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War on drugs (1971 to today)
Failed war on drugs policy
War on drugs (1971 to today)
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Colin Flynn Professor Anderson Social Justice 12/4 The Hypocrisy of The American Justice System America is home to the land of opportunity. Millions of immigrants come to the United States each year in pursuit of the American dream. Little do some know they are entering a more strict society compared to the one they left. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the word, with 716 per 100,000 people getting put behind bars (Wikipedia). How is a country that lives by the words of freedom, and integrity, have higher incarceration rates than the rest of the world? There are 36 states that have higher prison populations than the second leading country, Cuba (vice). There are so many reasons and flaws that can be pointed out …show more content…
This increase in crime led many Americans believing in the need to be tougher on crime. The government decided to use the method of mass incarceration, believing on the fundamentals of incapacitation and deterrence. Incapacitation refers to the restriction of an individual 's freedoms and liberties that they would normally have in society (study.com). This response is typically used when a person has committed a crime, and will head to prison. Deterrence is the inhibition of criminal behavior by fear especially of punishment (Webster). Thus saying causing fear of punishment will reduce the likelihood of criminals committing a crime. The American government proceeded to act as promised to become harsher on crime. The number of arrests increased dramatically. When looking at just plain ink and paper you would see that arrests rates were getting higher, so you would think that the country would be becoming safer. Instead of targeting violent criminals, there were significantly more people being thrown in prison for non-violent crimes such as drug …show more content…
Men like Nixon and Reagan had a tough mentality, while Clinton and Carter were a little more lenient (Parenti). Some targeted the suppliers, some targeted the consumers, and others targeted both. One of the key faults in the War on Drugs has been targeting consumers. People are going to take drugs no matter what. In order to reduce mass incarceration, the government must stop targeting and focusing on punishing the consumers of drugs. In 2005, four out of five drug arrests were for mere possession, and the vast majority of those offenders had no history of violence (Alexander). Targeting consumers of drugs is completely detrimental to the War on Drugs. You aren’t removing the problem by getting rid of the consumers. Instead you are putting a lot of people who have never committed a violent crime into a system surrounded by hardened criminals who truly deserve to be away from society and in prison. Prison is not a safe place. After a few months or years in prison, you become accustomed to prison norms, full of aggression and violence. People who simply got caught in possession of a drug are interacting and living with rapists and murderers. 77 percent of drug offenders would be arrested again (Crimeinamerica). Putting drug addicts and users in prison doesn’t solve the problem, but only enhances it. The point attempted to be made here is not to abolish drug laws for consumers,
The purpose of the law was to protect the general public from repeat offenders and effectively “deter” criminals (Jones 2012). The three-strikes law was seen as necessary in states because of a movement referred to as the victims’ movement. The movement brought violent and sex offenders into the public’s attention. As a result, the states created the three-strikes law in order to “silence” the public (Jones 2012). However, the three strikes law doesn’t come without certain consequences, such as over-crowded prison facilities and increase in cost (Jones 2012). The three strike law purpose was to deter crime in the United States; however, research has concluded that the law has not in fact deter crime. For instance, in California the crime rate by 13.8 percent; however, the crime rate declined prior the enactment of the three-strikes law (Jones 2012). The three strikes law also did not display a significant drop in crime rates in populous cities (Jones 2012). One study researched the violent crimes in states that had similar three-strikes laws as those in California and states that did not have a three-strike law. Figure one in the research charted the crime rates in states with a three-strikes law and figure two charted the crime rates in states without a three-strikes law. The two figures verify that the three-strikes law does not contribute to the decline in crime rates because the rate for crime in the
Since the 1970’s the United States has been waging an ever expanding and seemingly never ending war on drugs. The United States has spent trillions of dollars to rid the streets of illegal drugs, but too little effect. On the contrary drug use is higher today than during the 70’s when the drug war was officially declared by the Nixon Administration. Not only has the war on drugs failed to limit the drug trade, it has also damaged the black and Latino community. Women and lower class citizens have also been affected by our drug policies. The war on drugs is rooted in racist ideology and as consequence has disproportionately affected lower class communities of color. This war on drugs will continue until the people decide to take action towards a better and more reasonable policy.
