The, “American Dream,” is practically the leading cause of crime in the United States. Why do people commit crimes? Often for money and personal gain, but why? Often you will see people who commit crimes just to make ends meet, but more often than not you see people committing an excess of crime, and why do you think they do this? To live the “American Dream” and give their lives a sense of meaning. Wealth is glamorized in today’s culture. When you have role models, athletes, politicians, and celebrities that are all filthy rich, it’s hard for people not to want to be wealthy. The American Dream creates tensions between classes especially. You can see this in different genders, races, classes and you can see it in things like media, music,
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The theory stated that “As a defender of the existing social order … The criminal justice system ultimately serves the interests of the capitalist class … The system is designed so the rich get richer and the poor go to prison.” Now, I found this particularly interesting and I thought about it a bit, especially with the war on drugs that we have been discussing in our Community and Justice course. The war on drugs was established mandatory minimum sentencing and harsher punishments on drug offenses, and a result of this was massive incarceration rate increase. Now, as we discussed in class, crack and cocaine are the same exact drug, yet the sentencing is completely different. In 2010, we passed a law called the Fair Sentencing Act, and I think that our system expresses all but that. Prior to this law, the sentencing ratio from crack to cocaine was 100:1. That means if you were caught with 5 grams of crack, you would be charged the same as somebody with 500 grams of cocaine. This absolutely disgusts me, being that crack is very prominent among the more poor african american oriented neighborhoods, and the cocaine is only used by rich white people for the most part. It was literally a stab at the poor, it was an excuse to lock up the poor and let the rich become richer. Now after the
The theory stated that “As a defender of the existing social order … The criminal justice system ultimately serves the interests of the capitalist class … The system is designed so the rich get richer and the poor go to prison.” Now, I found this particularly interesting and I thought about it a bit, especially with the war on drugs that we have been discussing in our Community and Justice course. The war on drugs was established mandatory minimum sentencing and harsher punishments on drug offenses, and a result of this was massive incarceration rate increase. Now, as we discussed in class, crack and cocaine are the same exact drug, yet the sentencing is completely different. In 2010, we passed a law called the Fair Sentencing Act, and I think that our system expresses all but that. Prior to this law, the sentencing ratio from crack to cocaine was 100:1. That means if you were caught with 5 grams of crack, you would be charged the same as somebody with 500 grams of cocaine. This absolutely disgusts me, being that crack is very prominent among the more poor african american oriented neighborhoods, and the cocaine is only used by rich white people for the most part. It was literally a stab at the poor, it was an excuse to lock up the poor and let the rich become richer. Now after the