1. Lewdog

    Lewdog Come ova here and give me kisses! Supporter Contributor

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    Essay on the decline of crime in the u.s.

    Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by Lewdog, Oct 11, 2015.

    I have until Friday at 5 pm to write a 3-5 page essay on the decline of crime in the U.S. by using 3 points of interests. So far I want to use community style policing, the better officers being hired because of their education, and then later being given proper training, and legislation from states and the government that has created the three strikes rule, but also has made some minor drug offenses misdemeanors, or making marijuana possession complete legal.

    What I'm asking, is does anyone know any good sites that would be great for me to use? I found one about Obama MIGHT release thousands of non-violent drug offenders from Federal prison, but that was back in 2014 and there is nothing saying he actually did it. Any help would be awesome!
     
  2. BrianIff

    BrianIff I'm so piano, a bad punctuator. Contributor

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    Is it necessary to use three points, or those are the three you want to use? The declining rate of national crime is a huge topic; I'm wondering how the instructor presented the assignment.
     
  3. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Googling

    freakonomics "drop in crime"

    finds some interesting discussion, and the links may (I was too lazy to look) point to other references.
     
  4. Shadowfax

    Shadowfax Contributor Contributor

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    1/ Is it a real, across-the-board, decline in crime? Or just "more crimes have declined than increased"?
    2/ Is it because crime has declined, or is it because the definition of crime has been changed to make it harder to break the law? - As suggested by your third point about legalisation of marijuana possession.

    The question you're answering - to me - is about looking at the statement "The Decline of Crime in the U.S.", and either supporting it or refuting it.

    The example of "evidence" that you're quoting - Obama may release some offenders - looks very poor; it sounds like a headline from a tabloid, probably making a political point either for or against Obama. Either way, it's not even a fact. Even if it happened, it doesn't impact on the crime rates...these guys have already been convicted and scored in that year's figures.
     
  5. Lewdog

    Lewdog Come ova here and give me kisses! Supporter Contributor

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    I read the essay assignment a little wrong, here is the theme, "
    ESSAY 1

    Over the past few years, violent crime rates in most categories seems to have gone down a bit (but may be on the rise again), continuing a general decline in violence that began nearly 20 years ago, according to both the UCR and crime victimization surveys. In 3-5 pages (sent as an email attachment to me in MS-WORD or equivalent, by Friday, October 23), identify and discuss at least three (3) reasons for this trend. Your book may not be very helpful to you in this regard, so you must use outside sources primarily (which you must appropriately cite). As you know, plagiarism is something that is taken very seriously, so make sure that this is your own work and reference appropriately!"

    So ignore my first post, talking about drug crimes.
     
  6. Lewdog

    Lewdog Come ova here and give me kisses! Supporter Contributor

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  7. BrianIff

    BrianIff I'm so piano, a bad punctuator. Contributor

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    Does your school give you access to academic journals online? It's all well to find things from websites, but in my experience, to cite the actual studies -- even if you found them through the news -- is far better.
     
  8. Lewdog

    Lewdog Come ova here and give me kisses! Supporter Contributor

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    No there is no special portal to do that, that I know of, and my local library sucks. I'm going to a satellite campus and there is no library there on campus. I have my three text books, two that are also Criminal Justice books for other courses. So I am put at somewhat of a disadvantage.
     
  9. BrianIff

    BrianIff I'm so piano, a bad punctuator. Contributor

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    Well, in that case, I guess news or other NGO sources are good then, can't recommend any off hand, but sometimes you can quote the abstract of the journal article, which is publicly available.
     
  10. Lewdog

    Lewdog Come ova here and give me kisses! Supporter Contributor

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    Yeah the article I quoted doesn't have too much meat I can use as for reasons, but at least shows numbers to support the decline.
     
  11. Lewdog

    Lewdog Come ova here and give me kisses! Supporter Contributor

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    Well here is the essay I submitted. I was running a little behind schedule due to the other classes and their finals (which I got A's in both classes, Yay!). I wish I could have gotten some feedback but isn't an English class so I am guessing the instructor will go more by content than anything else.

    How would you like to be surprised? No, I'm not talking about saving fifteen percent on your car insurance. Would you believe that violent crime in America has been falling for the past few decades? I know that is hard to believe with all the mass shootings you see on the news, but it's true. According to a report released by the FBI, violent crime fell 4.4 percent in 2013, to the lowest level in decades. In 2013, there were 1.16 million violent crimes, the lowest amount since the 1978's 1.09 million violent crimes, Reuters reports (Feeney, 2014). "From 2000 to 2012, the U.S. violent crime rate fell over 23 percent. Such an improvement in the social fabric would be cause for celebration. But the crime drop of the 2000s followed an even larger decline in the previous decade: 32 percent from 1993 to 2000" (Mac Donald, 2014). With all this good news, we are now left to understand how it has happened. I believe there are three explanations for this down tick in violent crimes. First is a better economy and a lower jobless rate within the country. Violent crime and jobless rates often seem to be directly related. The second factor I believe helped in the drop of violent crimes is community-oriented policing. A method that gets citizens involved in policing in their own community is a new policy and has been very effective. The third and final explanation is the connection between the legislative system and the new laws that they have introduced into the criminal justice field. Laws like the three strikes laws, hate crimes laws, and special weapons additions to current laws, have served as a greater deterrent for would be criminals to not commit crimes. I will discuss all three of these explanations further in the following paragraphs.

