Incarceration Criminal Justice System

Prison overcrowding is due to mandatory minimum sentences, three strikes laws, the war on drugs, and lack of rehabilitation programs. In addition, there is little evidence that the death penalty reduces crime than life in prison, and it costs more than to keep a prisoner for life. Mandatory Minimum Sentences The mandatory minimum sentences have greatly contributed to

Even though work was a very significant part of each persons life, it was not shown as a main focus for any of the characters. It seemed that all that mattered was having money and being one of the elite members of the community. Money earned from work, legal or not, was mainly used to live a luxurious life, while holding a reputation. Fitzgerald makes it seem as if the rich were only meant to live in order to experience the luxuries of life. In comparison to Gatsby, the pleasure and luxury Nick receives is not much, however the majority of people wish to be as high in society as him.

One concern is that BWP leads to over incarceration, which Kelling and Bratton respond to this by admitting that, yes, it does; however, the crimes people are being imprisoned for are far less serious than those that are being prevented by BWP and their sentences are thus much shorter. But, the main concern is that SQF, and therefore BWP is inadmissibly discriminatory towards minorities. Once again, Kelling and Bratton give ground by not defending the abhorrent results of the 2011 SQF’s, which resulted in over 700,000 stops and only a 6% success rate. They instead talk about how much their methods have improved with far fewer stops and a higher success rate. This may seem like an odd way to address the claim of discrimination, but the point is that they now are making much more calculated decisions when stopping people, and not just frisking minorities at random.

The more the individual perceives legal sanctions as severe, the greater is the perceived cost of crime and thus the probability of deterrence (Dr. Kirk Williams, Ph.D. in Philosophy from University of Arizona, 1987). What is more, incapacitation directly proves the rationality of retribution. According to Dr. David Green, Ph.D. in Economics at University of Newcastle, (2006), crime levels fall when more offenders have been sent to prison. Statistics show the average inmate committed 140 crimes in the 12 months before his admission into custody. If we locked up 10,000 more offenders a year, we could prevent 1.4 million offenses, saving a fortune and reducing aggravation for citizens.

Homeless people, they have so little, yet they are usually the ones giving more than those with a wealthier lifestyle. This proves that money doesn’t impact the type of person one is, just as seen in ‘The Outsiders’ as a strong

Based on the knowledge given in the article it states that “Curfews lowers the number of teens involved with crimes. From 1995 to 1999, the number of minors arrested for violent crimes dropped 23 percent. Expertscredit public curfews for the drop in crime.” Numerous teens all around the world that do not have a curfew have attempted crimes in multiple ways. From girls to boys, crimes are very easy to strive without a curfew. All in all, more people without a curfew commit more

The type of violence that is most common in prison is/are rape and gang violence. Unfortunately, inmates are not the only suspects, prison staff sometimes harass or rape the inmates. The inmates who are the victims of staff violence sometimes do not report that they have been violated or assaulted because they feel like no one will believe or listen to them. Deaths in prison are also a huge problem, according to Bureau of Justice A total of 4,446 inmates died in 2013, an increase of 131 deaths from 2012. This was the highest number of deaths reported to the BJS Deaths in Custody Reporting Program since 2007 (www.ncjrs.gov).

Race, Class, and Incarceration The main goal of the U.S. law enforcement has been to make the world a safer place but in the process of making the world a safer and “better” place there have been quite some downfalls. One of those many downfalls would have to be the American prison system. In today’s society police enforcement has given so much focus on prosecuting street crime while failing to acknowledge white-collar crime and other major crimes that occur every day. As demonstrated in Trends in U.S. corrections, the U.S. has had the highest rates of incarceration as of 2011 adding up to more than seventy hundred thousand(The Sentencing Project 3). Race and class play an important role on who is punished for such crimes as well as who gets

One major cause of added tension is the practice of racial profiling by law enforcement which increased significantly in the 80’s, when “the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) developed profiling of drug couriers to intercept and reduce interstate drug trafficking” (Sirin 4). With few policy changes since the war on drugs began, the results are, in 2000 the U.S. surpassed Russia as the leader of having the most individuals incarcerated. Michigan, a relatively small state, in regard to population, has more individuals incarcerated than the country of France, and the numbers get worse in the larger states like California. From 1980 to 2000 the “number of individuals incarcerated increased 300%, with the majority being African Americans” (Sirin 7). The last few years have seen “some

Prison overcrowding is due to mandatory minimum sentences, three strikes laws, the war on drugs, and lack of rehabilitation programs. In addition, there is little evidence that the death penalty reduces crime, and it costs more than to keep a prisoner for life. Mandatory Minimum Sentences The mandatory minimum sentences have greatly contributed to the prison overpopulation

The lack of resources to extract DNA is continuing to effect the justice system. The backlogs of rape kits throughout the United States has become an overwhelming number while the crime labs have been doing very little to compensate for these changes. Not only does the inefficiency of DNA analysis effect rape kits, rapes effect thousands of innocent humans every year. It is an ongoing cycle and very little is being done to stop it. Although hard to help with the rates of crime, specifically rapes, there is something that can be done with bring these sexual offenders to justice.

The inability to afford proper legal representation has allowed many black youths to serve time in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. Another example of judicial inequality in parity between legal treatments of citizens is the Crack Cocaine Mandatory Minimum Sentences. Before 2010, there were much stricter mandatory minimum sentences when someone was convicted of a crime involving crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. Crack cocaine is much cheaper to produce and buy than powder cocaine, and thus crack cocaine offenders were more likely to be poor and black, while powder cocaine offenders were more often more affluent and white. Thus a disproportionate number of blacks were imprisoned