Varun Jaitly
Brian Lewis
1/30/2014
Crime
An Unspoken Truth
Crime is a part of society, like a cog in a machine. It is simple to understand why it happens, and has multiple solutions. With that being said, society still fails to understand the realities of crime and what it means in regards to society. Crime is a clear indicator as to where society is having issues, whether its areas of high volumes of street crime or corporations cutting corners. Crime is everywhere, however society still misinterprets it and a lot of times takes crime and its solutions in the wrong direction. Xgreat intro and syn"thesis;" finally someone gets it.
Crime does not discriminate
Inner city Chicago, Oakland California, the Bronx New York, and Detroit, these are places notorious for high volumes of street crime. However after years of high crime rates things aren't getting much better, why? Simply because most policy makers, rather than change the circumstances that induce crime, they ramp up the punishment hoping it to become a deterrent to crime. When in reality if you look at the areas where street crime is the worst it also happens to take place in areas of rampant poverty or low income communities. That is not a coincidence, in the same way that it's not a coincidence that the worst white collar and corporate crime happens on Wall Street. Crime does not discriminate, however the solutions never seem to go after the main reason why people commit crime. According to the "Crime and Social Deviance" chapter, crime is committed when people try to take shortcuts, whether out of greed or out of desperation. Xnice paragraph. looking for the readings in US.
Street crime happens mostly in low income areas and by people who are either unemployed or aren't making enough money to support themselves or their family. this also why many people turn to illegal drugs and narcotics distribution, because despite the legality of it the money is good enough to support a family. So why not get a real job? Author Victor Rios explains the realities of hard work in low income areas," My mom, she's washed dishes thirty years of her life working ten hours a day and she still makes ten, eleven dollars an hour. That's hard work"(Rios 188, Social Control and deviance). When society has made it difficult to get a job and then to get a job where there is a possibility of growth, how do we expect people to react? Low Income areas offer little to no opportunity, and that leads to people wanting to take short cuts in the form of street crime. Unfortunately the areas where street crime is the worst also happens to be where majority of child births happen out of wedlock and the school districts can't compete with schools in better areas due to lack of funding or revenue from income. A mixture of broken homes, and broken schools creates a breeding ground for gangs because gangs are a way to find likeminded people who can offer you money and pleasures without going through the struggle others had to. Gangs are a product of social integration, where troubled kids find solace in drugs, violence, overall deviant, and criminal behavior. If I can tell you in a paragraph the causes of why we have high crime rates in lower socioeconomic areas, why then isn't this problem solved? The reason is because people looking from the outside into these areas aren't seeing a cycle of poverty being created by the conditions people are living in, but rather they see people who need policing. Xgreat paragraph; to me, in this essay, it would come later, after a discussion of Durkheim,....
The reality is many of the policy makers that are creating plans and promoting policies in these areas tend to not fully understand why crime is so widespread. For instance, having police in libraries or doing police checks in school when really the schools need more funding for educational programs. When you give people sub-par tools to work with, then they can't get the job done and can't compete, especially when the college system has become so competitive and schools have done the same. These things lead to street crime, it's not as though people wake up one day wanting to rob someone at gun point, they wake up and out of desperation either aspire to greatness or fall to deviance. The worst part is that most fall because they have been brought down so much by the lives they have lived. it's hard to hold people to the standards of the outliers that came out of poverty and became great people, without helping to bring the average up. It's a cycle of poverty and crime and rather than find the proper solution it's easier to say they need more policing than to take the time and create the proper plan to fix these people's lives so they can have solid careers and futures. Xgreat thesis driven essay; you need to summarize and anlalyze the US articles.
