Crime Control in the US

Question 1

Decline of US Crime Rate

Answer 1

• Has little to do with “tough on crime laws” that incarcerate more people for longer.
• Has to do with economy, changing markets for crack cocaine and demographics

Question 2

Excuses for High Crime Rates

Answer 2

We’re too soft on crime

• In reality we have the highest crime rate in the world
• In the last 30 years, increased use of mandatory sentences and harsher sentences

Modernization/urbanization

• Other highly industrialized countries in the world have lower crime rates
• Also striking differences within the U.S. with respect to the amount of crime and violence
• This variation does not depend on the size of the city or the population density

Youth
-Young people are more likely to commit crimes and “age out of crime”, but changes are not only dependent on the size of the youth population

Question 3

Sources of Crime

Answer 3

Poverty
-Poverty, inequality, unemployment create economic needs as well as marginalized classes

Prisons

• Prisons do not encourage pro-social behavior
• Prisons have few programs to help inmates when they get out
• The overuse of prison hurts communities and families from which minor offenders come

Guns
-The current stock of 200 million guns and the relative ease of obtaining them adds to the high level of lethal violence

Drug policies:

• Pharmacological effect- effect of the drug that reduces inhibitions or stimulates other activity
• Economic crime- need for money to buy drugs, so the higher price of the drug, the greater the incentive to commit crime
• Systemic crime- gang-related violence to settle dispute resolutions or turf wars

Question 4

CJ System: Designed to Fail?

Answer 4

CJ system does little to impact crime rates

• Responds to crime after it occurs
• Most criminals don’t think they’ll get caught, harsher sentences have little impact
• Wide variety of factors produce crime, few of the effective interventions to reduce crime concern the police, courts or prisons

Question 5

Phyrric Defeat Theory

Answer 5

Situation in which vast resources are spent to secure an objective, but it’s failure is really a success

Failure results in persistent level of street crime, which is a “victory” for the wealthy and corporate America who are not seen as part of the crime problem, even if they really are

Question 6

A Conspiracy Theory?

Answer 6

Criminal law had it’s origin in one-on-one harms

Criminal justice policy never:

• focused on effective crime prevention
• criminalized harmful acts of the powerful or eliminated economic bias because these failures do not generate effective demands for change
• the powerful benefit from this system and most believe we’re fighting real threats

Thus, we have a large amount of street crime and harms of the powerful for which we have little protection