1. Interesting Points:
a. An interesting point I found was the contribution of the criminal justice system to an ideology. The ideology is explained as the set of beliefs that formulate and justify the existing state of affairs and its unfairness. The message being conveyed by the criminal justice system is that the result of criminality is from a single persons weakness versus the inequities of the social class (177, 2). I find this interesting that the failures of the individual is being the pinpoint of criminality and that social inequity is being preserved in the doing so.
b. The ones who suffer from the injustice of the criminal justice system and the failure of the reduction of street crime are the poor. The poor are not in a position in which they can change the policy of the criminal justice system (181, 1). Along with this, the poor are being victimized by the lack of success in reducing the high rates of crime on the street (180, 5). These facts are interesting because it depicts why the poor can’t change the policy themselves. They are the ones who suffer from the policy and are stuck in a hole of poverty.
c. The laws are said to be serving the rich and powerful versus promoting the well-being of society (192, 6). Another interesting point, and along with that the criminal justice policy makers are the well-to-do and rich people (193, 3). These points are interesting because the law is only benefiting the higher class of society and they have complete control of the law. The poor is only going with the flow and doing what they can to survive. They can’t do much considering they are stuck and it is hard for them to get out of poverty. There are a few people higher class ruling over many thousands of lower clas...
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.... Actual events are skewed from actual events causing them to be more dramatic or aimed at a specific group more than it should be (186, 2). This is where the poor people and their crimes are most noticed. Why is reality so distorted through social media and television?
c. The actual percentages of the wealth distribution between the poor and rich are 5% for the poor and 84% goes to the wealthy. What is perceived is that the poorest have 20% of the wealth while the wealthy have 59%. Lastly, the ideal percentages of wealth are said to be 45% for the poorest and 32% for the rich (198, 1). The wealth gap can be concluded as unjust and unfair in the United States (198, 3). How can the percentages in Table 4.2 be so off from the actual amount of wealth between the richest and poorest of the U.S.? Weren’t we suppose to be the country of equal opportunity and equality?
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...
Jacoby can be easily perceived as an upset and alarmed individual who blames the rise of criminal activity in the United States on the failure of the criminal justice system. He cares about people and believes that the safety of individuals is decreasing because criminals are not punished effectively by imprisonment and that some even receive a “sign of manhood” from going to prison (197). Additionally, he is upset that the ineffective system is so expensive. His concern for his audience’s safety and his carefully argued grounds, which he uses to support his claim, create a persona of an intelligent person of
ically based control policy (punish and deter individuals) address the issues that surround the social construction of crime and deviance? References and Related Readings Bureau of Justice Statistics-1989, UNCRIM Gopher, SUNY-Albany, 1994. Marcus Felson, Crime and Everyday Life: Insight and Implications for Society, Pine Forge Press, 1994. Allen Liska, Perspectives on Deviance, 2nd ed., Prentice-Hall, 1987. Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld, Crime and the American Dream, Wadsworth, 1994.
One policy one could examine to see its implications on incarceration rates in the United States is the “War on Drugs.” This war has taken place since the Nixon administration in the 1970s, and aims to eliminate the possession, importation, and solicitation of illegal substances. This war has multiple fronts in which people are currently fighting, but the domestic theatre of war is a culprit for this rise of incarceration rates. Bobo and Thompson examined this phenomenon and found, “rapid increase in incarceration rates can be traced to the "War on Drugs" and associated sentencing practices” (451). The “War on Drugs” can be seen taking place in predominately urban impoverished African-American communities. As a result, more African-Americans are being arrested for drug crimes, whether they be petty possession misdemeanor crimes or more serious felony solicitation of illegal substance crimes. Further, since these areas are more impoverished, individuals will look for other ways in order to generate income in order to support themselves and their
Young, white, upper-class males who engage in crime are significantly less likely to serve jail time or even be arrested, than their black male counterpart. That being said, lower class white males are more likely to be arrested than their upper-class white counterpart. Is money truly the root of all evil? NO, it’s not. It is however what drives both sides of the criminal justice system. Of course, those with a higher SES or less likely to be arrested in general but there is more to it. In class, we discussed the issues of privatized jail and the revenue they make only when filled to capacity. The “If you build it, they will come!” mentality is fully functioning in the prison part of the criminal justice system. Many police forces are set up with numbers in mind, and in order to be successful a certain amount of arrest must be made. The War on Drugs spurred this ideology as the higher amount of arrest led citizens to think that crime was being lowered. Additionally, those with high-class status can afford to be represented properly in the criminal justice system and do not have to fear the extra fines placed on prisoners or even those just convicted of crimes. VICE – Fixing The System showcased stories of returning citizens who faced the stigmas of jail, the fines of the court, and were lead back into a life of crime just to make ends meet. This vicious cycle leads back into the criminal justice system with these returning citizens being rearrested or by violation of parole/payment, due to financial
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.
issues in the court system. Studies show that most victims in the criminal justice system are poor
Reiman, Jeffrey. 2000. The Rich Gets Richer And the Poor Gets Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice. Washington, D.C: Allyn & Bacon.
4 Sims, A. Barbara. 1997. "Crime, Punishment, and the American Dream: Toward a Marxist Integration." Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 34:5-24.
...on of a crime-punishment nexus to market forces shaping the contours of social control.”³ Capitalism reduces labor and swells the surplus population, which is then subjected to its state’s forms of coercion and social control. Also, the commercial features of the marked economy “enables private interests to commodify prisoners as raw materials for a corrections industry, creating a high-volume, profit-driven system of punishment.” ³
Reiman and Leighton continue to expand on the Pyrrhic Defeat Theory and ways how the criminal justice system continues to succeed by failing to reduce crime. They speak of some reasons why the policies enforced by the criminal justice system, maintain crime rather than reduce it. The system makes use of excuses as to why it fails at the reduction of crimes. While continuing to serve the interests of the powerful and maintaining the view of the poor being the most dangerous to society.
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.
Today, a vicious cycle of poverty, criminality, and incarceration traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities. And many aspects of our criminal justice system may actually exacerbate these problems, rather than alleviate them.
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.
The Classical School of Criminology generally refers to the work of social contract and utilitarian philosophers Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham during the enlightenment in the 18th century. The contributions of these philosophers regarding punishment still influence modern corrections today. The Classical School of Criminology advocated for better methods of punishment and the reform of criminal behaviour. The belief was that for a criminal justice system to be effective, punishment must be certain, swift and in proportion to the crime committed. The focus was on the crime itself and not the individual criminal (Cullen & Wilcox, 2010). This essay will look at the key principles of the Classical School of Criminology, in particular