According to statistics since the early 1970’s there has been a 500% increase in the number of people being incarcerated with an average total of 2.2 million people behind bars. The increase in rate of people being incarcerated has also brought about an increasingly disproportionate racial composition. The jails and prisons have a high rate of African Americans incarcerated with an average of 900,000 out of the 2.2 million incarcerateed being African American. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 1 in 6 African American males has been incarcerated at some point in time as of the year 2001. In theory if this trend continues it is estimated that about 1 in 3 black males being born can be expected to spend time in prison and some point in his life. One in nine African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 are currently incarcerated. Although the rate of imprisonment for women is considerably lower than males African American women are incarc...
In his novel Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys, Dr. Victor M. Rios aims to demonstrate the catastrophe of criminalization, the flops of using cruel and humiliating punishments that attempt to “‘correct’ and ‘manage’ marginalized youths” (p. 23), and to display the consequences that these practices will have on the paths that teenagers take. He does this by documenting parts of his experience in observing forty boys of Black and/or Latino who are “heavily affected by criminal justice policies and practice” (p. 8). Then, he clarifies how these flaws impacted the boys in these situations. The aim of this essay is to summarize Dr. Rios’ observations and analyze and critique the primary arguments made in the book.
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
In the article “Gentrification’s Insidious Violence: The Truth about American Cities” by Daniel Jose Older, Older places emphasis on the neighboring issue of gentrification in minority, low income communities or as better known as being called the “hood” communities. The author is biased on how race is a factor in gentrifying communities by local governments. Older explains his experience as a paramedic aiding a white patient in the “hood” where he was pistol whipped in a home invasion by a black male. This is an example of black on white crime which is found to be a normal occurrence in the residence of his community. But that is not the case in Older’s situation because that was the first time he has
...se them to geographic targeting, police brutality, disproportionate incarceration and sentencing rates. Get tough on crime ideologies as well as mass incarceration practices encouraged by mainstream American citizens and policy makers alike, result in further oppression and complicate individual’s abilities to achieve social and economic success. In order for the United States to attain a “post-racial status,” biases in society should be eliminated therefore encouraging police bias’ to be removed, additional concern should be had for individuals in low-income, urban areas, and sentencing and arrest practices should be equalized across all races. Many sociological issues have a role in how the criminal justice system operates and until further notice, it remains unequal and supportive of racist policies that keep this country from attaining a “post racial status”.
In Punished: policing the lives of black and Latino boys author Rios, victor. Victor Rios grew up in the ghetto in the Oakland, California in the 1980s. Rios, a former gang member and juvenile delinquency. Rios managed to escape this trend of gang violent as a teen; he managed to escape the gang violent lifestyle from his peers. He provides us a with a depth overview of a three-year study of 40 minority youths, 30 of whom were previously arrested. The study was done in Oakland, California. Rios give us a clear overview inner city young Latino and African American. Rios emphasize on the difficult lives of these young men, who are faced with policies in their schools, communities, and policing. Importantly, he gives us a clear understanding
For example, police and probation officers become involved in non-criminal justice matters at schools and in the community, often times by advising parents and students on academic matter. According to some of the boys in Rios book, probation officers served the purpose of punishing them by branding them criminal in front of the rest of the community, which prompted victimization by peers, stigmatization in the community, and rearrests for minor infractions. Eventually, the youth learned to manipulate the system and increasing recidivism. Rios also notes that some youth were being incarcerated through false accusations, police “step-ups”, entrapments, and forced testimonies that led many of the boys to declare a vow against everyone providing information to police, even when they were the victims. Also, the gang database accentuates criminalization, as it permits police to keep track of most at-risk juveniles and impose tougher policing and harsher sentencing.* In other words, police roles leak into other aspects of juvenile’s lives, which have led to an increase in criminalization. As a result, for many of the juveniles’ detention facilities have become preferred social settings because they provide the structure, and discipline, they don’t receive from their families and the
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.
Since I am a minority I was already a bit accustomed with the inequalities or wrongdoings that occur to those of a minority group. Before reading this book I used to think that those who commit crime or engage in delinquent behavior are considered “lazy people” or people who just want “the easy way out;” or maybe they just weren’t trying hard enough to attain that “American Dream”. After reading Victor Rios’s book I realized how much the system has an impact on your future depending on where you come from. Right in the beginning Victor Rios mentions the “youth control complex.” The youth control complex is this idea that the system criminalizes young people for acting in everyday behaviors. (2011; pg.xiv). They are criminalized through schools, families, police officers, probation officers, community centers, the media, businesses, and other institutions. (2011; pg.xiv). These institutions are supposed to be
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
The writers begin by introducing some statistics where it is seen that there is a high number of blacks and latinos in prison for drug charges. They also present the two ways that racial disparity in drug arrest rates is explained by. The first is that
As Well as their neighborhood had impacted them. Like at first Author Wes had lived in a bad neighborhood in a rural part of Baltimore but his environment the changed when they sent him to Military school changing the way he acted and making him a completely different person making him successful. Whereas the Other Wes neighborhood stayed the same making more likely to stay selling dough and stealing from stores which ended up with him not being successful. He had changed his life when he left his neighborhood to go to the job corps, but as soon as he came back he ended up going back to his old ways not improving at all.Ending up in the situation he is in now, it shows an extrinsic factor to as how their neighborhood affected them in different
The book "Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys" is written by Victor M. Rios, who was a former gang member in his hometown and later turned his life around. He went to Berkeley and earned a doctorate in sociology. This book explores how youth of color are punished and criminalized by authorities even under the situation where there is no crimes committed and how it can cause a harmful consequence for the young man and their community in Oakland, California. The goal is to show the consequences of social control on the lives of young people of color and try to remind the authorities. This is important Since society plays a crucial part in shaping the lives of people. And the authorities have biases towards them and mistreat
This news article addresses the issue of the mass amount of kids in jail and who is most likely to be in jail. In this article, the author uses many key statistics of the amount of colored kids and teens in jail. In the beginning, the article starts with the amount of kids in jail then proceeds to tell us the percentage of colored kids versus the percentage of non colored kids in jail. Next, it focuses on the amount and increase of people that have been incarcerated just in the past few years and why they have most likely been sentenced. Lastly, the author then states what actions have been taken to stop this and mentions the committees that have formed to help those who have been targeted by this issue. The intended audience is parents who
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