Crime Is Despicable And That Criminals Are Dangerous People

Some of us, as young children, may have been taught that crime is abhorrent and that criminals are dangerous people, neglecting to explain why people commit crimes. Those same children may have learned that the criminal justice system -- comprised of law enforcement, the court system, and so on -- were impartial solutions to keep citizens safe and law-abiding. But the truth is, crime isn’t so simple and the criminal justice system may not be as grandiose and good as we were taught. In the final decades of the twentieth century, there was a surge in prison inmate numbers, described as â€Å"hyper-incarceration† (Nuno, 1). Of those incarcerated, many were minorities. Now, one in three males born to African Americans will have been in jail at†¦show more content†¦Before we can identify strategies to deal with the issue of crime and recidivism, we must first identify why crime and recidivism occurs in the first place. The Functionalist paradigm, a sociological theory suggesting that society is like a machine with various parts working together to complete a single function and that failing parts are dysfunctions and social issues, utilizes Robert Merton’s Strain Theory. The Strain Theory suggests that crime occurs when a cultural goal, often in the form of money or material goods, cannot be obtained by someone through cultural means, or approved means to achieve the cultural goal. Such forms include innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebe llion. Innovation is defined as the acceptance of cultural goals and the substitution of cultural means with deviance. When innovation occurs, crime happens. However, such strains are not taken into consideration by current policies attempting to reduce and prevent recidivist crimes and juvenile delinquency. Instead, inmates after serving their sentence are released back into the world often times without any support, leading to many resorting back to crime in order to achieve cultural goals. In fact, the majority of juvenile inmates who commit crimes following their release are imprisoned for crimes such as robberies and burglaries (Heslin, 161). Therefore, using Functionalism and thereby Strain Theory, crime and recidivism can be prevented by making cultural means accessible. In