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Posts: 3 (archived below)
Comments: 1
Surveillance ! (Zhanna Onishchuk)
“The Outsiders” has made the point that certain people set the rules, and others are forced to abide by them. Although we tend to rebel in our minds against the police and the government, we often just accept rules because they seem credible. There’s this new “Smart Meter” technology, an electricity meter to be installed by major electric companies in homes, that is advertised to reduce green house emissions and reduce electric bills. I heard about it from “Lionel’s” Commentary on the WB 11 news. Here’s the video :
Can you believe it ? Now the government is not only surveillance criminals through unethical methods, as per our classmate (@Antonio,) but it is surveillance regular people. If you do any research about the smart meter, which homeowners probably wont, it is difficult to find out out about the surveillance characteristics that the meter has, all that is advertised is its beneficial bill-reducing capabilities.
How are we supposed to follow rules when they are not justified at all ? We are blinded by everything that the government wants us to hear – and we have done nothing wrong. The government applied bad stigmas to regular people just as much as they do to criminals. Otherwise, such deception and surveillance would not exist. This is proven over and over again with intrusive privacy legislation that applies to everyone. So are we all really criminals that need to be controlled ? If we look at aourselves as criminals, we can justify breaking laws. Which comes back to the government’s need to surveillance us. This loop will never end !
Zhanna Onishchuk
Avoiding Delinquency ! (Zhanna Onishchuk)
Robert Agnew’s strain theory of delinquency places most of the blame on whatever aversive environment children are born into. They can not avoid the pain of the dangerous dating relationships, the abusive homes, and the uncaring teachers, so delinquency results while they are in such custody. It seems as if the only true solution to the problem is to truly escape. If children somehow attain a better financial situation, they can escape whatever aversive environment that encourages their delinquency. But what exactly happens to runaway children ? Does the fantasized, new, and supposedly non-aversive environment discourage delinquency ?
Paul Aaron Jr. was arrested for forcing runaway girls to be a part of his prostitution ring. Click on the image to watch the news report !
In Polk County, Florida, two young runaway girls were discovered to have been victims of forced prostitution. The girls, 14 and 15 years old, were forced to turn tricks and were repeatedly raped by an older male. Shockingly, one of the men who engaged in sexual intercourse with these girls was a police officer. These girls were classified as “habitual runaways” and “troubled teens,” therefore their home environment is very questionable. I don’t think that the pain-avoidance theory is credible. While it seems as if DYFS (The Division of Youth and Family Services) is taking children out of bad homes and helping them, what happens to these children when they are placed in other environments is usually not better. Children, whether we accept it or not, are always at the mercy of adults around them. Rates of youth delinquency, therefore, are based on the actions of the adults who are supervising the children. Chances are that if their parents don’t support them, no one else will. There is truly no fix for bad parenting, and unfortunately, delinquency is a direct result of it.
Zhanna Onishchuk
COPYCAT CRIMES ! (Zhanna Onishchuk)
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Click the image to watch the beginning of Natural Born Killers !
While most of Lombroso’s theories of why homicide has increased in America are manifestations of racism and pseudoscience, I was pleased with his recognition of criminal activity among people who were exposed to criminal activity by the media. Lombroso suggests that some people will only commit copycat crimes. I think that he is correct; exposure to violence is encouragement of violence. The movie Natural Born Killers has been credited with spurring many shootings throughout the country. Because it made the criminals celebrities, and because it presented violence in such an alluring manner, it attracted easily influenced people to commit random acts of violence. Random is the keyword, since most of the crimes associated withe the movie were without motive, just like Mickey & Mallory’s crimes. Lombroso would have used the the copycat crimes inspired by the movie as hard evidence of a critical cause of crime in the US. Yet it is ironic that while Lombroso is looking for the biological reason of why people commit crime, a trait that would have been found by him if he examined the main characters of the movie, it initiates replica murders by other people who wouldn’t have committed such crimes, and therefore don’t have the violent biological factor, without watching the film. I wish Lombroso spent more time developing his theories about such criminals. While the debate around the extent of influence violence in music and film have on reality is always hot, I think that without movies such as Natural Born Killers, contemporary society would have much less natural born criminals.
Zhanna Onishchuk
