Clarence Darrow’s speech Crime and Criminals, “Address to the Prisoners in the Cook County Jail” is a very unique speech with a different look at crime and criminals. Throughout the speech he states many important facts, but what he cannot seem to stress enough is the factor of circumstance. Darrow states that his view of crime and criminals is different than most peoples; he does not view people as good or bad, but rather sees them as people that have been brought up in different circumstances. Those people living life well-off have been introduced into this world on the side of wealth, while there are those who either live in poverty or in prison. It is said by Darrow that he believes jails should not exist and that everyone should be given fair chance at a successful life. Instead of leaving the justice of these individuals in the hands of affluent people, and allowing them to throw the unfortunate in prison, Darrow thinks that we should be giving them a chance to succeed. …show more content…
People may say that they have broken the law, thus they have committed a crime. Yet, Clarence’s definition of crime differs from the general assumption of society. Our population views crime as something a criminal would commit, whether it be theft, murder, or what have you. It can be demonstrated that circumstance has shaped what we call law and what is viewed as crime. If a person breaks into your house and robs you of something they do not have themselves, it is considered breaking and entering, and can be punishable by jail. However, if Mr. Rockefeller raises oil prices in the winter because he knows people will have to pay it or freeze, it is considered smart business; even though it is clearly theft. Both parties are committing ‘crime’, but society has deemed Mr. Rockefeller, the person who is a thief, respectable; while the person who is breaking and entering, a criminal, solely because it is all they know to do to
" With violence affecting so many lives, one can understand the desire driven by fear to lock away young male offenders. But considering their impoverished, danger-filled lives, I wonder whether the threat of being locked up for decades can really deter them from crime" (305). Hopkins is definitely not our stereotypical prisoner. Most generally, our view of prisoners is not that of someone who has this profound use of wording and this broad sense of knowledge.
I clung to the notion that it wasn’t the government’s or society’s fault these people were in jail. It was the prisoners to blame. They did the crime, so they had to do the time. In the article “Prison: To Punish or Reform” Dianne Clemens, president of Justice for All- Citizens United Against Crime, argues “[w]e encouraged criminals to place the blame for their activities and addictions upon others and we, as
Every civilization in history has had rules, and citizens who break them. To this day governments struggle to figure out the best way to deal with their criminals in ways that help both society and those that commit the crimes. Imprisonment has historically been the popular solution. However, there are many instances in which people are sent to prison that would be better served for community service, rehab, or some other form of punishment. Prison affects more than just the prisoner; the families, friends, employers, and communities of the incarcerated also pay a price. Prison as a punishment has its pros and cons; although it may be necessary for some, it can be harmful for those who would be better suited for alternative means of punishment.
Many changes are made inside the justice system, but very few have damaged the integrity of the system and the futures of citizens and prisoners. Although the story seems to focus more on lockdown, Hopkins clearly identifies the damaging change from rehabilitation in prisons to a strategy of locking up and containing the prisoners. To the writer, and furthermore the reader, the adjustment represented a failure to value lives. “More than 600,000- about 3 times what it was when I entered prison, sixteen years ago. In the resulting expansion of the nation’s prison systems, authorities have tended to dispense with much of the rehabilitative programming once prevalent in America’s penal institutions” (Hopkins 157). The new blueprint to lock every offender in prison for extended sentencing leads to an influx in incarcerated people. With each new person
Jacoby uses many claims about how crime in the United States has grown and the how faulty America’s justice system currently is. One claim said that citizens pay around “$30,000 per inmate each year” (Jacoby 197). This grasps the reader’s attention by connecting their life to the problem; it is their money, a lot of their money, being used to imprison these criminals. The rates have increased on inmates since the 1980s by over 250% (Jacoby 197). Jacoby declares that the prison system is terrible; he uses accurate and persuading evidence.
