Crack Cocaine Epidemic

“Just Say No!” A statement that takes us deep into yet another decade in the history of the United States which was excited by controversies, social issues, and drug abuse. The topic of this statement is fueled by the growing abuse of cocaine in the mid 1980s. I shall discuss the effects of the crack cocaine epidemic of the mid 1980s from a cultural and social stand point because on that decade this country moved to the rhythms and the pace of this uncanny drug. Cocaine took its told on American society by in the 1980s; it ravaged with every social group, race, class, etc. It reigned over the United States without any prejudices. Crack cocaine was the way into urban society, because of its affordability in contrast to the powdered

Crime has always been a hot topic in sociology. There are many different reasons for people to commit criminal acts. There is no way to pinpoint the source of crime. I am going to show the relationship between race and crime. More specifically, I will be discussing the higher chances of minorities being involved in the criminal justice system than the majority population, discrimination, racial profiling and the environment criminals live in.

The United States features a prison population that is more than quadruple the highest prison population in Western Europe (Pettit, 2004). In the 1980s, U.S. legislation issued a number of new drug laws with stiffer penalties that ranged from drug possession to drug trafficking. Many of those charged with drug crimes saw longer prison sentences and less judicial leniency when facing trial. The War on Drugs has furthered the boom in prison population even though violent crime has continued to decrease steadily. Many urban areas in the U.S. have a majority black population. With crime tendencies high in these areas, drugs are also prevalent. This means that a greater percentage of those in prison are going to be black because law

It was during the mid-1980s that the emergence of a new smokable form of cocaine, called crack, had been introduced to the United States. Crack, was highly-addictive and swept through impoverished areas of cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Miami. In the end it caused devastating effects for black and Latino Americans. As crack cocaine was becoming a grim and rising epidemic, hip hop was evolving alongside it. It was in the 1980s that crack cocaine and hip hop became the two leading fundamentals of urban street culture. It is not suggested that hip hop caused the crack epidemic, or vice versa. But, it can be argued that both fed off each other, particularly hip hop off the crack culture itself.

Purpose Statement: to reveal the problem of mass incarceration of poor, black male, and increasingly female, young people in the name of a bogus war on drugs from the 1980 's?90 's.

In the 80s Boston, as well as other cities, experienced a drug epidemic. The drug was called crack and it affect the city of Boston badly. A nurse named Fulani Haynes at Boston Medical Center was working during the crack epidemic. She explains how to care for babies who were born addicted to drugs that passed from a mother’s bloodstream through the placenta and into a tiny body. “The babies couldn’t tolerate being held or rocked, she recalled. They wailed at the sound of soft lullabies. Only complete darkness, silence, tight swaddling, and medication could soothe them.” This drug has nothing to do with heroin but it shows the people of Boston that if the heroin addiction continues to spread, more and more children will be born addicts and

As soon as I entered the class, there was a man sitting in our class. His name was Paul Shapiro, and he was from the Orange County Courts. He explained to us what the community court is, and what kind of effect it has on our society. During mid-1980s, crack cocaine was widespread and people kept going back to prison. To cut this infinite loop of incarceration, Orange County made the drug court. It is not like a real court, but rather similar to a program that helps drug addicts free themselves from drug dependence. Unlike other courts, the prosecutor, the attorney, the probation officer, and the judge in the drug court work as a team.

Over policing in African American communities started during the drug wars and continue to result in over drug arrests of African Americans. Over policing may also occur when police concentrate their efforts not on illegal activity, but on citizens behavior with the hope that in the process of the investigation some evidence of crime may be uncovered. Some police activities such as undercover drug buys are more common in African American communities than other communities and consequently disproportionate numbers of African Americans are arrested for drug dealing (Nunn, 2002). When it comes to violent or non drug crimes there is a clear victim and suspect, and the police can go to the crime scene and investigate. On the other hand when it comes to drug related offences, there isn’t a clear victim and the police can choose when and where to investigate. Police choose to target African American communities because they are easier to target, which results in over drug arrests (Mauer, 199, p.143). The police focus on substances that blacks buy, sell, and places where they would sell them, which results in high drug arrests rates. For example in 2008, the drug arrests of blacks was 3.5 times higher than whites (Tonry, 2011 p. 54). One would wonder if the government and law

