INTRO TO CRIMINOLOGY I
This week we looked at where criminology theories come from. We looked at theory building and the role of research and development. It's very detailed studies, so I'm not even going to attempt to write it all out in detail. For the assignment we chose three criminology and sociology based journals from the EBSCO host and described them in an essay. In the discussion we talked about how we would build a research theory into the neighborhood watch program to convince the mayor of a fictional town whether or not he should start the program in his town.
INTRO TO CORRECTIONS I
This week we reviewed the sentencing and correctional process. We start out by reviewing the pretrial process including arrest, prosecutors who can offer plea bargains and finally the courts if the case does go to trial. We then learn about pretrial diversion programs which can be used to offer and offender a chance to enter into treatment programs, and if completed successfully they may have the charges dropped.
We reviewed other programs such as the bail system which can allow some offenders to be free while awaiting court.We then looked at the pretrial investigation into the offenders background, and the sentencing guidelines that judges have at their discretion for sentencing an offender.
In the discussion we talked about the use of plea bargains and also for the assignment we wrote an essay on plea bargains. This is a very important part of the process since 90% of all cases never have to go to trial, without plea bargains the system would literally collapse under the workload of trying every case before a jury, it's just not possible.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Week 2
INTRO TO CRIMINOLOGY I
This week we looked at crime statistics, based on the traditional FBI uniform crime reporting (UCR), and the new National incident-based reporting system(NIBR) of the UCR, and National crime victimization survey (NCVS). The UCR collects data on crime reported to law enforcement agencies around the nation based on seven major offense categories, murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. All percentages on based on a per 100,000 person ratio, for instance murder is reported as 5.7 per 100,00 with a 60.7 clearance rate.
The NIBR is much more detailed data based on each individual incident, such as victim and offender information and all crimes committed in each instance gets recorded, unlike the previous UCR system. The NCVS is nationwide surveys taken to ask people about crimes they have had committed against them whether reported or not, this sytem is not totally reliable though because the information is impossible to prove, and many people might make up stories to impress the interviewers. The NCVS does often turn up a much higher crime picture than the UCR because the UCR is based only on crimes cleared, which means an arrest was made, or the agency knows who is responsible but an arrest is not possible, such as the offender being killed by the police, or a murder-suicide. The overall clearance rates for crimes in America is pretty low, so there is a lot of crimes out there being commited that we don't know who commited them.
We also covered a recent addition to UCR data, the "hate crime", agencies report when a crime was committed based on racial, religious, or sexual hate. Surprisingly, organized hate groups such as the KKK actually make up a small percentage of these crimes, it seems to be mostly random, especially after 9/11 when middle eastern people were targeted, and also Indian (India) people were a lot of times mistaken as Muslim, and became victims of hate crimes. We then reviewed the crime statistics over the last thirty years, including the peak of the crime waves in the mid nineties and the sharp decline since then. Although these numbers may be a little misleading, as one expert said in the text, it's like falling off of a very high peak, to a smaller, still high peak, below. So in other words, it's not that crime has fallen to a low level, it's just a lot lower than it was when it was extremely high.
Students from Guilford College in NC protest the attack of three Palestinian students.
You must take these numbers with a grain of salt, they are in no way an accurate representation of what's really going on, the extent to which we may not even have any way of understanding. So many crimes go unreported for one reason or another, which is why we have the NCVS, but yet there is also no way of proving that information is correct either, it's based soley on what someone tells the interviewer.
We then look at age and crime, also race. Trends show that the older we get the less likely we are to be involved in crime. Young blacks males up to 25 years old have the highest rate of involvement, and also victimization. Race as far as the statistics show, seems to be more among African-Americans. This was also the topic of our class discussion this week, however like I stated previously, the stats are based solely on clearance rates, and there are a lot of crimes being committed that never get cleared so it's impossible for anyone to have an accurate number of race involvement in all crimes. Why does it matter anyway, does it serve us any purpose to have this break down of information, if we truly want to all be American's then why do we need to be segregated into categories by the color of our skin? Just the term African-American, or Mexican-American alone should be offensive, I mean for those who were born American citizens just like the rest of us. People refer to me as an "American", not as German-American, or Irish-American or what have you. My great Grandmother was a Cherokee, but nobody calls me a Native-American. Anyway enough with the rant, we're getting off topic here.
Also understand that a clearance only means an arrest, so if an African-American is arrested for a crime but later found not guilty, it still is a mark against his race for that crime, or any race.
