Author Archives: rt103458

Foot patrol leads to less crime

In boston the police commissioner decided that bringing back the old police beat way would lower crime rate in certain neighborhoods and he has proven to be correct. According to Jame Wilson and George Kelling implementing the new police beat to sustain order was a good idea and i agree. In class we came across the topic of “roughing up” strangers to the neighborhood or giving them a hard time. Yes in some cases it can seem biased to take one individual and treat him as if he did something wrong just because you are unfamiliar with him. Not saying that i agree with these methods but i do understand where it comes from. Notice how friendly the cops are in that boston neighborhood with the citizens as if they have grown a trust liking for each other. In order to keep “order” things need to stay “normal” in a sense. The local drunks are ok in the eyes of the foot patrol police because they know them and know what to expect. When you insert an unknown variable (a stranger) you put a little fear in everyone around. Who is this stranger? What do they want? What will they do? In order for the police to maintain order they need to ask the same question. Once the people of the neighborhood become doubtful and scared things start to become difficult for the officer to control so the way to keep the order is to find out what this stranger is doing here and if they are safe to be around your neighborhood. Not to be biased but to reassure the citizens of the neighborhood everything is ok.

Psychiatrist arrested for issuing illegal prescriptions

After watching “Medicated Child” i started to wonder why would anyone willing over medicate such an innocent person, giving families the false perception that something is wrong with their loved ones and false hope that it will be better. When in reality all you are doing is creating the problem to begin with. To me the answer seemed clear…money, but i didnt want to believe someone can be so selfish. Unfortunately it is true. Seen in this article  an 84 year old psychiatrist was prescribing an extremely high amount of Oxycodone which is a drug commonly used to get high. This shows why in the documentary “The medicated child” the doctors were so quick to prescribe the children more and more money because instead of finding the best alternative they just want to make money. One thing that disturbed me the most was in this article it says that undercover agents were able to go in to her office talk for about 10 minutes and leave with a prescription of 90 pills of oxycodone when in fact there was nothing wrong at all. The article also says that she made a daily total of two to three thousand dollars and had over three million dollars in various bank accounts all from illegally prescribing drugs. This shows that you dont need to fit the typical  criminal stereotype to be a criminal. Even the ones we trust to keep us safe can turn out to be criminals for the right price.

Casey Anthony Tries To Plea Incompetence

It is no secret that throughout history plenty of people who commit serious crimes try to plea insanity or some form of medical disorder. Doing so, they are able to get an easier sentence for example, an insane asylum which they rather over prison anyday. Although they do try this it often does not work which i feel it should’nt work when the crime is severe enough. I do feel like some people are mentally unstable and cannot function in a “normal” society. I do however feel like in this case of casey anthony the plea should have never even been up for consideration. She was accused of killing her two year daughter and during her deliberation  with her lawyer they brought up the fact that she could plea mental incompetence but after 3 psychologist examined her they found that she was indeed competent. This shows the kind of crimes that people try to get away with by pleading to be “insane”. Im not saying that no one is incompetent but i feel like people use that too much. This is a big problem with medicalizing deviance. Deviance is just that, an individual go against the “norm” and rules of society for either their own gain or their personal pleasure which either should not be backed by science. Understandably we have to be sure that we arent throwing the wrong people in jail (witch hunt) but we should not support criminals by saying they have something medically wrong with them.

LOVE STORY SHEDS LIGHT

A lot of people stigmatize people with disabilities, be it physical, mental or an emotional disability. We tell ourselves that they arent like us and dont see the world the same way we see the world. A lot of the time people with disabilities are often made fun of, ridiculed and judged as being “not normal” and not being able to fulfill everyday task like the rest of us when in all reality they are not that different. “Stigma and Social Identity”shows the world in the perspective of a few people with disabilities in an attempt to show the world that just because physically or emotionally they dont think like us they still share similar thought process which makes them no more disabled than the next person.

One example from the reading is the one legged girl who fell. She had many people come to her aid. though this seems like a regular act of kindness she saw it as  people coming to help the “poor girl with one leg” she felt like they completed disregarded the fact that she was knocked down by “a wild bronco” automatically blaming the fact that she only had one leg. In the link above tells of a woman who sets out to change the thought of how people see others with disabilities mainly because her sister has a disability. She says she hopes one day people will be able to see someone with down syndrom bagging groceries at a market for some extra cash like any other person and instead of judging them see them as just a normal person.

Before technological advances people have struggled with being able to identify others. For example shown in the reading “A History of Fingerprinting and identification” in the late 1800’s European authorities tried different methods such as keeping a register of descriptive marks to identify repeat offenders or “Recidivist”. Authorities would use distinctive marks on criminals such as, a scar on the left arm or, a a tattoo on the chest of a criminal. This way if the offender came back to jail after being let go it would be easy to identify them as a repeat offender. Although this sounds like a good idea the labor became way to high for little results and very little was being done about repeat offenders.

Believe it or not even in every day life we use these sort of techniques to identify one another. An example of this is from the movie American History X which as a scene (provided below) following Derek, a white supremacist, into prison. On his way out to the yard he states “Im just going to throw up a flag and hope a friend sees it” which in this case was his white supremacy tattoos. In an attempt to find a “friend” as he puts it he proceeds to take off his shirt exposing his tattoos and who he is. This does draw the attention of other Neo-Nazi members. Although it does not directly tell you who he is it shows what he represents and others can identify him as either a friend or an enemy. Just like lambroso used tattoos to identify people so did derek in this situation.

*NOTE: Only watch from 1:36-2:30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_-KH03ozR0&bpctr=1342910620&skipcontrinter=1