[gnahatakan]

Gow can social science help to reduce the crime ?

[JimGunther]

By studying the root causes of crime and making suggestions to public and private agencies about what to do about it. A good example would be to look at how parents raise their kids and what values they are being instilled with. We have laws in my state that prohibit kids from having access to guns in their homes. Sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? Yet when I was growing up, we always had one or two guns in the house and age 11 I owned my own 22 caliber rifle. By the time I was 16 I also had a revolver and a shotgun. Sounds like trouble, doesn't it? Yet at the age of 18 I was a police officer in the Air Force.

Obviously, I got something from my parents that many, many kids are not getting today. Social science could determine what is going wrong in this area and make recommendations to correct it.

When I went to high school, the janitors swept the halls with big wide brooms at the end of the day. At the high school where my kids recently graduated, they have to sweep the halls after every change of classes. There was a kid stabbed to death there recently, this never happened when I was a kid. Never.

What is happening in the upbringing of kids today is just one area where social science needs to probe more than it is to determine why kids act the way they do.

What happens in prisons is another area where social science can look to see whether our prisons are returning people to the streets who know how to act when they get there. People who spend time in prison are generally there because they did something horrible to someone else. I was a probation officer who also dealt with parolees who had been returned to the streets after serving a prison term. It was amazing to see how many of these people had a distorted view of what life was all about and how their way of thinking really didn't fit into the normal world, preventing them from living a normal life. Social science could study issues like these and make recommendations that might help reduce crime.

These are only a few ways where social science, the study of society, can help to reduce crime. I worked in various parts of the criminal justice system and do not think that most people realize how much money and grief people who commit crimes cause our society. We certainly need to use social science more than we are today to address these issues.

[excon]

Hello g:

I couldn't disagree more with my compatriot JimGunther. His assessment is based upon the premise that our laws are just. However, they're anything but.

Back in simpler times, we could all agree on what was crime and what wasn't. Since the beginning of civilized society, we recognized that rape, robbery, murder and mayhem were crimes. People who committed such offenses needed to be separated from society both for the protection of society, and to help the individual correct his ways.

Then things changed... Drug laws happened.

All of a sudden the sale of an item between two consenting adults was a crime. But was it wrong? Should those people be in jail along with rapists robbers and murderers?

Today, fully HALF of the prison population are there due to drugs. JimGunther says that people are in prison because they've done something horrible to someone else... That just isn't so. Most of them are there because they sold somebody something. That's not too terrible.

So, as long as the laws are unfair, trying to rehabilitate someone who is unfairly in prison makes no sense.

There is a way a social scientist can effect the system in a positive way. Right now people are sent to prison FOR punishment. Instead, we should send them there AS punishment. There is a BIG difference between the two.

excon

[JimGunther]

I will have to admit that am always abit surprised to see objections being raised to my comments that have nothing to do with what I said. I mentioned or suggested nothing about laws being just or unjust. My only suggestion was that social science can be used to look at various aspects of our society and come up with conclusions to reduce crime. That suggestion would apply whether the laws are just or not.

Whether a law is just or unjust is also a conclusion that can be reached by social science. There are studies right now, for example, that take a look at how the death penalty is applied and changes are being made to make it more equitable.

The OP didn't ask anything about whether a given set of laws, such as drug laws, are inherently unjust, so I'm not going to address that issue. Again, this matter is already being looked at by social scientists and others, who are concluding, for example, that the evils caused by alcohol consumption are much greater than those caused by the illegal drug marijuana, and there are movements in various states to allow legal use.

I was a parole/probation officer for 7 years in MD and most of the parolees I had were not in prison for drugs, mostly crimes of violence and felony theft, some of it related to drug use which they used in an attempt to explain their behavior.

This website, part of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, shows that most offenders in state prisons are there for crimes of violence, followed by property crimes, with drug offenses coming in third. Most prisons in the country, of course, are run by the states.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm

[earl237]

I personally think that tougher penalties for violent crimes, especially young offenders would be a good way to reduce crime. Many left-leaning people disagree, but even young offenders themselves have admitted that they committed crimes because they know that even if caught they will get little, if any punishment. This has to change. All violent criminals should get jail time no matter what their age is. I agree with excon to a certain extent on drug laws. If someone is an adult and earning a living, then I don't really have a problem with them using marijuana at home as long as they are not driving. However, I don't think drugs such as cocaine and crystal meth should be legal for anyone because people who are high are often very violent.