One, is the viable America. The America that is connected to its own economy, and where there is a plausible future for the ones born into it. But there is another America as well. One where opportunity and forgiveness are scarce. Those caught possessing recreational drugs are sent to prison for fifty years or more, never seeing their families and communities again, but rather a six by ten cement block. It doesn’t matter if they had a mental illness that led them to prison, or an unfair judgment because of their skin color. All that matters is that they fill a bed, so that private prison companies will make their pay. This is the current system of mass incarceration in America. Although America currently incarcerates a quarter of all prisoners in the world, people do nothing. 2.2 million citizens are missing from the nation, yet we see it as perfectly fine as these men, women, and children are criminals. Yes, they are criminals but they are also people. People who in our current prison system are being denied the basic human rights. Most prisoners are being tortured with solitary confinement, spending up to seven years with little to no human contact, with no way out. Those who are placed in confinement are not violent criminals but rather African American non-violent criminals. Non-violent criminals who often turned to crime because they are victims of our failed education system, or their parent had been in jail. Our prison
Is race and ethnicity a contemporary issue in today’s modern criminal justice system, or is it an issue of the past. Race and ethnicity plays a huge role in our justice system, to say that is doesn’t would be false. We can look back through history and we can see many example of how much of a role it has played. There are many studies that prove that race and ethnicity is still a current issue in our contemporary criminal justice system. There are many debates about whether it does or does not still impact our justice system as well. We cannot deny that race and ethnicity impacts the operations of our justice system, not justice in our system, but in other systems around the world. In particular, race and ethnicity still impacts our system
Today, half of state prisoners are serving time for nonviolent crimes. Over half of federal prisoners are serving time for drug crimes. Mass incarceration seems to be extremely expensive and a waste of money. It is believed to be a massive failure. Increased punishments and jailing have been declining in effectiveness for more than thirty years. Violent crime rates fell by more than fifty percent between 1991 and 2013, while property crime declined by forty-six percent, according to FBI statistics. Yet between 1990 and 2009, the prison population in the U.S. more than doubled, jumping from 771,243 to over 1.6 million (Nadia Prupis, 2015). While jailing may have at first had a positive result on the crime rate, it has reached a point of being less and less worth all the effort. Income growth and an aging population each had a greater effect on the decline in national crime rates than jailing. Mass incarceration and tough-on-crime policies have had huge social and money-related consequences--from its eighty billion dollars per-year price tag to its many societal costs, including an increased risk of recidivism due to barbarous conditions in prison and a lack of after-release reintegration opportunities. The government needs to rethink their strategy and their policies that are bad
“More than half of federal prisoners are incarcerated for drug crimes…” (Branson, 2012). Nonviolent drug offenses in America are unrightly over punished, causing more harm than good to those charged and all American citizens. Drug arrests and imprisonments are far too common and are taking focus off of more important crimes. The sentences for nonviolent drug crimes are far too long and harsh for the crime. Punishment against nonviolent drug crimes are not working and is causing more harm than good. The harsh punishment for nonviolent drug offenses might not seem like a problem at first, but it causes a huge toll on everyone involved. A simple nonviolent drug arrest could ruin an otherwise law abiding citizens’ life. The war on drugs is damaging
The general idea with deterrence is that the possibility of punishment, or being made an “example of” through harsher sentencing; will sway people to not commit crime. The principal was thought to be that if you increase the harshness or severity of consequence for ones actions, you can in turn reduce the crime rate, but that may in fact not be the case. “There is now considerable research that disputes this idea especially with regards to jail sentences. The sentencing commission found that there is no evidence of a deterrent effect from increasing the severity of the sentence. But instead accepted that any deterrence effect comes from the entire process rather than a particular sentenced
This supports the conservative’s claim that the war on drugs is not making any progress to stop the supply of drugs coming into America. Conservative writer for the magazine National Review, William Buckley, shows his outrage towards the Council on Crime in America for their lack of motivation to change the drug policies that are ineffective. Buckley asks, “If 1.35 million drug users were arrested in 1994, how many drug users were not arrested? The Council informs us that there are more than 4 million casual users of cocaine” (70). Buckley goes on to discuss in the article, “Misfire on Drug Policy,” how the laws set up by the Council were meant to decrease the number of drug users, not increase the number of violators.
