Disadvantages Of Crime Control

The Crime Control Model is one that has been around for just about 50 years now and as it has progressed from its early days with Nixon to now it has progressed with the waves of crime. The most influential act set forth by the United States Government in an effort to control a growing crime problem was the Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act of 1994. This act, according to the original bill itself, did many things such as banned assault weapons, added more offenses to the federal death penalty, attempted to protect women from domestic violence (Violence Against Women Act, Safe Streets for Women Act, and Safe Homes for Women Act), also it instituted boot camps for delinquent juveniles along with funds to build more prisons. With …show more content…
The largest criticism with these policies however, is when those who commit crimes that may not be deserving of life imprisonment or a longer term sentence in prison. Mandatory minimums especially can lead to a stigma of distaste for law enforcement for the perpetrator of the crime which, if started at a young age could affect the rest of their lives negatively. In the case of three strikes laws, you may have screwed up as a young adult or even gotten a DUI, and then you steal something over a certain dollar amount or have over a certain weight of marijuana in your possession and end up in jail for life. While this may seem like something that would never happen, it happens more often than prosecutors would care to admit. To make matters worse, the vast racial disparities in prisons is no coincidence. Today, 1 in 3 African American males born today will see the inside of a cell at some point in their lives, for Latinos 1 in 6, and for Whites 1 in 17. (Johnson, …show more content…
I believe to fix this issue there should be more chances for the alleged criminals to be heard whether it be pleading to a lesser charge to keep them out of prison with community service attached or something else that would benefit the community for someone who was receiving a sentence for their first offense. I believe prison should be about rehabilitation and with mandatory minimums and the reduction of prisoner education it is hard to find anything constructive for the men and women imprisoned in America to do except get into more trouble while incarcerated. I believe that prisoners who commit nonviolent offenses should be put on probation or other forms of punishment that do not include extended stays in state or federal prisons. Furthermore I feel that to make the time in prison more productive, much like recent pushes have been made to add more programs to help prisoners that will eventually reenter society. These programs could help make that transition go much smoother and allow the convicts a chance to have a normal life again and possibly staying away from other convicts and the temptation to re-offend and be sent back to