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
In the novel, The Jail: Managing the Underclass in American Society, Irwin claims that the jails are inhabited by individuals based on their offensive behaviors, and most importantly, based on their social status, notably being poor. “The public impression is that the jail holds a collection of dangerous criminals. But familiarity and close inspection reveal that the jail holds only a few persons who fit the popular conception of a crime…some students of the jail have politely referred to them as the poor” (Irwin 1). In Chapter one, Irwin describes what a jail entails. He explains that a jail is the foremost start into the criminal justice system. Those individuals placed in jails, normally do less than a year 's time in a jail. A jail is created for individuals who cannot make their bail, and most likely have committed a
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
Currently there are 80,000 drug offenders in federal prison, making up a little over 60 percent of the prisons’ population (Stewart 113-114). 94 percent of the drug offenders were sentenced under one of the four mandatory minimum statutes passed by Congress between 1984 and 1990 in an attempt to reduce drug use in the United States. Even further, it was in 1998 that “57 percent of drug defendants entering federal prison were first offenders, and 88 percent of them had no weapons.” On average, these 80,000 prisoners are sentenced to approximately 6 and ½ years in prison (Stewart 113-114). And it is due to the prohibition of mitigating circumstances that leads to these situations. The United States’ prisons are overcrowded. New York Times reported that despite the United States only is home to less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the country provides approximately one quarter of the world’s prisoners (Liptak). Yet some will insist that Todd must have been guilty in someway or another, or maybe he was simply an innocent who fell through the inevitable cracks in the system. On the contrary, that is the exact problem with mandatory sentencing, it’s setup allows people to not only slip through cracks, but to land face first and watch their life
Even excluding to consider the civil ramifications of imprisonment, the current standpoint neglects other measures effects. These incorporate damaging, faculty of crime and the crimes within the prison. Prison is a school of crime in which criminals first learn and then improve their skills at criminal behavior and create connections with other criminals. This account implies that incarceration removes prisoners from social networks connected with employment and instead connects them to associate with criminal activity. Some scholars have argued that incarceration does not necessarily reduce crime but merely relocates it behind bars. Increasing incarceration while ignoring more effective approaches will impose a heavy burden upon curst, corrections and communities, while providing a marginal impact on
Although prison systems are intense and the experience is one of a kind for sure, it does little to help them as statistics show “two-in-five inmates nationwide return to jail within three years of release”(Ascharya, K). The population of people entering the prison systems nationwide is increasing exponentially. Often times, it is due to the living conditions in which they return to, such as facing the same poverty, limited prospects and minimal network connections, that make them turn to crime to survive. For obvious reasons, income is the solution to many of their problems, which can only be obtained with their “by any means necessary” mindset. Prison has almost become a second home for recurring inmates and in some cases has reached a point where it is no longer intimidating....
According to the Oxford Index, “whether called mass incarceration, mass imprisonment, the prison boom, or hyper incarceration, this phenomenon refers to the current American experiment in incarceration, which is defined by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment and by the concentration of imprisonment among young, African American men living in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage.” It should be noted that there is much ambiguity in the scholarly definition of the newly controversial social welfare issue as well as a specific determination in regards to the causes and consequences to American society. While some pro arguments cry act as a crime prevention technique, especially in the scope of the “war on drugs’.
Crimes and criminals only exist when a public body has judged the such according to accepted procedures; no public authority → no crime
Crimes are not ‘given’ or ‘natural’ categories to which societies simply respond. The composition of such categories change from various places and times, and is the output of social norms and conventions. Also, crime is not the prohibitions made for the purpose of rational social defence. Instead, Durkheim argues that crimes are those acts which seriously violate a society’s conscience collective. They are essentially violations of the fundamental moral code which society holds sacred, and they provoke punishment for this reason. It is because of these criminal acts which violate the sacred norms of the conscience collective, that they produce a punitive reaction. (Ibid)
MacDonald, H. (2010, January 4). A crime theory demolished. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870359090504574638024055735590.ht