    When the economy is in the tubes, violent crime goes up, and when the economy is going good and there is a low jobless rate , violent crime goes down. As you can see from the numbers when searching for jobless rates at http://useconomy.about.com/ , rates from 1993 until now except during the recession year of 2009 have been in a decline or stayed about the same. We are still in somewhat of a decline at this point in time. They have a direct correlation between each other. Fact is we all have bills. Rent, electric, water, grocery, phone, internet, cable, cell phone... they all have to get paid and when you have a family it is even more important. You have to put food on the table and give your family shelter, and when you lose your job you may have to look for support, what do you do when the support isn't there? What do you do when all avenues are closed? For some people that leads to crime, which may escalate to violent crimes like robbery. It's not a matter of 'want,' but more of 'need and necessity.' Now having a family and needing to put food on the table isn't the only reason for violent crime during recession years, but it is a big part of it.

    The second factor in the decline of violent crime is community-oriented policing. Community-oriented policing was established in the 1990s by the federal government when President Bill Clinton signed into the Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which provided more than $30 billion to fund community policing and was the largest anti-crime legislation in the nation's history. Elements of the legislation included hiring 100,000 additional police officers nationwide, the creation of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) to oversee the distribution of funding to local and state police agencies, and the funding of a number of innovative community policing projects and experiments (Gaines & Kappeller, 2011). The community-oriented policing was a new policy that worked to bridge the gap between law enforcement and citizens through community project, initiatives, and meetings. It also changed things like officers riding in patrol cars to foot patrol, assigning officers to the same neighborhood, and having neighborhood meetings. Community-oriented policing has been a major reason for the drop in crime.

    The final factor for the decline in crime comes from more serious laws, like weapons attachments to existing older laws in order to make sentencing stronger than ever. Laws such as the 'three strikes,' have created a greater deterrent for criminals. "Currently there are 28 states with heavier sentences for repeat offenders. Massachusetts became the latest state to punish repeat offenders when it passed its own version of the law in 2012. The states which carry three strikes for habitual offenders are: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin" (Shoener, 2015). The idea behind the three strikes rule is to give repeat offenders a life sentence so that they are no longer a part of society and can no longer commit crimes. Some would argue that people change and that it is unconstitutional to give a person a life sentence for only committing three crimes, but there has been no Supreme Court ruling to attest to that.

    A second addition to crimes are hate crimes. Hate crimes are defined as, "Crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on certain group characteristics" (Gaines & Kappeler, 2011). Crimes that are decided to be hate crimes tack onto the sentence of the primary crime, and lead to much longer sentences and stipulations. The longer sentences seem to be a very good deterrent to criminals though some believe that judges and prosecutors sometimes overstep their power using the designation of hate crimes when there truly isn't the characteristics of a hate crime in the commission of the crime. The third and final addition is special weapons additions to certain crimes. Violent crimes often include the use of some sort of weapon in order for it to be classified as violent. Well depending on the weapon, such as a firearm, the sentence may be much higher than if the crime had not been done with a firearm or some other sort of weapon.

    Though some of these factors have been more important to the decline of violent crime than others, I think it is important to recognize them all. I hope these and newer idea evolve to continue the decrease in violent crime across America. America is too pretty of a place to be scarred and darkened by the evilness of offenders who don't understand their actions many of the times, and for those that do that just don't care what kind of consequences that come about from what they do.





    References



    Feeny, N. (2014) Time. Violent Crime Drops to Lowest Level Since 1978 Retrieved fromhttp://time.com/3577026/crime-rates-drop-1970s/


    Mac Donald, H. (2014) The Daily Signal Violent Crime in the US Has Declined Rapidly. What Happened? Retrieved from http://dailysignal.com/2014/10/28/violent-crime-us-declined-rapidly-happened/


    Unknown (2015) About News Unemployment Rate by Year Retrieved from http://useconomy.about.com/od/Employment/a/Unemployment-Rate-By-Year.htm?utm_term=unemployment rate in usa&utm_content=p1-main-4-title&utm_medium=sem&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=adid-39b9830c-c644-43d0-9595-3b28a01277ee-0-ab_gsb_ocode-4557&ad=semD&an=google_s&am=broad&q=unemployment rate in usa&dqi=&o=4557&l=sem&qsrc=999&askid=39b9830c-c644-43d0-9595-3b28a01277ee-0-ab_gsb


    Shoener, N. (2015) Legal Match Three Strikes Laws in Different States Retrieved from http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/three-strikes-laws-in-different-states.html


    Gaines, L. K. & Kappeler, V. E. (2011). Policing in America (7th ed.) (p. 82-83). New York, NY: Anderson Publishing.
     
    Last edited: Oct 16, 2015
  12. Jack Asher

    Jack Asher Banned Contributor

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    Interesting you bring that up, because the freakonomics reporting on the crime drop completely refute all of Lewdogs points.

    It's abortion. The crime drop is due to abortion.
     

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