POLICY TERM PAPER

Policy Term Paper

Policy Term Paper

Introduction

In his book Samuel Walker significantly studies several frequently held convictions about crime and criminal justice - finding that several beliefs have small basis actually. Crime control policy in the United States is unguided by theory. In fact, programs are favored precisely because they show disdain for ideas about the causes of crime. Theoretical criminology has been replaced by administrative criminology, the idea that more effective management of the criminal justice apparatus is the key to crime control. Not coincidentally, expenditures on police and prisons and for wars on gangs, drugs, pornography, and violence are at unprecedented levels, and calls for increased government intrusion into the lives of citizens seem to come from all shades of the political spectrum. The incarceration rate, remarkably stable between 1930 and 1980 at about 100 prisoners per 100,000 population, has since 1980 more than tripled(Schlosser, 2000). This growth has been accompanied by corresponding growth in the probation and parole populations. Today more than one million adults live in prison, and more than three million are on parole or probation. Incredibly, more than one adult male in thirty is currently under some form of correctional supervision.

Discussion

Since the early 1980s we have argued that the age distribution of crime was a fact of considerable importance. The strength of the association between age and crime is astonishing. The crime rate rises rapidly through the early adolescent years, peaks sharply in late adolescence and early adulthood, and then declines precipitously and continuously throughout life(Robinson, 2002). Thus the crime rate of adolescents and youth is markedly higher than the rate for all other ages. This appears to be essentially true for all offenses, from theft to violence, from drug use to burglary, and to hold true in all cultures and social groups. Apparent exceptions, such as "white-collar" offenses, are crimes in which opportunities are heavily restricted by age(Currie, 1998).

Once the distinction between crimes and criminals, between events and people, is recognized, its consequences are hard to ignore. It suggests that over time offenders commit a variety of offenses, and indeed criminological research shows that offenders engage in a broad range of crimes and other forms of deviant behavior. With trivial exceptions, research has failed to discover specialists in particular types of crime. As a consequence, theories and programs that identify offenders as robbers, auto thieves, or drug users and see each type as being the product of distinct causal forces must be wrong. The distinction also suggests that criminal and deviant behaviors have something in common, that they somehow provide similar benefits to those engaged in them(Walker, 2001). Drug use, car theft, and assault must be products of a common underlying tendency. This explains the stability of offending over the life course. The characteristic that allows the offender to find satisfaction in many kinds of criminal, deviant, or reckless acts tends itself to be relatively fixed from an early age. We call this characteristic low self-control(Barak, ...