Essay about Incarceration and Mass Imprisonment

Words: 1072
Pages: 5

Nick Loredo
Professor Sutton
Soc 172
June 8, 2011
Essay (topic #2) In the United States there is in extremely high rate of incarceration and mass imprisonment. Policies and ideas for change are being brought to the table on a daily basis. Is it worth it? Is the question that we always have to ask ourselves and will justice truly be served at the end of the day. Well throughout this course I have found that there is never a true solution to crime rates in general only ideas to decrease problems that have yet to stop rising. For example, the War on Drugs in the early 1980’s and the “broken window” policy in the mid 1970’s are both examples of putting water on the fire but never putting the fire completely out. These policy have

Though resident felt safer, “if a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired, the result is that all of the other windows will soon be broken as well. Once communal barriers are broken, vandalism will occur and urban decay will begin to take place and when these small petty crimes go without response, future problems tend become much more drastic”, said Wilson and Kelling. Crimes of this sort take place from the most urban of communities just as they do in communities of poverty. For the communities and cities fortunate enough to be recipients of this new policing it was the psychological aspect of feeling safer that employed this strategy to continue. For example, the maintenance of order throughout the city, such as drunks being able to sit and not lay in the streets, homeless to beg elsewhere than in the main intersections and minimize prostitution, public drug dealing, panhandlers and loitering. By paying more attention to smaller crimes the prevention of larger crimes would come, making this policy politically strong for government officials and board members. When the community is in favor of such a policy the political aspect can be rewarding for all in the sense that if larger crimes are diminishing than in the overall spectrum of the strategy being used is a success and can be thought of as a policy to use more often and soon spread to