller, K.S., & Fritzler, R.B. (2008). Crime and criminal justice in american society. Long Grove, Illinosis: Waveland Press, INC.
Respondents were asked a series of questions pertaining to the “code of silence” and their perceptions of this phenomenon. Studies conducted on the code of silence have indicated that “the code is a central characteristic of the occupational subculture, with rookie officers socialized by veteran officers to demonstrate loyalty to their colleagues by participating in and upholding the expected silence” (Long, Cross, Shelley, & Ivkovic, 2013, pp. 242-243). Both officers indicated that they would not stay silent in instances of severe and obvious misconduct, when it arises. This aligns well with the previously cited study, that examined police officer’s likelihood of reporting fellow officers’ misconduct (Long, Cross, Shelley, & Ivkovic 2013).