He says that the sole purpose of the academy is “to protect the department from the legal liability that could result from negligent training” (22). He explains how the academy never really did teach him anything about how to be a good officer rather. The academy is explained by one officer as “no wonder that’s how cops are out there [rude to people]. They demean us. They break us down.
As he is unable to achieve these luxuries through work, he may turn to criminal activity because he wants to be like his peers as he feels pushed out. Sociologists believe that to some extent, relative deprivation is the key cause of crime in society however there are some other aspects that affect this. Sub-cultural theories are a belief of some sociologists where crime is explained by saying that criminals learn how to commit these crimes from their peer groups or subculture. Cohen in 1955 completed a study on working class boys in North America and found that they were easily involved in gangs. One aspect that was said to have pushed them away from the education system and towards these gangs was because they had middle class standards and values and these boys were unable to live up to the high expectations of these teachers.
Some communities need the jobs prisons provide. The public is biased about crime generally, and believes crime rates are going up when they are actually declining. Many want prison to be horrible. Who can blame crime victims? Taxpayers dislike money going to prisons.
When policy and claimsmakers label crimes as social problems, they do not always account for all representations of crime. They neglect to realize that crime is a reality that filters through a series of human decisions running the full scale of the criminal justice system (Silver 265). Jeffery Reiman states within “A Crime by Any Other Name” that, “although there is a wide range of behaviors that the law defines as criminal, people tend to view crime as involving only certain kinds of acts committed by particular populations of individuals”. For example, the rhetoric presented within the War on Terror in the United States lead to moral panic which exaggerated and distorted perceived deviant behavior (Silver 330). Similarly, the rhetoric presented
The police personality fosters and “us vs. them” mentality that cops are always the good guys and everyone else is a potential bad guy (The Brotherhood). There is a subculture in Police work that in some cases can carry severe penalties towards officer’s if they were to “rat” on another officer. This subculture code of “Don’t give up another cop” has been described as the code of silence, or the blue curtain of secrecy (Pollock 119). In this subculture police officers are often ostracized or deemed unfaithful to the badge if they were to turn on another officer and testify against them during an investigation. Police officers must trust other officers to back them up in a struggle that could potentially be a life or death situation.
According a study conducted by Chaney and Robertson, American’s attitudes about police officers have changed dramatically in the past ten years. Their study, which appeared in The Journal of African American Studies, suggests that instead of feeling safe and protected by police, many citizens actually feel animosity towards police officers, and are mistrustful and suspicious towards them (Chaney and Robertson 480). This situation seems almost impossible to rectify, especially since law enforcement is given the authority and the privilege to use force not only by the law, but also by society. In order to allow law enforcement officers this power, the public must completely trust those who are protecting them, and must believe that police are using force responsibly and ethically. People naturally assume that the police are well-trained to use force appropriately and fairly without prejudices.
It's clear that in every single case police officers are overreacting. But the question here is: Is it because of racism? The chairman of the police union Washington D.C. says that deadly use of force where race is a factor does not equal racism. Furthermore the debate is about the punishment of Slager. If the fault is not on the police, Slager has to be punished.
Another example of how statistics from the police and statistics from victim surveys are different is because not all victims report crime to the police for many reasons and therefore create what’s called “the dark figure” (The number of crimes that go un-reported, we have no idea how big or small this number is). One last example of how they differ is that the victims are left to classify the crimes that they have been fallen victim to, which means that the classification may be wrong changing the statistics, whereas the recorded crimes get classified by the police. The advantages for using victim surveys to studying patterns of crime are: able to triangulate the accuracy of official statistics; may be more valid, as official procedures don’t have to be followed and victims have their own say; victims more likely to respond due to no fear of reprisal; can estimate the overall levels of crime, as unreported crimes are included; they have a high rate of comparability. These reasons allow us to see all of the advantages for helping to decide how useful victim surveys are in understanding patterns of crime. The disadvantages for using victim surveys to studying patterns of crime are: Not all
Direct factors which taint the research. In a study Agnew suggest t bulking the measure covers the effects of individual forms of strain and suggests that more studies need to be done to determine individual strain (Agnew 2002,2006). In conclusion, the actual act of not being employed plays little to no role in criminal behavior. There are several other things that play a major role in what makes a criminal. There is no direct correlation between unemployment and
Well Part of the reason lies in how our community defines sexual harassment in public areas. At work, there is a government-approved definition, which basically states that sexual comments are not allowed & there are punishments given to people who don’t follow the rules. But on the streets, people feel that the rules are almost nonexistent or blurred. This causes men too think that it’s okay to make a girl feel uncomfortable or threatened. I personally feel that this issue of Street Harassment has turned into a Global problem, and it definitely seeks more attention.