The higher classes have passed laws only to benefit themselves. These same laws are unfavorable to the working class. Both crowds commit acts of deviance, but the system the higher class created defines deviance inversely for each group. The justice system judges and punishes each group differently. The elite can afford expensive lawyers and sometimes friendly with the people in control of creating and enforcing laws. The working class does not have these advantages. The working class is likely to commit street crime, such as robbery and assault. A homeless individual is more probable to be categorized deviant than an executive who misuses finances from the corporation. The elite are less likely to commit acts of violence but more expected …show more content…
It began in the 1980s, when high crime led counsels to send people to prison for longer sentences. The country’s war on drugs lead strict sentencing procedures, which reduced the preference of judges. In a 2013 study "Why are so many Americans in prison?", Steven Raphael and Michael Stoll, professors of public policy at Berkeley and UCLA, found that changes in sentences for drug offences were important, accounting for about twenty percent of the increase in the incarceration rate. Yet, stricter sentences for violent offenders accounted for nearly half. Many convicts serving long sentences were never dangerous, or have matured with age and no longer posed a danger to the community. To put someone in a cell is to strip the individual of all freedom. Most of us think this sort of dispossession of freedom can be justified when a crime is serious enough. A regulation of proportionality has to apply so that way punishment can always fit the crime. Keeping people in jail too long adds an injustice to the original crime. If someone commits a crime that is six years, but is kept in for twelve, then six years of life have been unreasonably taken in much the same way that the life of a kidnapping victim went through. It may be that many Americans have taken the idea that a serious crime justifies the loss of certain rights. This may explain the America’s indifference to the fair of punishment. Fairness is kept for those who haven’t disgraced their mortality and citizenship by committing crimes. Thus, putting away the criminals lets us great citizens sleep at night knowing there would be less crime in the streets
"U.S. has the highest incarceration rate out of all of Europe"(Sentencing 17). We do not have to imprison everyone if they do a wrong. Prisons should be a last resort, not a first option. Prison should only hold killers or drug lords, not some person who accidentally got involved with illegal
For those who don’t belong to those groups, it is easy to use that against them, instead of logical facts. The well-respected men of the upper class, are less likely to be convicted of crimes, simply because of their status. The clergymen would have be convicted of witchcraft because of their position and status is society. Fragility of justice is still the theme that applies the most because it only takes one to accuse you, to jeopardize your life. Your life can be put on the line because of one person, only
If a celebrity is busted for doing illegal drugs, they are immediately sent to rehab. Meanwhile, a young man without a household name or money would be spending some time in jail. Smaller scale: if a child from a middle or upper class family acts out in school, the teachers immediately first thought is that something is going on at home. If a poor child acts out or gets in trouble, many teachers are swifter to punish first instead of investigate. Times have changed, but people have not
Three-Strikes Law It is my intention to establish a relationship between the three strikes law and retention rates of prisoners incarcerated for low level offenses. Before I begin to discuss the three-strikes law, it is imperative that I give some background information on sentencing guidelines. During the 1970 's the incarceration sentences imposed were indeterminate, meaning the judge had the discretion to sentence an offender on a case by case basis and sentencing a person to state prison or county jail was supposed to be to rehabilitate that person so he/she could re-enter society. Often time’s prisoners were sentenced to different amounts of time for similar offenses.
However, the elite class were the ones who usually possessed the high valued goods, and the lower class were the ones who tried to produce these goods. This created a difference is social ladder; from the higher working class (elite) and lower working class
Immigrants and poor works worked together to increase the wages. The rich wanted to ensure in maintaining their power and wealth, leaving the others in terrible circumstances. “The purpose of the state was to settle upper-class disputes peacefully,control lower-class rebellion, and adopt policies that would further the long-range stability of the system”(Zinn, 238). Always, the wealthy and powerful have control the lower class, creating discriminatory laws. These laws that have been created is beneficial to the rich.
Some reforms that have been built around the promise of public interest are the prison institutions, businesses, political machines, and voting rights. Before their reformation, these systems were oppressing minority communities from thriving. Before there was a prison system, citizens who chose not to follow the law were brutally punished. Then during the 1800s, the early stages of prison systems were developed.
violent or nonviolent (1). It is hard to figure out who is a violent criminal due to the way they were charged under the justice system. There is no way of showing whether or not violence was used while they were dealing or drug using. These statistics prove that by focusing on other resolutions for non-violent crimes, the incarceration rates could be reduced. Along with rehabilitation for drug offenders, there is also a need for proper rehabilitation of mentally ill patients and prisoners to keep them from relapsing and ending up back in the system.
In 1972, former President Richard Nixon made his infamous statements regarding crime and drug abuse. In this speech, he declared a war on crime and drugs and intended to decrease the number of people using drugs and the amount of crimes that were committed. Since this declaration, incarceration rates in the U.S. have gone up by 500%, even though the amount of crime happening has gone down. One of the reasons why I feel our rates have risen, is because sometimes, we put people in jail when they don’t need to be there in the first place.
In addition to the negative purpose of a retributive punishment system, the current prison conditions help explain why this model is severely damaging to convicts. The United States prison condition is plagued with brutal violence, increased rate of sexual abuse, mistreatment of convicts, and overcrowding of prisons at an alarming rate. This coincides with the retributive-model, considering this dogma fails to view these criminal offenders as socially ill individuals and leading to extensive imprisonment periods. In 2005, a research was conducted about the current prison condition in the U.S. Results showed that “the population of convicts has risen by nearly 4x in the last 20 years, accumulating close to 2 million convicts” (Jeffrey Smith,
The upper class committed contrasting crimes to the lower class because of their prestige and power in the community. This was because of their opposite social standards. The most significant crime nobles
If they experience luxury when they are brought up they never learn the habit of obedience. The poor on the other hand who are too degraded. So that the one class can’t obey and the other may only rule to
No, prisons should not be abolished. They should not be abolished but they to be more specific in the crimes that are considered federal. Also they need to reevaluate the amount of time given to certain crimes. Criminals need to be reprimanded for their own actions but some actions need other alternatives to imprisonment. Rapists receive years of imprisonment for the crime they have committed as far as discipline.
The Upper Class was insulated from the lower classes in terms of issues and
When talking about political rights it is also important to mention how class effected people’s rights. Firstly there were small differences in voting rights between classes as “if one owned a business or was a university graduate, one was entitled to vote in more than one constituency” . This rule gave the middle and upper classes a greater political say in the country and this advantage to the upper classes was not changed before 1939. It is also important to mention the roles in which class played in government with the aristocracy having a “near-monopoly of power in the House of Lords” whereas the Commons was taken up by people from a middle class with all prime ministers “invariably drawn from a middle class background” . The roles of