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Example research essay topic: Released From Prison War On Drugs - 2,101 words

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Crime and Punishment The issue of crime and punishment has been a cornerstone for many people of different time periods. There is no doubt that each and every crime should have corresponding and justified outcome for the person committed it in a form of punishment. Although society has to identify what is the crime and what are the reasons and outcomes of the action of an individual to characterize it as a crime and what punishment should match that particular crime. The rapid growth of the crime control industry is a frightening aspect of contemporary U. S. society.

Incarceration represents the ultimate form of surveillance: 24 hours a day, within four walls, monitored by humans, by machines, restricted in their movements. In 1993, American criminologist, professor of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland Gary La Free published his seminal study, The Changing Nature of Crime in America. This study examined the expansion of what Gary labeled the crime control industry in western democracies. Particularly the study talks about the issue of political construction of crime industry within historical frameworks. A recent CBC radio program, Ideas, noted that in the early 1970 s, the state of Texas had about 14, 000 people in its jails. Today the number is ten times that high.

That same program cited a Rand Corporation estimate that by the year 2002, prison spending will consume 18 per cent of California's resources. In the United States, one in three young black males is under some form of criminal justice supervision, read surveillance, on any given day. Ernie Drucker of the Montefiore Medical Center in New York noted recently that the rate of incarceration of young black males in the United States was twice the rate of incarceration in the Soviet Union during the worst years of Stalin's regime. Many of those young black males are in prison for drug crimes.

Despite levels of drug use being almost identical between blacks and whites in the United States, blacks are more likely to be arrested, more likely to be convicted, more likely to spend time in prison as a result, and more likely to receive long prison sentences. At present, one in three young black males in the United States is under some form of criminal justice supervision. Populations under intense surveillance, is largely linked in North America, and likely in other countries, to the enforcement of drug laws. In the United States, the explosion in the prison population, the explosion in the ultimate form of surveillance, is being caused largely by the enforcement of our drug laws. Some 1. 5 million Americans are expected to be behind bars by the year 2000.

The unenforceability of drug laws in the face of criminal prohibition has led to calls to increase the use of intrusive powers by the state and powers of surveillance, in a vain attempt to the powerful trade created by criminal prohibition. Imprisonment may be the ultimate form of surveillance. However, in the enforcement of our drug laws, it is most certainly not the only form of surveillance. There is no drug crisis in the workplace, in our homes, in our schools. But the War on Drugs, coupled with the profits that drug testing brings to the biotech industry, and the absurd rhetoric of moral entrepreneurs, has fostered this highly intrusive form of surveillance and the community and government support for it. Drug testing of students is also showing a whole new generation of citizens that they have no privacy, hardly the lesson we want to teach if we are to preserve this fundamental human right.

Police search powers are another example of the excessive levels of surveillance and intrusion generated by the war on drugs. Searches conducted to enforce drug laws are often violent, since the police anticipate violence from their targets. These violent searches most certainly intrude upon our physical privacy and sometimes they go terribly wrong. The war on drugs has escalated to the point where extreme police tactics are routine.

These powers are being applied against everyone. And they will spill over into other areas of law enforcement and state control. Even if you support the War on Drugs mentality, the criminal prohibition of drugs, you must realize that these extraordinary powers of enforcement are being used against everyday citizens, the vast majority of whom do not deserve such surveillance. The past few decades have witnessed the emergence of a punitive attitude toward juvenile offenders. These over applied policies (e.

g. , increased waivers of juveniles to the adult system and mandatory sentencing of juveniles) put some youth in facilities who could be served successfully in the community. Such policies have had a negligible effect on crime and have contributed to overcrowding in prisons, jails, and juvenile institutions. Some believe that such policies have also helped to expand an already large crime control industry. The community has the power to regulate the behavior of its residents through the influences of community institutions such as, schools and various hospitals. People must learn the universal norms and have a set of distinct moral values in order for a peaceful atmosphere to exist within a society. There are many different factors that we must look at to maintain social control and to have it run as smooth as possible.

The first factor is the consistent evidence that crime is an activity engaged by youth and is particularly dominated by males. Criminal law isnt there to provide social control as that responsibility falls on behalf of the community. Which by enlarge is generated through parenting roles. It is true that the criminal code doesnt have any sanctions to provoke youth not to engage in criminal activity. If you commit a crime, there is a factor that you will be able to get away with the actions you displayed.

The other factor indicates that if one is caught for engaging in criminal activity, the punishment is so small that the crime seems worth it. (Guzman) The second factor is the evidence of substantial variation in offending within a population to variations in informal social control and social capital. With these patterns as a starting point, this research drew on recent formulations in both criminal and life course research to propose a model that incorporates changing factors of informal social control, indicated by changes in institutional bonds and social capital over the course of time. Thus, this analysis was to identify changes in the proportions of sub-populations that are less bonded and have less interdependency and to relate to the fluctuations in the size of the populations to secular trends in aggregate property crime rates. You can measure this on tree factors of property crime of which the effects of the theoretically derived measures of social control and social capital were consistent with the expectations and then were generalized across these crime types. (Guzman) For robbery rates, all three measures of social bonds displayed significant and theoretically expected associations. For breaking and entering rates, both financial social capital measures were significant, while the labor force measures were not. Last but not least are motor vehicle theft rates, two of the three social capital measures were significant.

