Crime in America

1. Crime in America Crime trends have shown significant decline for the past several decades

2. What is Crime? • One can ask about crime the question we asked about deviance – how is crime defined? • Just as in deviance generally, definitions of crime are chosen on the basis of who controls the rule making and rule enforcing processes. • Such processes are not immune to the biases, corruption and misinformation found in the larger society.

3. Marijuana and its Legal Status: A Case Study • As is described in the chapter on drugs, marijuana was not considered contraband until after 1937, despite a history of use dating back to Biblical times. • Research has shown that marijuana was criminalized by linking it to crazed Mexican and Black users, which is the case with other drug laws and other minorities/deviants.

4. Watch Reefer Madness • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLLLTntnqjk • Its in 8 parts and lasts about an hour. • This was propaganda aimed at generating public support for laws against pot.

5. Pot and the White Middle Class • Marijuana use was found to exist among the middle class in the 1960s and became a popular drug among college students. • Increased arrests of white kids for pot possession led to a reduction in penalties for use. This was because middle class parents forced legislatures to change the law so their kids would not go to prison.

6. TheTrend • Looking back, when pot was associated with minorities it was made criminal and by the 1950s included death for drug dealers. • By the 1970s the children of the rule creators and enforcers were using pot and the laws changed to just fines.

7. Crime in America • Crime was highest in the 1970s and declined significantly in the 1990s. There is a recent increase over the past 20 or so years. • Property crime is the most common crime, while violent crime is lower and has been for decades. • Gangs has become a significant problem in most American cities.

8. Crime in America: 2010 • http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement • Use this link to find the crime rate in your town. Look on the right for Table 8 and search by state. The other tables are equally interesting.

9. Trends in Crime • http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t4202010.pdf • This link show crimes for which there was an arrest for the past several decades. If there was no arrest, or the crime was not reported, it is not counted here. These uncounted crimes are as many as 60% of all criminal acts.

10. Racism in the Criminal Justice System • There is evidence of racial disparities in the criminal justice process. Minorities are generally treated more harshly than whites. • Social scientists explain this disparity as based on factors like having a job, owning property, hiring an attorney and other sociological factors. • Direct racial discrimination has not been proven, poverty seems to be the most likely explanation.

11. FemaleCrime • Female crime has increased in amount but not so much in type of crime since the 1970s. • Women are not as likely to commit violent crime as are men, and prostitution and petty theft remain some of the most common crime committed by women. • As women move into positions of power in business, more will commit those kinds of crimes.

12. Controlling Crime • America used to attempt to rehabilitate criminals while they were in prison with education and drug and psychological treatment. • Since the 1980s the trend in America is to use prisons to punish and warehouse minorities and the poor. • The increase in sentence length since the 1980s accounts for part of the decline in crime in the 1990s.