Unlike street crimes there are crimes that take place when there isn't enough policing, According to the FBI these crimes have a certain effect on society relative to street crimes "Although street crimes are more prevalent, looking strictly at the numbers (White Collar Crimes) has greater financial impact. these are white collar crimes and corporate crimes. Here we don't have people who have been brought up in broken communities but rather they are privileged individuals who believe because of their income and their place on the socioeconomic ladder that they are above the law. In 2008 the United States financial market cashed because corporate greed went unchecked and unchallenged and the people in the end who took the brunt were average Americans. This is the reality of corporate greed, it takes money from those who barely have it. Now with new regulations like the Dodd Frank act, and a number of other attempts at changes in policy, market regulators are working to regulate markets so Wall Street bankers can't steal from people and their livelihoods. Xgreat writing, just not what the assignment asked for entirely, in that you were supposed to include a disucussion of three specific articles from US.
On this side of the spectrum you can see how the reactions are not supposed to focus on the community aspect but on the fact that the bankers actions were blatant rule breaking out of pure greed. They weren't socialized into these roles but rather they grew into them and the reaction in policy isn't supposed to be sympathetic but rather aggressive so people know that no matter how much money you make or what your last name is, you are not above the law. Yet we see that in the aftermath of the great financial crisis the bankers were bailed out with the money of the people they stole from, and rather than restore the markets and people's lives, they handed themselves massive bonuses and got rich selling off major market positions. Yet despite the Billions of dollars stolen from people, the US got over it after a year and has limped on ever since. In relation to today if you talk about crime rather than say "We need to bring down the bankers" people turn to labeling and racial profiling and pointing out how the Mexicans and Blacks are destroying America but not how the banks are. Xyou have improved the RTS issue!!
The reality is that we stigmatize the things we don't like and we let that stigma spread until it becomes a reality. Now what's happened is that the ghetto communities have accepted their roles in society and troubled young teens are proud to join gangs where they smuggle narcotics and illegal weapons. Why? because society kept beating them with their stigma that created a self fulfilling prophecy. why would you want to persecute a bank when everyone wants to be the rich banker? It is much easier to persecute the young black man and make it harder for him to achieve a higher goal when everyone in his community thinks it's cool to do drugs. Humans have an amazing ability to understand things on the highest levels and then fail to apply that understanding whatsoever. Xuse Rich get Richer and Poor get Prison article here.
the reality is that older Americans think being Gay is a crime, that blacks are destroying our society, that weed destroys people, and that helping those who we as a society have failed is communist. The most important thing I believe is causing improper judgment or failure to correct the wrongs in society is because people buy into stigmas to the point where they believe their own lies. My parents are from India and are fairly open to things, yet they are certain that weed is some horrific narcotic, why? Because society has created this stigma that weed destroys life despite the reality that weed doesn't destroy lives and that it actually has medicinal qualities that could help people of proper research was done and doctors could use it in medical practices. The same goes for gun Violence, the recent shootings that have happened have created an amazing situation where both sides of the debate are completely wrong. The side that wants to take away the guns has failed to understand that gun violence since the 70's has decreased at a rising rate, and that the majority of gun related crimes happen in lower income communities with illegal guns. So a ban on guns would not be very effective if at all, instead policy makers should try to fight the inflow of illegal guns that are coming into this country because they are not regulated and tend to be more dangerous than the guns that are legal in this country. However with that being said, people who believe that gun regulations are fine as they are have their heads on backward. The majority of mass shootings in public places that have happened, including campus shootings and mass murders happened with legal weapons, and in most cases the shooter was a victim of mental illness. So to say that we shouldn't make it harder for people with mental illness to buy guns is outlandish, in the same way that people can go to a gun show and buy guns without having the purchase documented. These are some examples of how society perceives criminal activity yet fails to approach the solution in a proper manner. Xmore great writing; I wish I could read this with the class but it's not bringing in the essays it needs to. but great writing, nonetheless. You're at the next level I think. great focus.
Stigmas have destroyed this country and have no place in social policy creation. We lose hundreds of thousands of peoples in gang wars every year, and to drug abuse. We have people who lose their hard work and the lives they've created because banks seize their homes after that same bank cause market collapsing conditions making it damn near impossible for people to pay their mortgages. Here in America Crime is an Indicator as to when a part of society is failing to hold up to a certain moral standard. That is why we use crime to identify these portions of society so we can go in and fix these things, yet we fail to do so because we let our societal notions get the best of us.
