Crime Control in the US Flashcards
Decline of US Crime Rate
- 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
Excuses for High Crime Rates
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
Sources of Crime
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
CJ System: Designed to Fail?
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
Phyrric Defeat Theory
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
A Conspiracy Theory?
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