In addition, the new scope on combating crime also projected many policy implications as the conservative theory is applied to the criminal justice system today. Across the board, the conservative theory holds true to “get tough on crime” as it called to hire more law enforcement officers throughout the nation. Eventually this would lead the government and local law enforcement agencies to increase their force not only in personnel but also in equipment and other necessary items that are essential to each law enforcement officer. Simply put, it would cost the agencies more money due to the combating crime rates with more arrests. In addition, this would also lead to the increase and hiring of more judges/magistrates, prison guards, prisons, and essential staffing within the criminal justice system. According to Lilly, Cullen, and Ball (2015), “the financial burdens of prison during the fiscally tight times of the 1980s furnished ample motivation to search for alternative methods of social control. Still, in turning to community corrections, conservatives brought a distinctive look” (p. 345). Interesting enough, the rise of the criminal justice services throughout the nation continued to build, as agencies got tough on crime, however, the taxes and financial burdens are felt even two decades later. Overall the influence of getting tough on crime/ the conservative movement focused on the individual motives as the cause for crime. As the focus narrowed, the policies that were implemented created positive and negative impacts on society. If such polices continued to strive for more policing into the twenty-first century and continued to dawn the extreme “get tough on crime” lens then taxes and financial issues would grow out of control. To that end, the United States continues to feel the effect of the conservative movement in the 1980s
Ultimately the question that we should ask,have we as a nation approach the war on drugs fairly ? Is the war on drugs about the drug or is it about our people? I can honestly say with my head held high its not about the drug but about the people. .We as a nation don't gain anything if we strip our people from their rights and abandoned them. As Lisa D. Moore, DrPH and Amy Elkavich, BA noted, “Everyone should be able to access quality health care and education inside and out of prison. We should support ex-felons after their prison terms in their attempts to find meaningful employment, housing, and education.” We all live under one nation and should strive to be the best nations and allowing people to seize our rights as citizen is irrational. We need to step up and ask for change!
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’.
The war on drugs has continued to intensify in recent decades, and leaders of that war adopted better rules and ways of dealin...
Today?s drug laws seem to do more harm than good. The so-called drug war hasn?t seemed to be as effective as it was intended to be. Its original intent lies in its name, to attack the drug problem in America. Nixon started the war on drugs in the late sixties to stop drug abuse at the source, the distributors. Another intention for the war on drugs was to show individuals taking part in this illegal activity that their participation would cause serious consequences. The government has taken drastic measures to keep drugs out of our nations streets, from attacking the frontline in The Columbian drug fields, to making numerous drug busts in urban cities across the United States.
The United States of America is a primary example of the idea that even the greatest things have their own flaws. The United States is known to be one of the most powerful and influential countries in the world. Yet as a nation we still have many of our own flaws. We are not the number one country in education or health. We don’t even provide all our citizens with health care coverage unlike many European countries such as Denmark. The one thing that we’re better at than other countries is putting people in prison. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. As of the year 2013, we had 2.2 million people in prison. Why is that? Why are people committing so much crime in the United States rather than in any other country?
While Clinton's baby boomer generation has dismissed aggressive anti-drug campaigns as ineffectual, the truth is that tough approaches to the problem have proven to be very successful. The Nixon, Reagan and Bush administrations are direct examples of this.