I would like to share with you the clearance rates for all crimes known to police under the 2006 UCR, so you can see what I'm talking about, I will give you the total number,then the clearance rate.
Also understand the difference between a robbery and a burglary. A robbery is the taking of something from someone with the use of force,or threat of use of force. A burglary is the unlawful entry of a structure with the intent to commit a theft or felony, and includes forced entry, non-forced entry and attempted forced entry. So you see, someone can break into an establishment and commit a felony and it's still a burglary, whether or not they steal anything.
Also on the same token, someone can enter an establishment, but if there is no proof of intent to commit a felony or theft, it's not a burglary. That pretty much made up the basis for all the studies this week, crime rates and different race,age and social factors involved.
For the assignment we used the UCR website to do research on burglary rates between Denver and Tampa, and we compared the rates for 2007, 2000, and 2002.
Intro to Corrections I
We started out this week by looking at the early responses to crime, before the corrections system was developed. These were often very violent and brutal practices, involving beatings,torture and mutilation. The punishments were sought to fit the crime, liars had their tongues ripped out, thieves had there fingers or hand cut off, adulterers had an 'A' had branded to their forehead. Banishing was also popular, as we discussed last week with the English convict ships to Australia. The brutal corporal punishments were also used in colonial America, as well as whipping posts and stocks and pillories for minor offenses, this is wear an offender would be locked into a wooden device and ridiculed in the center of town.
William Penn, the governor of Pennsylvania was unhappy with the brutal treatment of criminals in those days. The Quakers, who had settled Pennsylvania were the victims of religious persecution themselves and they decided to abolish capital punishment for all crimes except murder and they developed the idea of the first prison system in America as an alternative way of dealing with criminals. Inmates were kept in individual cells and were not allowed to communicate with any other inmates, in fear of moral contamination among themselves. They were even moved about the prison with masks over their faces in case inmates met up after being released, they did not want them to recognize each other. Prisoners were put to work during the day making handicrafts in their cells, and nights were for bible studies and penance on their crimes. The objectives were hard labor,solitary confinement, and religious study.
The first Pennsylvania prison was opened in 1826, the Eastern State Penitentiary just outside Philadelphia. The first idea of a prison was opened in 1790 when a wing of the Walnut Street Jail into housing for sentenced offenders, this was also in Philadelphia.
In 1817 New York opened a prison in Auburn which was originally designed around the Pennsylvania model of corrections,but in 1823 they began making changes and came up with their own system. They kept inmates separate at night, but allowed them to congregate during the day to work in factories to improve the goods that could be sold to help cover the costs of the facility.
Beginning in 1870 and lasting until 1910 the system entered into the "reformatory era" in which the emphasis began to shift from punishment to reforming prisoners through education and other programs so they could have a future back in society and be deterred from future criminal ways. We then learned about all the changes that have led to the system currently in place today and reviewed the importance of each of the sentencing goals, punishment,deterrence,incapacitation,rehabilitation and restitution.
In the class discussion we talked about which of these goals we felt were most important, and for the assignment we wrote a report on Phrenology, the study of the brain and certain physical features that some criminals have that are believed to be from way back in the evolution of humans, which may indicate they are not as developed mentally as the rest of us in today's sociecty.
This week we looked at crime statistics, based on the traditional FBI uniform crime reporting (UCR), and the new National incident-based reporting system(NIBR) of the UCR, and National crime victimization survey (NCVS). The UCR collects data on crime reported to law enforcement agencies around the nation based on seven major offense categories, murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. All percentages on based on a per 100,000 person ratio, for instance murder is reported as 5.7 per 100,00 with a 60.7 clearance rate.
The NIBR is much more detailed data based on each individual incident, such as victim and offender information and all crimes committed in each instance gets recorded, unlike the previous UCR system. The NCVS is nationwide surveys taken to ask people about crimes they have had committed against them whether reported or not, this sytem is not totally reliable though because the information is impossible to prove, and many people might make up stories to impress the interviewers. The NCVS does often turn up a much higher crime picture than the UCR because the UCR is based only on crimes cleared, which means an arrest was made, or the agency knows who is responsible but an arrest is not possible, such as the offender being killed by the police, or a murder-suicide. The overall clearance rates for crimes in America is pretty low, so there is a lot of crimes out there being commited that we don't know who commited them.
