The connection between race and crime in the United States has been an area of scholarly debates and public controversy for a very long time. The debate has centered on the contributing factors and the major causes of disproportional representation of the racial minority groups such as blacks and Hispanics at almost all the stages of the judicial system since 1980s. The defendants from the minority groups were charged and convicted with crimes requiring mandatory minimum prison sentence more habitually hence contributing to the large racial disparities in incarceration. Black disadvantaged groups have faced several injustices in history. The brutal murder of Emmett for no substantial reason and the controversial trial that favored the guilty white murderers is an example of this. However, there have been major reforms in the judicial system of the U.S. Emmett’s murder that was an exhibition of the disparity of justice for the black in the South is no longer emphasized due to the advances made in reforming the judicial system. Even after the implementation of a fair judicial system, statistics indicate that the many of the prisoners in the Los Angeles county jails are blacks. This paper explains the reasons for the increasing crime rates among the blacks as postulated in the famous theories of causation even after reforming the justice systems.
The stain theory by Merton constitutes various notions in sociological science that clarify various factors in the sociological structure that could make an individual exhibit deviant behavior. In discussing this theory, the focus will be on the reason why a number of black Americans resort to breaking of the rules as a means to moderate pressures, stresses and strains that come as a result of social relations with the educational system, the family system and the community at large. The primary causes of strain that is brought about by the rigid social interactions and structures must be explained for the purposes of understanding this theory. Strain is caused when an individual is not able to put up with the standards set by a shared dream for instance in living the Americans’ dream that a citizen may be compelled to conform to. Problems related to finances are the primary causes of strain, and it affects the relationships in the family and later narrows down to influence an individual to commit a crime. American Psychology Association stipulates that the black Americans are extremely more likely to live in a low-income household than the whites and that the rate of unemployment is relatively high among the blacks. The mentioned social circumstances put strain on the population of the blacks hence leading to more criminal activities being attributed to the blacks. Poverty affects the life of a family and lack of employment aggravates the disorders. “Chances of a black American being poor and of living in high-poverty societies are higher than whites’ chances.” (Healey, 2004). Due to this, black American families live in poverty and are most likely to commit crimes so as to earn a living.
The social learning theory can also be used to explain the causes of high crime rates among the black Americans. This theory stipulates that people often learn to engage in crime through the process of association with others. As a result, they come to perceive crime as something that is justifiable, and that is desirable in given situations. The theory further, supports that juveniles do learn to engage in crime in the same way they learn to engage in good and conforming behaviour. The primary or intimacy groups play a big role in influencing what we learn through observation. There are three mechanisms by which individuals learn to engage in crimes that are involved in the social learning theory: beliefs, modelling and differential reinforcement. Crime is likely to occur when it is frequently reinforced and infrequently punished. Crime reinforcement is rampant in the families of the black Americans than in the families of the whites as an act of crime can easily be justified by the pathetic conditions in which the juvenile blacks are forced to live in. The beliefs that one gets exposed to as well could result into the development of deviant behaviour. Most children of the blacks grow in with the beliefs that tend to favour crime. These beliefs increase the likelihood of a black getting involved in criminal activities. Individuals always imitate the behaviour of those around them especially when they respect them and have some reason to believe that imitation of their behaviour will result into some reinforcement. Most youths from the black families identify with the criminals and their criminal acts with the belief that in imitating them, they will enjoy the reinforcements that their models are enjoying for instance money. The labelling theory as well can be used to explain why many blacks get involved in criminal activities. This theory studies the reaction to crime and makes a counterintuitive conclusion about the causes of unlawful activities. This theory stipulates that the efforts put in place to control crime are the major contributors to the increasing crime rates. The black individuals who are arrested and taken to court for prosecution and later punished and labelled as criminals are viewed and treated as criminals by the conventional society. This phenomenon increases the likelihood of committing subsequent crimes due to many reasons. The labelled black criminals definitely have problems in obtaining genuine employment hence increasing their levels of strain and this also reduces their reward in conformity. Conventional people may also not be ready to associate with them. This lowers the strength of their bonds with conventional others and promotes the learning of more crimes. It is argued that labelling increases crimes even more, in circumstances when minimal or no effort is made in reintegrating the offender back into the rightful society for instance when offenders are informally labelled over a long time and when they are rejected. Hence, more former black criminals will, therefore continue getting their way back into criminal activities.
The social disorganisation theory that focuses on the immediate social environment, for example, peer groups, school and the family, also tries to elucidate the reasons for rampant involvement of the blacks in criminal activities. It tries to explain why some societies experience higher crime rates than others and borrow a lot from other former theories of crime causation. It identifies the qualities of a given community with high rates of crime and draws a control theory to clarify why the said qualities contribute to law-breaking. According to this, theory crime is more likely to be exhibited in communities that are large in size, economically deprived, high in residential mobility, high in multi-unit housing like apartments and also high in family disruptions. The factors mentioned above are said to limit the ability to exercise efficient social control. This comes with underlying weakness in providing the young with the stake in conforming to the societal laws, exercising of direct control and socializing with the young generation so that they can develop self-control and condemn delinquency. The black communities in the United States are often associated with the characteristics mentioned above. Their system of settlement is overcrowded and very informal with weak social structures to shape the behaviour of the youths. Therefore, a youth from a black community is more likely to engage in criminal activity while taking advantage of the weak social control structure and of the fact that he or she can easily escape unnoticed.
The cultural alignment framework affirms that the black violence against themselves can be attributed to the deculturalization, the lingering impacts of slavery and the compulsory assimilation of the Eurocentric values. The oppression of culture promotes violence as it devalues the minority blacks and coerces its domination on the subsets hence the affected groups feel oppressed. As a result a climate is created where by the blacks feel non-existent and illegitimate such that a black will only feel powerful with a gun in his hand. The black gun owner derives the level of respect that has been elusive due to cultural oppression. This leads to the blacks killing even among themselves.
A typical black community faces a lot of challenges in its quest to becoming a community of conformance. Such uncontrollable factors that are witnessed among the black communities, collectively promote high crime rates among the blacks even after the abolition of slavery and the implementation of the anti-discrimination policies in the criminal judicial system of the United States of America.
References
Healey, J. F. (2004). Diversity and society: race, ethnicity and gender. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press.
Feld, B. C. (1999). Bad kids: race and the transformation of the juvenile court. New York: Oxford University Press.
