In the 1960s, America saw a rise in crime. Desperate to curtail this rise, Americans looked for any reason that the crime rate was so high. People mostly pinpointed the main problem as being drugs and guns. While some minority leaders did try to say that the poverty was also an issue, most people simply focused on the drugs and guns aspect of the crime problem. They thought that the only way to stop crime was to cut drugs and guns out of society. Political, religious, and civic leaders endorsed punitive legislation that would cause the punishment for having guns or drugs to skyrocket. Many people thought that these punitive would cause criminals to give up the game and become law-abiding citizens, but without addressing the root cause of crime—poverty—many black and Latino communities, which were often the communities most affected by drugs, guns and violence, still saw many people become incarcerated. This effect was unintended, but it was devastating to communities throughout the country, causing a self-perpetuating cycle in which young black and Latino men ended up incarcerated.
Many would say that punitive crime legislation was only sought after by white politicians, however, to say so would eliminate the agency that the black community had in the creation of these laws. Since most of the crime was occurring in poor minority neighborhoods, many in those communities were invested in trying to end the violence. People saw the situation as “revolving door justice” in which criminals were being punished too leniently for committing crimes against innocent black people.[1] In response to this, Forman writes that
“Some displayed tremendous hostility towards the perpetrators of crime, describing them as a ‘cancer’ that had to be cut away from the rest of the black community. Others pushed for harsher penalties but acknowledged that these measures would not solve the crisis at hand. Some even expressed sympathy for the plight of criminal defendants…But that sympathy was rarely sufficient to overcome the claims of black crime victims, who often argued that a punitive approach was necessary…”[2]
The black community wanted an end to the violence that was ravaging their neighborhoods, and to meet that demand, politicians backed policies that would enforce harsher penalties. It was much easier to punish criminals than to look at them as sympathetic victims who committed crime because of their circumstances. Even though black leaders could identify poverty as an issue, it was much easier to get everyone to agree on draconian punishments rather than sweeping economic and social policies that would radically change the communities affected by crime.
As such, harsh penalties were adopted under the assumption that they would take criminals off the streets permanently, and soon, there would be a drop in the crime rate. However, without addressing the structural issues that poor black and Latino communities faced, crime was still perpetrated. Rios suggests that this was caused by hypermasculinity, which caused young men to commit crimes “to acquire money, to gain status among peers, or to resist their marginalization”[3]. One notion of manhood requires that men provide for their families, so in trying to fulfill that tenet of manhood in places that are economically stagnant, young men turn to illegal activities to get money and resist the humiliation of not being considered a man. Economic stagnation in the communities combined with resistance to being humiliated by working for those who look down upon them caused youths to end up looking to gangs and criminal lifestyles to help them become men. Since many adults in poor, minority communities are incarcerated, youths did not have positive role models to look up to, and instead looked to negative figures who made them think these deviant lifestyles were their only option for success. Forman builds on this theory by describing that in black communities, there was huge job loss that kept communities economically disadvantaged[4]. Even though there were few legal jobs, men still felt the need to provide for their families, causing them to commit crime which would allow them to become economically successful. Combined with increasingly punitive criminal codes, this led to significant portions of the black and Latino communities being incarcerated for long periods of time.
It has been acknowledged that punitive criminal justice measures are ineffective. Instead of tackling the root cause of crime, the laws work to punish those who have always been most at-risk of becoming criminals—the poor. Because of factors such as classism and racism, the criminal justice system has reached a point in which it is more acceptable to punish instead of to rehabilitate. Forman asks: “What if we came to see that justice requires accountability, but not vengeance?”[5] If justice required accountability instead of vengeance, then it would revolutionize the way we look at crime. It would cause us to look at justice as a criminal becoming responsible for his actions and bettering himself through the criminal justice system. The justice system would take on a more humanitarian role, instead of a persecuting one. As the criminal justice system stands, almost everything is one-size-fits-all, allowing us to say that the best way to deal with criminals is to just mete out draconian punishments without really knowing and understanding the criminal. If criminal justice became a more positive experience that gave criminals and at-risk youth hope, then perhaps we could combat crime effectively.
Punitive justice leaves criminals at risk of committing more crime when they are released. Forman writes that to lower the incarceration rate and help criminals get onto more positive tracks, massive reforms should take place, including: “instituting pretrial diversion programs…funding public defenders adequately, giving discretion back to judges…building quality schools inside juvenile and adult prisons, restoring voting rights to people who have served their sentences…and welcoming—not shunning and shaming—those who are returning from prison”[6]. By doing this, we could create a criminal justice system that works to stop the cycle of crime. If we look at the criminal justice system as an opportunity to rehabilitate criminals, then we can combat crime and help people most affected by poverty and crime take positive steps towards building their communities.
While Forman suggests reforms that could stop the cycle of crime for criminals, Rios suggests an approach which would try to stop crime before it even happened. He writes that the best way to do this is through “positive interactions [that] can provide a better outlook for young people and [through] an authority figure’s openness to grant access to material resources, like a job or an educational credential”[7]. In other words: the community must invest in young people. If youth feel like they are respected members of the community who have more opportunities than simply becoming part of illicit industries, then they can engage positively with the community and avoid becoming incarcerated altogether. They would also be able to exercise their masculinity in positive ways that would not lead them to commit crime. One youth that Rios interviews says, “If I could go back in time to when I was fourteen, fifteen, I had been all confused. I needed someone, a role model, a father figure, someone to guide me the right way”[8]. Many youths describe similar sentiments, and if the community had given them opportunities to pursue licit and legal opportunities, then youths would be kept away from activities that would land them in trouble with the law.
Crime amongst poor, stigmatized youths must be combatted at two fronts. First, we must recognize that the criminal justice system currently works to punish instead of create accountability and rehabilitate. The criminal justice system must work upon the notion that youths make mistakes and should be rehabilitated by giving them skills and networks that they can fall back on once they have done their time. The criminal justice system must become more tailored to individuals, restoring some subjectivity that would allow it to become less beholden to punitive measures. Second, we must create environments that allow for youths to grow up with positive interactions that do not humiliate them. Many youths do illegal things because they feel that they are not respected in legal, socially accepted environments, and therefore, we must work to create environments that allow them to thrive.
By working to reform the criminal justice system into a more positive experience and empowering youths through educational and work opportunities, we can combat crime effectively. Punitive measures do not work to effectively combat crime; if anything, they further feed the cycle of crime. Youths must be taught that criminal lifestyles are not their only options; the criminal justice system must teach them that the crimes they commit when they are young are not going to define them. This must be done by teaching youths in prisons and diverting them to programs that would keep them off the streets. Poverty is the root cause of the crimes committed by youths, but it does not have to keep youths in a cycle of crime for life. Education, programs, and proper work would allow youths to engage positively with society and grow up in environments where it is not constantly being reinforced that their only option to be economically independent is to commit crime. If we implement proper reforms to the criminal justice stem, then we can effectively combat crime and start decreasing the incarceration rate in America.
Footnotes
[1] James Forman, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Girroux, 2017).
[2] Forman, Locking Up Our Own
[3] Victor M. Rios, Human Targets: Schools, Police, and the Criminalization of Latino Youth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Ltd., 2017).
[4] Forman, Locking Up Our Own.
[5] Forman, Locking Up Our Own.
[6] Forman, Locking Up Our Own.
[7] Rios, Human Targets.
[8] Rios, Human Targets.
Bibliography
Forman, James. Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Girroux, 2017.
Rios, Victor M. Human Targets: Schools, Police, and the Criminalization of Latino Youth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Ltd., 2017.