We also covered a recent addition to UCR data, the "hate crime", agencies report when a crime was committed based on racial, religious, or sexual hate. Surprisingly, organized hate groups such as the KKK actually make up a small percentage of these crimes, it seems to be mostly random, especially after 9/11 when middle eastern people were targeted, and also Indian (India) people were a lot of times mistaken as Muslim, and became victims of hate crimes. We then reviewed the crime statistics over the last thirty years, including the peak of the crime waves in the mid nineties and the sharp decline since then. Although these numbers may be a little misleading, as one expert said in the text, it's like falling off of a very high peak, to a smaller, still high peak, below. So in other words, it's not that crime has fallen to a low level, it's just a lot lower than it was when it was extremely high.
Students from Guilford College in NC protest the attack of three Palestinian students.
You must take these numbers with a grain of salt, they are in no way an accurate representation of what's really going on, the extent to which we may not even have any way of understanding. So many crimes go unreported for one reason or another, which is why we have the NCVS, but yet there is also no way of proving that information is correct either, it's based soley on what someone tells the interviewer.
We then look at age and crime, also race. Trends show that the older we get the less likely we are to be involved in crime. Young blacks males up to 25 years old have the highest rate of involvement, and also victimization. Race as far as the statistics show, seems to be more among African-Americans. This was also the topic of our class discussion this week, however like I stated previously, the stats are based solely on clearance rates, and there are a lot of crimes being committed that never get cleared so it's impossible for anyone to have an accurate number of race involvement in all crimes. Why does it matter anyway, does it serve us any purpose to have this break down of information, if we truly want to all be American's then why do we need to be segregated into categories by the color of our skin? Just the term African-American, or Mexican-American alone should be offensive, I mean for those who were born American citizens just like the rest of us. People refer to me as an "American", not as German-American, or Irish-American or what have you. My great Grandmother was a Cherokee, but nobody calls me a Native-American. Anyway enough with the rant, we're getting off topic here.
Also understand that a clearance only means an arrest, so if an African-American is arrested for a crime but later found not guilty, it still is a mark against his race for that crime, or any race.
I would like to share with you the clearance rates for all crimes known to police under the 2006 UCR, so you can see what I'm talking about, I will give you the total number,then the clearance rate.
- Murder 17,034 60.7%
- Forcible Rape 92,455 40.9%
- Robbery 447,403 25.2%
- Aggravated Assault 860,853 54%
- Burglary 2,183,746 12.6%
- Larceny(includes all petty theft) 6,607,013 17.4%
- Motor vehicle theft 1,192,809 12.6%
- Arson 69,055 18%
Also understand the difference between a robbery and a burglary. A robbery is the taking of something from someone with the use of force,or threat of use of force. A burglary is the unlawful entry of a structure with the intent to commit a theft or felony, and includes forced entry, non-forced entry and attempted forced entry. So you see, someone can break into an establishment and commit a felony and it's still a burglary, whether or not they steal anything.
Also on the same token, someone can enter an establishment, but if there is no proof of intent to commit a felony or theft, it's not a burglary. That pretty much made up the basis for all the studies this week, crime rates and different race,age and social factors involved.
For the assignment we used the UCR website to do research on burglary rates between Denver and Tampa, and we compared the rates for 2007, 2000, and 2002.
Intro to Corrections I
We started out this week by looking at the early responses to crime, before the corrections system was developed. These were often very violent and brutal practices, involving beatings,torture and mutilation. The punishments were sought to fit the crime, liars had their tongues ripped out, thieves had there fingers or hand cut off, adulterers had an 'A' had branded to their forehead. Banishing was also popular, as we discussed last week with the English convict ships to Australia. The brutal corporal punishments were also used in colonial America, as well as whipping posts and stocks and pillories for minor offenses, this is wear an offender would be locked into a wooden device and ridiculed in the center of town.
William Penn, the governor of Pennsylvania was unhappy with the brutal treatment of criminals in those days. The Quakers, who had settled Pennsylvania were the victims of religious persecution themselves and they decided to abolish capital punishment for all crimes except murder and they developed the idea of the first prison system in America as an alternative way of dealing with criminals. Inmates were kept in individual cells and were not allowed to communicate with any other inmates, in fear of moral contamination among themselves. They were even moved about the prison with masks over their faces in case inmates met up after being released, they did not want them to recognize each other. Prisoners were put to work during the day making handicrafts in their cells, and nights were for bible studies and penance on their crimes. The objectives were hard labor,solitary confinement, and religious study.