In 1994 there was 15,000,000 incarcerations, in 2002 there were 13,500,000, and by 2012 there were only 12,000,000 incarcerations. The notion of a historic boom in incarceration after the 1994 crime bill was passed is completely false. This fact takes away the movies narrative of social injustice and the massive incarceration that is taking over our modern society today. This section of the movie then goes on to claim that black people are targeted for the consumption and dealing of drugs in the 90’s. However, the Bureau of Justice Statistics states that 50% of drug incarcerations were white people and 49% was black and the 1% was other races. If black people were targeted in this time era so heavily, why were there more white people in jail for drugs compared to African-Americans? At this same time SAMHSA did a survey in prison asking inmates whether they are in prison for selling drugs or consumption. 82% of the people were white and 16% was black. The percent of African-American drug users was 13% and the incarceration rate was 13%, at this time 60% of blacks lived in intercity metropolitan areas were the majority of arrests were made. This shows that it isn’t the polices fault for making these arrest, but the people in the intercity who involved themselves in using drugs knowing well that there was a higher chance of being arrested due to higher police force in areas that require it.

The correlation between gangs and drugs has always been an issue for the United States government. Major cities often overlooked the problem of youth gang violence, thinking it was only a 1960’s trend. Sixty years later, gangs and drugs continue to be a problem, but in an increasing number within urban, suburban and rural areas in the United States. People may characterize this problem with words such as violence, increase drug activity, and delinquencies, but not many seem to see the bigger picture. Lack of interaction, collaboration, and strategies from law enforcement, youth centers, businesses, churches, and political icons are increasing gang violence and drug related offenses in major cities. In such cities as Chicago, minority groups are the most vulnerable to joining a gang, which then leads to an involvement with drugs; they are faced with barriers – lack of family support, poverty, segregation, unemployment, etc. An incident that happened in Chicago history is the closing of the Cabrini-Green Project, where people involved with gangs had to find a new home, scattering gang-members throughout the city, and eventually leading to their spread and growth.

The past quarter century has seen an enormous growth in the American incarceration rate. Importantly, some scholars have suggested that the rate of prison growth has little to do with the theme of crime itself, but it is the end result of particular U.S. policy choices. Clear (2007) posits that "these policy choices have had well-defined implications for the way prison populations have come to replicate a concentrated occurrence among specified subgroups in the United States population in particular young black men from deprived communities" (p. 49).

Since the decade of the 1990s crime has increased in America, especially in state of California. In 1990s, violent crime plummeted fifty-one percent, property crime fell forty-three percent, homicides are down fifty-four percent compared to previous decade (Chettiar, 2015). Increased police in the 1990s brought down crime by about five percent, police employment increased dramatically in the 1990s, rising twenty-eight percent. One example of state policy that were put in place in the 1990s to address crime was the 1994 Crime Bill, which provided funding for 100,000 new local officers (Chettiar, 2015). Police techniques can be effective in reducing crime especially in the 1990s. Thanks to digital revolution in the 1990s, police forces started using computers to target criminals. But as of today, incarceration rate has increased with six percent of property crime decline in the 1990s and sadly only one percent of property crime

The chapter goes on to overview the crime crisis happening the United States in the 1980s through the 1990s. After exploring possible causes of the problem and how bad everything has gotten, the authors go on to explore possible solutions to the crime epidemic. The solutions are quite varied, well thought out, and are supported with statistical facts. For example in talking about the effect of gun buyback programs and their effect on homicide: “Given the number of handguns in the United States and the number of homicides each year, the likelihood that a particular gun was used to kill someone that year in 1 in 10,000. The typical gun buyback program

The research design proposed by the authors is to statistically compare the relation between the dependent variable “violent crime” and four explanatory variables: a measure of “broken windows” policing (misdemeanor offenses), a measure of demographics (young male enrolled in high school), a measure of drug use (hospital discharges for cocaine-related episodes) and a measure of economy (unemployment). They use data of seventy-six precincts of New York City from 1989 to 1998, obtained from a variety of official secondary sources.

contributor to crime in the United States is a young, black male living in an