All together, seven out of nine possible effects were statistically significant and theoretically consistent, meaning that there is good support for the theoretical model. For the three social controls and social capital measures, the most consistent effects were found for the proportion of the people living at home. Interestingly, the age-sex structure measurer was significant and theoretically consistent in only one of the three measures. While the effects of unemployment were statistically significant in all its measure, but it yielded a positive effect when it came to break and enter factors which was opposite from the expectations. Finally, the control measure with the strongest effects was the opportunity measurer of residential population density ratio. It was significant in all models at a probability level of less that 0. 001.

These findings further indicate the importance of including dimensions of criminal opportunities in both criminological theory and criminological research. It is known that recent years have seen a diverging trend in the sequential order and timing of major life coarse transitions and we begin to see a concomitant decline in primordial social organization. Late teens and young adults are increasingly less likely to live at home and are less likely to be embedded in other closed networks. In current research, fundamental changes in the organizations of social activity within the life cycle are clearly related to change in crime rates over-time. The current research also indicates further benefits of a social indicators approach to criminological theorizing (Guzman). New York people show little sympathy toward ex-convicts these days.

Everyone appreciates the fact that aggressive police work and harsh sentences have made the city a safer place. That doesnt mean that criminals who complete their sentences should face continued punishment after they are released from prison. Two pressing questions whether they should be allowed to vote and whether they should be able to get jobs need to be dealt with soon. The voting issue is in the headlines this presidential election year.

Recent studies show that about 5 million felons, roughly 2. 3 % of all eligible voters, will be denied the right to vote in this election because of the nature of their crimes or because they are on parole. The number of felons totals about 13 million; while many of them can vote, most of them think they cant. Disproportionate percentages from both groups are African-Americans, and the estrangement of these individuals radiates throughout their communities, alienating many from the political process. (Grain) The simple policy followed by most other democracies is that people who have fulfilled their sentences are able to vote. The same thinking should determine whether people released from prison should encounter stiff barriers to landing a job. Here, technology and trial lawyers are conspiring to make it almost impossible for felons to find decent jobs.

Some 20, 000 inmates are released from prison each year in New York City alone, and if they dont find work, they will likely return to a life of crime. It is true that few of these individuals have marketable skills. The lackluster economy of recent years has made finding work difficult for a variety of job seekers. However, the situation for ex-convicts is getting worse. New databases and online filing of job applications allow employers to check criminal records quickly and inexpensively. People with troubled pasts can easily be rejected by employers without receiving an explanation even though such discrimination is illegal in New York City. (Grain) Therefore people are then pressured into criminal or deviant acts by negative affective states, like anger, which then results in negative relationships.

Such as negative affects leads to pressure, which then leads to illegitimate ways to attain a goal, says Agnew. He also talks about how his General Strain Theory in terms of the bulls-eye when it comes to explain criminal activity and deviance. Social control and criminal law both work and provide for one another. Since its the community's responsibility for most of the norms to be brought into the criminal code as laws, the community should then take full responsibility to raising law-abiding citizens.

We understand that corrupt families and falling economies are some of the dominant reasons for criminal activity. However, if everyone were raised in an atmosphere where there was financial stability and good parenting, the majority of crime would be eliminated. As long as we live in a society where people are known to grow up as independent individuals this should be expected upon, because crime doesnt occur in hunting and gathering societies where every one is raised as ever ones child. In general criminal law does a good job of deterring criminal activity and providing much needed social control. Bibliography: Gary La Free, Robert J. Bursik, Sr. , James Short, and Ralph B.

Taylor. The Changing Nature of Crime in America. William Lyons and Stuart Schein gold. The Politics of Crime and Punishment. Graham C. Outer.

Explaining Regional and Urban Variation in Crime: A Review of Research. Available at: web David Grain. Time to stop punishing ex-cons, Crains New York Business, 10 / 11 / 2004, Vol. 20, Issue 41. Robert Becker. The Death Penalty as Delineated by the Old Testament. USA Today Magazine, Nov 2004, Vol. 133, Issue 2714.

Will Find. Making the Punishment Fit the Crime. Ontario Statesman Magazine, issue April 2004. Ishtvan Guzman.

Controversies over Contemporary Criminal Law. Wired Magazine, issue June 2003.


Free research essays on topics related to: criminal activity, criminal justice, released from prison, war on drugs, drug laws

Research essay sample on Released From Prison War On Drugs

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