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When asked this question, different people from different walks of life are likely to have discrepancy in their answers. For example the response of a sociologist might differ from that of a TV news anchor, just as the perspective of an inner-city resident might be different from that of a politician.
From a sociological perspective, crime in America could be seen as being on the rise because of an increase in underlying problems in the lives of individuals and in the community. These problems are typically economic, social, and/or psychological in nature. While there are certainly genetic and biological factors involved in the development of an individual's propensity towards committing crimes, environment also plays a key role in this arena. People from problematic backgrounds or especially difficult circumstances are not only more likely to participate in criminal activities, but are also more likely to continue their destructive activities to the point at which serious run-ins with the law develop. These dysfunctional lifestyles are most often associated with poverty, family disintegration, relocation, discrimination and boredom.
An inner city resident would probably also say that crime is on the rise in America. The United States has witnessed a tremendous growth in the size of its urban underclass each year, or areas stricken with persistent and pervasive poverty. The percentage of the population persistently poor is large and rapidly increasing, meaning that more and more teenagers are joining gangs, and that the need for welfare is exploding in most cities. While movies depict romanticized versions of the life in a street gang, the cold hard facts are much less glamorous. Statistics repeatedly show that violence and crime are on the increase, young people are dropping out of school in record numbers, and higher percentages of the population are withdrawing from the labor force.
Two principal contributions to the recent dramatic expansion of inner-city gang in the United States are: 1) media-generated diffusion of "gang culture" that makes gang symbols of dress, music, and behavioral styles immediately available to youth groups seeking special identity and 2) greater emergence and spread of an urban underclass which yields the base of minority, disorganized communities with large numbers of underemployed, marginalized youth who potentially feed into gang formation. The poor are also increasingly isolated in ghettos at the cores of our metropolitan areas which could easily be correlated with gang violence.
Unfortunately, there is no reliable data on changes in the economic background of violent criminals. It could be assumed that the numbers had risen faster in poor societies because of the violence that explodes everyday, whether it includes gangs or other individual infractions.
A politician would likely view the question from the perspective that ambivalent responses to crime divert attention from the willful forces that are casting shadows over the American Dream. Thus the issue of gun control is paramount in today’s society if we are to reduce the rising numbers of violent crimes. In a society where individualism, independence and equality are all seen as highly desirable values, it should not be surprising that John Q. Public’s growing affinity for firearms, a tool that enables its owners to effectuate those values, would become a widespread phenomenon. It is unfortunate, however, that guns have come to act as symbols of these values for many Americans, when in truth, all they do is perpetuate criminal activity.
Someone in the media might attribute “rising crime rates” the way crime is portrayed, claiming that even though crime is a prevalent problem in the United States, much of this perceived pervasiveness is dictated by the media. What the public chooses to think of as epidemic proportions is often a skewed perception in that bad news sells and good news tends to get ignored. The viewing public has a seemingly insatiable appetite for crime stories in both the electronic media and in print. Crimes shown or discussed in the news have become in a warped sense, a form of entertainment. The media is not to be chastised for this; it is merely giving the public what it wants.
The increase in the public's concern about crime is generally parallel with the amount of intense media focus on the issue. In fact, in a January 1994 Los Angeles Times poll it was shown that nearly two-thirds of the respondents attributed their feelings about crime to information they had acquired from the media. Certainly, both the news and entertainment media focus on the abnormally horrendous crimes and on the types of individuals who commit them. The media also nurtures doubts about the criminal justice system in that many of them center on the ways in which criminals can beat the system. Accordingly, in the media, reform comes to mean making it possible to crack down on criminals. To top it all off, punitive solutions resonate well with the culture of violence that seems so much a part of the American psyche and that is itself constantly reinforced by the media. With the media's role in reporting crime and using crime as entertainment gaining increasing influence and attention, the importance of the interplay between the mass media news and entertainment systems and the criminal justice system may be greater today than ever before.
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