Ways of Maintaining Law and Order in the US Essay

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Policing Strategies in the U.S.

Directed patrol

Directive police patrols predict crimes that might occur by offering locations that are at a great risk of crimes during each patrol, shift day and night. This policing strategy has various advantages. Putting police officers in the ? by 500? prediction "boxes" creates a suppression and deterrence impact, thus prevents crime from happening. In turn, all these reduce arrests. We have seen cases where criminals were interjected and stopped from doing crimes or exiting a scene when a crime is committed. Reduced criminal arrests mean a decreased city costs regarding jails, departments, and courts. This frees up resources for throughout to concentrate on community problems and dwell deeper into solving issues rather than on increasing prison population.

Directed patrols try to understand criminal activities in a specified location or hot spot. A hot spot is defined as an area that holds a higher than an average number of disorder or criminal events. The appropriate interpretation of these hot spots is as crucial as the technology and data within directed patrols. Sometimes, these hot spots are improperly interpreted, leading to misallocation of police patrols. For instance, flaws in data entry create incorrect crime maps, resulting in a misallocation of police services. The police department can avoid or lessen such problems by adopting better incident mapping technology.

Studies illustrate that even with intensified computer technology; it is highly challenging to identify hot spot crime areas. This argument is important because it might be impossible to identify these hot spot areas without the use of proper technology. As a result, police departments should advance their technology to identify high crime locations in an efficient manner.

Discrimination and Disparity

'Discrimination' refers to the different treatment given to persons based on ethnicity, race, economic status or sexual orientation. On the contrary, treatment must be based on the actual qualifications or behavior of each person. I have never experienced discrimination, but I had an opportunity to witness a form of institutionalized discrimination. I found that police were normally conducting directed patrols in the minority or poor neighborhoods much often due to high crime rates. As a result, higher rates of arrest tend to exist in the minority and poor locations. The disparity in the arrest rates of minority/poor versus middle-class areas results from the practices of law enforcement.

In comparison, 'disparity' is defined as a difference, but it does not always entail discrimination. A typical example of disparity within the police department is seen in the sentencing guidelines. In the 90s, the sentencing guidelines and the sentencing reform of 2020 created massive disparities. Research proves that the establishment of the guidelines led to an increased disparity between white and black following the choice made by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

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One major disparity emerging from the sentencing guidelines that is applied today is the longer sentences for drug crimes on crack cocaine, which promotes racial disparity because it is cheaper to obtain crack cocaine than it is to obtain powder cocaine.

Gun control laws and programs

The topic of gun control continues to be controversial. The pro-gun control bodies claim that elimination of guns will reduce violence and crime. Nevertheless, this can only be seen as the best-case scenario. Taking away guns means that more violence will take place because innocent citizens, who are potential victims, will be rendered defenseless against criminals who will always find a way of obtaining the weapon. Thus, gun control should be eliminated because it cannot reduce crime; instead, it would increase it.

Rampant gun ownership makes guns fall into the wrong hands. When it is easy for law-abiding citizens to access guns, it is also easy for the entire population to access and use them. Some groups of people should not be allowed to access guns because they could cause mass casualties. Such persons include terrorists, the mentally unstable, criminals, schoolchildren among others. Over the years, a vast bulk of mass shootings in the U.S. resulted from the individuals mentioned above accessing guns and using them.

Anti-gun control bodies disagree with all the arguments fronted by opponents. They argue that very citizen has a constitutional right to bear arms and that the country would be a better place with unrestricted gun rights. This means that citizens are entitled to bear arms for self-defense purposes. Proponents of anti-gun control cite the Second Amendment in their defense: "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Therefore, preventing law-abiding citizens from buying and using guns through gun control laws not only violates their constitutional right but also prevents them from defending themselves when the need arises.

Banning citizens from legally buying and using guns puts criminals in business. Among the strongest arguments against gun control is that when the government makes it impossible for people to purchase guns, the outcome is a black market whereby guns are traded illegally just like illegal drugs. Consequently, the rate of organized crime increases. While seeking to avoid such a scenario, gun control laws should not be enacted.

It will be extremely challenging to use gun control as strategy to curb crime. In fact, these laws would achieve the opposite. Guns are not responsible for crimes committed. The ignorance and irresponsibility of gun owners cause crimes. The government should only punish those who fail to act maturely when owning guns.

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