One of the biggest problems affecting ethics, values and diversity in law enforcement is racial profiling. Racial profiling has existed since the end of slavery. In the Southern states laws called "Black Codes" were created, and these made it illegal for African Americans to be unemploye...

The Death Penalty and Race The death penalty has existed throughout the course of our nation's history and has always been a part of our judicial system. Over time the criminal justice system has taken advantage of the death penalty by applying it differently to individual based on ...

Since the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, we have become more fearful of crime than ever before. The groups that are more fearful of crime are typically not the groups that are the most victimized. Our nation, as a whole, needs to implement more ways to reduce the fear of crime that we ha...

A crime that is apparently so heinous that the only conceivable punishment is death. The use of the death penalty as a deterrent to crime is as heinous as the crimes that put people on death row. The death penalty is believed to be one rooted in racism, and it has continued in that tradition. The po...

Homicide can be deterred by punishment. According to sociologist Travis Hirschi, people restrain themselves from committing crimes like homicide when they have successfully forged what he calls a social bond with conventional society. Hirschi explains the four components to this social bond as att...

A homosexual male is beaten to death because of the openness of his sexual orientation. A Jewish woman is assaulted while walking to her car in a Jewish temple parking lot. A white supremacy group shoots an African American teenager. Many would say that these people had simply been in the wrong plac...

Since the 1960's the crime rate has continued to rise, resulting in an increase in the number of inmates in federal and state prisons. Because many crimes that occur in the USA go unreported, the crime rate statistics are restricted to those incidents that are actually reported to law enforce...

Gangs are virtually everywhere in today's world. It is estimated that the number of gang members in our country equals over a quarter million of our nation's total population. Originally young people, most often teenagers, join a gang because they are lacking positive influences at home and/or at sc...

Capital Punishment Can you imagine getting the death penalty at the age of 16, especially if you are innocent. These things happen in our courts and it is an embarrassment to our country. Capital punishment is, in many ways, a miscarriage of justice. It is wrong to execute people who may be inno...

George W. Bush spends almost $200 million dollars per year to fight the "War on Drugs." You probably didn't notice this because the only results we've seen have been in the form of misguiding commercials claiming that "buying drugs supports terrorism," or "marijuan...

The answer to this question is astounding: the U.S. incarcerates 25% of the world's prison population with only 7% of the world's population. This is a disturbing anamoly in the history of the world. Never before has a country been able to incarcerate so many people at such a high rate, ...

Opposition To the Death Penalty The death penalty should be outlawed in the United States. Capital punishment has been around for thousands of years. Many Americans today see it as a justification for the murder of another. But the problem is there are many flaws in our court system when it co...

Capital Punishment The death penalty is not a new idea in our world. Its origins date back over 3,700 years to the Babylonian civilization, where it was prescribed for a variety of crimes. (Capital Punishment p.10). It was also greatly used in the Greek and Roman Empires. It continued into Engla...

Drugs and crime over the last ten years have increased for women at about twice the rate of drug use in men. In 1999 a survey of inmates in state correctional facilities, the percentage of women in prison for a drug offense exceeded that of men. (2000, Bureau of Justice statistics) Drug usage is the...

Making Matters Worse "Drug abuse is a serious problem, both for individual citizens and society at large, but the 'war on drugs' has made matters worse." -Ethan A. Nadelmann The prohibitionist approach to the war on drugs, just like the temperance movement of th...

The film, "Colors," produced in 1988 by Dennis Hopper, is giving us a view of Los Angeles street gangs and how the police and community deal with them. What is ironic about the story is although there are plenty of scenes of violence and terror, the producer seems to take a more sympathetic stance...

Capital Punishment The death penalty is a necessary evil that has a positive effect on society today. It is an effective deterent of crime as well as a safeguard for society. It also helps to keep order in our cities. Furthermore, I fell it is a just and effective punishment for those who have c...

Crimes of Women For years studies of women's deviance were limited to prostitution and other kinds of sexual deviance thought to be typical female offences. It soon became apparent that not all women offenders fit this stereotype and that women were involved in a wide variety o...

Is the Criminal Justice System Racist The first question that I will reflect upon will be "What does Guiner mean when she says that if we can't talk about race then we can't talk about crime? Is there reluctance in our society to deal squarely with issues of race and crime? If so w...

My first experience with unjustly being profiled was November 19, 1993. I was walking home from the city's subway station, after a long hard day at work. As I turned the corner of 59th street and Lexington avenue. I observed two white females walking ...

Americans Must Give Up TV Violence For the Kids, Or Else To the unsuspecting eye, this nation's response and reaction to the rise in number of violent acts committed by teenagers could be described as appropriately overwhelming, but when examined more closely, does America really care? W...

Today, there seem to be that many historical events that take place today are court trials. The trial of Patricia Campbell Hearst can be the pioneer of this. For Hearst herself, I'm sure this was all a nightmare. Not only was she kidnapped, brainwashed, and held hostage, but in t...

New California law states that it is up to the prosecutors in a case as to whether minors are charged as adults for violent crimes. What should a judge do when eight boys from suburban middle class families, confess to armed robbery and assault and battery of five Hispanic immigrant farm workers?...

New California law states that it is up to the prosecutors in a case as to whether minors are charged as adults for violent crimes. What should a judge do when eight boys from suburban middle class families, confess to armed robbery and assault and battery of five Hispanic immigrant farm workers?...

Racial profiling is the police practice of using race as a determining factor in identifying a potential criminal. Although, under the constitution all people are equal, there are still stereotypes about minorities being a lower class even today. Certain minorities are treated unfairly and are ...