How Does Violence Affects Americans as a Whole

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Category: Societal Issues

Date Submitted: 06/04/2008 07:20 AM

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Violent crime, or street crime, is on the rise because law enforcement agencies are more focused on preventing crimes with potentially negative effects on large numbers of people, such as terrorism, at the expense of anti-street initiatives. Officials are also struggling to determine the best method, either rehabilitation or punishment. To fight a rising cause of drug–related crimes that is filling the nation’s prisons with convicted criminals. It is to believe that only strong punishments will decrease future offenders. It is expected that if drug addicts receive treatment, the street will not be safe .Violence in America. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Report, about 11.55 million crimes were documented in the United States in 2005. Crimes against property, such as burglary or car theft, accounted for more than 90 percent of these crimes, the rest of the crimes were violent crimes murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

Also in 2005, there were 16,692 murders in country- about one murder per 18,000 residents. An overall, violent crime increased by 2.3 percent. An increase in violent in the 1980’s, spurred a large part by illegal drugs, led citizens and policymakers to demand more get – tough –on crime programs.(Get tough is a approach did to help bring about decrease in crime throughout the last decade. From “Current Issues”/Close Up.com)In 1994 congress passed the Violent Crime control and Law enforcements Act, which provided 30 billion dollar over six years for crime control. The law included funding to add 100,000 police officers nationwide; a ten – year ban on certain semiautomatic assault weapons, there was also an expansion of death penalty in to cover additional federal crimes, last approval to impose a mandatory life sentence on any criminal convicted of three felonies for violent crimes. The reasons why violence affects America because poverty, drug abuse and because of easy access to fire arms.

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