The Pros And Cons Of The Safe Street Act

Furthermore, some laws are created for the powerful middle class and upper class. For example the Safe Street act was implemented on January 31, 2000 in Ontario.This prohibited aggressive solicitation and squeegeeing. This was advertised as an act to protect the interest of the general public and keep them protected from squeegee kids and panhandlers. The public dislikes soliciting due to fear of solicitors and cultural values such as the ‘American Dream’ which urges people to be an active and working member of the society and economy. But in consequence this is an act that is set up to target the homeless. The homeless are individuals who collect from the capitalist society but they cannot afford to feed into the system. Here individuals are …show more content…
According the labeling theory punishing an individual labels them as a deviant. Labels of deviance can be given to an offender either by the court system or a society. Labeling can cause individuals to be discriminated against and it can create gossip. Due to this circumstance even if the individual wants to repent for the crime the label becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because of the lack of opportunity. This is the case especially for young offenders who are punished (Robert, Francis and Richard 2010: 145). Punishment is then sometimes criminogenic, the prison is not an institution that helps to reform an offender. Rehabilitation is not much of an option to countries with large incarceration rates such as the United States as rehabilitation involves a lot of people with titles that demand high wages while a jail guard can be paid a much lower price. For example, inmates who need psychological help will need a psychiatrist who charges around a hundred dollars an hour. The system cannot spend money on this institution in the United States as it would be too expensive, they have too many prisoners. Rusche implies that incarceration is expensive therefore when the labour force is scarce the inmates are made to do forced labour but when they labour force is abundant punitive methods is used to deter and decrease costs of jail maintenance (Bichlar and Nitzan 2010: 7). However even though punitive methods are meant to act as a general deterrent most people who commit crime are not aware of the punishment that is awaiting because members of the society don’t regularly come into contact with the legal system. Or it could be simply that the offender had to do a cost and benefit analysis and decided the pleasure of crime is greater than the pain. Simple incarceration and punitive measures do not deter or rehabilitate. The most decent option for a government to