The first Pennsylvania prison was opened in 1826, the Eastern State Penitentiary just outside Philadelphia. The first idea of a prison was opened in 1790 when a wing of the Walnut Street Jail into housing for sentenced offenders, this was also in Philadelphia.
In 1817 New York opened a prison in Auburn which was originally designed around the Pennsylvania model of corrections,but in 1823 they began making changes and came up with their own system. They kept inmates separate at night, but allowed them to congregate during the day to work in factories to improve the goods that could be sold to help cover the costs of the facility.
Beginning in 1870 and lasting until 1910 the system entered into the "reformatory era" in which the emphasis began to shift from punishment to reforming prisoners through education and other programs so they could have a future back in society and be deterred from future criminal ways. We then learned about all the changes that have led to the system currently in place today and reviewed the importance of each of the sentencing goals, punishment,deterrence,incapacitation,rehabilitation and restitution.
In the class discussion we talked about which of these goals we felt were most important, and for the assignment we wrote a report on Phrenology, the study of the brain and certain physical features that some criminals have that are believed to be from way back in the evolution of humans, which may indicate they are not as developed mentally as the rest of us in today's sociecty.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
The Night Rider - Practice for English writing course
The Night Rider
__________________________________
Experience the thrill of the lone, all night trucker.
You awake from a deep sleep to the sound of your alarm; you wipe the sleep from your eyes and roll over to silence the alarm. You look at the clock and you see it has been nine and half hours since you ended your last tour of duty from the prior days work, you only have thirty minutes until it’s time to do it all again, just like you’ve done so many times before. As you crawl from your bunk and open the curtains you are greeted with the beautiful, serene vision of dusk. The sun is setting slowly over the western mountains. You see many truckers coming in, crowding the parking lot, fighting for that last few remaining spots. For many this is the end of their day, but for you, the night rider, it marks the beginning of another day.
You gather your thermos and walk inside the truck stop; you sit down at a table and order a cup and begin to collect your thoughts. You listen to all the not so discreet conversations going on among the other drivers as they take a few breaks to eat their dinners. You try and keep quiet, because you know that any little disagreement will spark a heated debate. You secretly laugh in amusement at how most of what you’re hearing is all nonsense, and how truckers seem to be experts in every field; law, medicine, politics… whatever the debate is, someone is an “expert” on it. It’s a phrase you will sometimes hear as “truck stop lawyer”, or “truck stop politician.”
You order yourself up something small for dinner, maybe a sandwich; you don’t want anything to heavy that may make you sleepy to early in the night. You sit and listen to the busy chatter of dinner time all around you, dishes clanking in the kitchen, people talking way to loud on cell phones, “expert” truckers having not to subtle debates with each other. This is the typical scene of a truck stop restaurant. After your meal has arrived, you down it quickly; as the time to get going is quickly approaching by now. You pay the cute waitress and leave her a few extra bucks for being sweet and calling you “hun” and “darlin’” and all that stuff, out here you don’t get a lot of female interaction, so these little things make your day.
You walk back into the store and fill up your thermos with the night’s coffee, as you pull down that lever on the coffee maker you hear the rushing sound as the liquid starts to swirl and fill your thermos, and you smell that wonderful aroma that you love so much. You head back out to the truck and open the hood and turn on all the lights and flashers to make sure everything is in order for your journey this evening. You close the hood and hop back in the truck, you reach down and turn the key to the on position and listen for that beeping sound, then you crank it the rest of the way over and feel that sweet vibration as the cab rocks side to side slightly and finally she fires up. You listen to the purring of the motor and smell the fresh diesel fumes, you are ready to ride!
You reach down and press in the air brakes knobs, listening for that familiar hiss of the air going through the lines; you put it in gear and begin to roll out. Some lucky driver shows up at just the right time to take your spot, you feel good knowing that you helped that tired driver find a safe place to park for the night. As you turn onto the on ramp and head for interstate you start grabbing gears one after another and you hear the marvelous roar of that big motor as you begin to pick up speed, you look out the mirrors as you place your blinker on and see your fellow drivers moving over to let you on the highway. You reach up and turn your CB on for the night, and give thanks to the courteous drivers for allowing you to merge onto the highway. You reach your cruising speed by this point and you got the truck in tenth gear and are rolling off into the night, the sun has finished setting now and the sky is lit by a full moon and all the beautiful stars of the distant skies. The traffic is starting to thin out now from the typical rush of the daylight hours, with each exit you lose more and more traffic as people and big trucks jump off searching for a place to spend the night. But you are one of the few, the special breed of drivers, you are a night rider! You’re only love is that night sky, the lonesome rumbling of your own wheels in the silence of the night and the glow of the chicken lights illuminating the highway on all sides of your rig as you roll on through the darkness.
