RACE AND CRIME

Race and Crime

Race and Crime

Introduction

The increasing crime rate has haunted the American society for centuries. The problem still persists in all the major areas of the United States. Most importantly, the crime trends in America show a direct relationship between the increasing rate and the racial background of a particular offender. The idea that crime is an understandable reaction to poverty and racism developed in the 1960s. Sociologists Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin have argued that juvenile delinquency is essentially a form of social criticism (Lott, 2008). In this paper, the reasons and factors influencing the increased crime rate among racial minorities are discussed.

Discussion

The theories advanced by Cloward, who has spent his career at Columbia University, and Ohlin, who served Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Carter provided an intellectual basis for many social programs of the time. Since the Mobilization for Youth in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1963 by the Federal Office of Economic Opportunity through a variety of assistance projects at work, their ideas have been transformed into policy.

Last May, Human Rights Watch said in a report that although the vast majority of the country's drug users are white, black people - representing 12.8 percent of the total U.S. population - constitutes 54 percent of those imprisoned for drug offenses. The report also revealed that in 34 states in the country a black man is 11.8 more likely than whites to be imprisoned for this reason. A black woman has 4.8 more likely than a white (Kleck, 2007).

The main victims of these biased procedures are obviously unequal justice young Latinos and blacks. Today there are more African Americans in prisons or on parole than there were slaves in 1850 before the beginning of the Civil War." (Correa, 2008)

In 2010, offenses related to drug cartels have exploded in the U.S. and overcrowding, particularly on the African-American, a direct result of these conflicts. However, studies have shown that drug trafficking earned in the same proportions, the Afro-American and white population. The judicial treatment of these crimes remains substantially unfair to a certain category of people: the same study reveals that, in a disadvantaged area, 4 of 5 young African-American will face the prison system at least once in their lives.

These figures relate to a social and professional extremely discriminating pushing many of them to deny their rights to vote, access to education or access to employment. Michelle Alexander, however, remains skeptical about the developments since the prison system poses a considerable challenge for the country and today, there are more than one million jobs and billions of dollars.

Thus taking the claims about race and crime into account and applying them inversely, I can conclude that white people are predisposed not only to random acts of violence, but the crimes which carry a large number of people and cut across racial lines. For example, the overwhelming majority of white collar criminals are WHITE.

During the past 30 years, experts say the alarming negative trend of ...