When dissecting the effects of the prison boom, one may be tempted to overlook the children involved. The epidemic of mass incarceration has been one of the most devastating sociopolitical issues of the past three decades. Not only was the prison boom facilitated, it was engineered. There were policy’s put into place that geared there effort towards a specific demographic which untimely lead to the mass incarceration that America sees today. One could summarize that the steady rise in the prison population could be attributed to get tough on crime legislation. Likewise many could use Nixon’s war on drugs as a significant factor in the prison boom of recent decades. The criminalization of poor and urban America has wreaked havoc on the family
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You understand what I’m saying,” Ehrlichman continued. “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war on blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” (New York Daily news ADAM EDELMAN MAR 23, 2016) I believe that this statement shows clear intentionality towards the disenfranchisement of one people over another. In fact, having such an inflammatory statement given in confidence Mr. Ehrlichman provides the motivation for one to see the clear racial bias and malicious intent behind some of the government 's policy.
In 1969 Travis Hirschi published the social control theory (Causes for Delinquency 1969) In a nutshell “Social bonds encouraged conforming behavior and prevented most people from committing crimes.” Hirschi believed that an individual may be able to dodge the pitfalls of criminality by engaging in social mechanisms of control. In my analysis, the social control theory will always yield faulty results because there is no way to account for varying values of an individual belonging to a targeted class of …show more content…
This says that crime is caused by structural causes rather than individual traits. (Shaw and McKay 1942 Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas) This is better defined as the breakdown of social institutions in a community. Poverty creates excess crime and criminal behaviors. If this is true then a reasonable person could place the blame on certain administration 's politics such as the initial Nixon drug laws and then later Clinton 's mandatory sentencing guidelines. For all of the models used in criminological theory, they never account for racist or elitist tendencies to wield power in favor of like individuals. What would the theories of Shaw and McKay look like if it interpreted data from the perspective of an impoverished underclass? It is in my honest opinion that the theoretical models would not work properly within those parameters without providing a motivation for the constant individual cultivation of extreme wealth. The prison industrial complex has proven to be a social juggernaut, but one may be surprised at what kind of negative effects have been absorbed by the most vulnerable people in our society. According to Christopher Widman in his paper imprisonment and infant mortality Having ever been incarcerated or having an ever-incarcerated partner increases the risk of having infectious or stress-related
You understand what I’m saying,” Ehrlichman continued. “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war on blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” (New York Daily news ADAM EDELMAN MAR 23, 2016) I believe that this statement shows clear intentionality towards the disenfranchisement of one people over another. In fact, having such an inflammatory statement given in confidence Mr. Ehrlichman provides the motivation for one to see the clear racial bias and malicious intent behind some of the government 's policy.
In 1969 Travis Hirschi published the social control theory (Causes for Delinquency 1969) In a nutshell “Social bonds encouraged conforming behavior and prevented most people from committing crimes.” Hirschi believed that an individual may be able to dodge the pitfalls of criminality by engaging in social mechanisms of control. In my analysis, the social control theory will always yield faulty results because there is no way to account for varying values of an individual belonging to a targeted class of …show more content…
This says that crime is caused by structural causes rather than individual traits. (Shaw and McKay 1942 Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas) This is better defined as the breakdown of social institutions in a community. Poverty creates excess crime and criminal behaviors. If this is true then a reasonable person could place the blame on certain administration 's politics such as the initial Nixon drug laws and then later Clinton 's mandatory sentencing guidelines. For all of the models used in criminological theory, they never account for racist or elitist tendencies to wield power in favor of like individuals. What would the theories of Shaw and McKay look like if it interpreted data from the perspective of an impoverished underclass? It is in my honest opinion that the theoretical models would not work properly within those parameters without providing a motivation for the constant individual cultivation of extreme wealth. The prison industrial complex has proven to be a social juggernaut, but one may be surprised at what kind of negative effects have been absorbed by the most vulnerable people in our society. According to Christopher Widman in his paper imprisonment and infant mortality Having ever been incarcerated or having an ever-incarcerated partner increases the risk of having infectious or stress-related