This is where I fell in love with the night, while working for Jamestown Transportation; I had a 2005 Freightliner Classic XL, with the name “Flight 837” painted on the sleeper and the hood, this was my baby, just me and ‘ol flight 837 and the midnight sky over the desert southwest.
She was cherry red with chrome lettering, loaded with chicken lights and chrome from all sides, man she was beautiful! The best part was rolling through the night and looking in my mirrors and seeing the glow of my chicken lights illuminating the empty lane beside me. You reach down and grab a big chug of that black coffee and reach up and turn on your stereo that’s tuned to your favorite XM music channel, this is what it’s all about the freedom of the open road. You approach your first major city to pass through, it’s just after midnight and you glide right on through town, never lose a gear.
Unlike your fellow drivers you passed at the last truck stop, which will be coming around about 5 am and start piling on the highway with all the local people headed to their 9 to 5 dead end jobs. They start their day off with bumper to bumper traffic, and an hour later they make it to the other end of town finally and still have to deal with traffic all around, and angry, inconsiderate drivers all day long, people weaving in and out of lanes and such, you never know what some of these people on the road are going to do next, but you don’t have that problem now, it’s just you and highway out here, along the way you pass a smokey bear in the median sitting in his car with the lights out. You cruise on by and he doesn’t budge, you wander if he is still awake at all.
As you roll on for about five hours you decide (or that thermos of coffee) that it’s time to hit the next truck stop, you see the exit approaching, you step on the brake and feel the powerful roar of the jake brakes engage as it quickly reduces your momentum and you glide graciously off the ramp making a lone roar all the way to the bottom, breaking the total silence of this little mountain town. You reach the stop sign at the bottom and turn right and drive into the truck stop, you pull up into the fuel island and park, something that would raise a lot of anger in your fellow drivers during the day time, and may even start a fight, but nobody cares now because the only other drivers around are parked off to the side and they are fast asleep. You grab your thermos for another round of go-go juice.
As you pull the door open of this little mom and pop café you hear that distinct chime of a bell hanging above to let the clerk know you’ve entered. You look over at the clerk and she greets you with a smile and a “good morning”, you smile back and return the greeting. You hear the slight sound of country music playing overhead; you head straight for the restroom to relieve yourself of that thermos of coffee you consumed in the first half of your shift and walk back into the store to get another round for the last half of your shift. As your fill your thermos with the sweet aroma of another fresh (or somewhat recent by this time) pot; you feel a little rumble in your stomach and decide to grab a pastry to go. You climb back in the truck, fire it up put ‘er in gear and drive away, nobody outside will ever even know you were here. You’re rolling back down the freeway again with just the sight of another big truck with lots of lights going the other way every once in awhile. The CB radio is pretty quiet for the most part, not like during the day time when it’s filled with want to be disc jockeys and the Rambo’s all threatening to whoop each other. The silence is broken every once awhile by another lonely trucker trying to say something silly to stay awake, or a few drivers running together passing by and chatting to pass the time away.
You reach up and tune your satellite radio to the overnight trucking show, but after a short while you realize this is nothing more than an electronic dining area, much like the one you were in at the beginning of your shift. A bunch of “expert” truck drivers with all the solutions, and a lot of them with invalid, uninformed complaints which amounts to nothing more than adults whining, you’re not interested in listening to this for very long so you switch to coast to coast am with George Noory for awhile and listen to peoples ghost stories, and how they were abducted by alien life forms and flown off in UFO’s to distant galaxies, only to be returned with sore behinds. Not very believable, but it is certainly entertaining for a few hours.
As the break of day starts to rise over the eastern horizon your body takes it’s natural toll and tells you it’s time for bed, you start to get sleepy but you just keep driving you got only a few more hours left, you finish off that second thermos of coffee and crank up your favorite tunes on the stereo. Finally you reach your destination for today and again you pull off the ramp and rumble your way to the bottom, as you pull in the truck stop you have full access, all the trucks have left to go on their way in the day time and you pick a spot and pull those air brakes, you’re tired and glad to hear that familiar sound of the air popping and you look out your window and see a puff of dust scatter around your truck as you set the air brakes, you close your curtains and hop in bed and drift off until it’s time to do it again. That’s the end of the day for the “Night Rider.”
Copyright Richard Goon (2009)
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