This questionnaire is to gauge people’s attitudes toward drug abuse, and crimes and how people think they correlate with race, color, age bracket and income group of criminal. The questionnaire aims to gauge people’s pre determined schemas about crime age and pre conceived notions regarding crime rates being high in certain races and low in others. The questionnaire asks about what race people think is most associated with crimes, the expected answers from the majority is definitely about crime rates being high in blacks. Also, the questionnaire asks about people’s occupation and the choices given clearly suggest the questionnaire aims to ask a specific group of people largely belonging to security, social services and police services and not general public. The questionnaire then correlates the use of certain drugs with the perpetration of crimes. Thus, the questionnaire aims to find out the perception employees in social security services have regarding who commits crimes and what their age, income, use of drugs is like.
Looking at the answers given by the respondents here are our basic findings. Most respondents belonged to the black American race (8), followed by Caucasians (white) (10) and males (12) as opposed to females (5). Majority of the respondents were police officers and had completed their high school. The criminal’s age bracket was of juvenile range i.e. from 15 to 20 as most of the respondents thought. Most respondents indicated cocaine as the favorite drug for most of the criminals out there while committing theft. In a way, cocaine is the most favorite drug for juveniles and they commit crimes under the effect of the drug, or so the respondents thought.
Most respondents think that these drug-induced-theft criminals are most likely to commit these petty crimes in lower and middle income areas. Then from experience the respondent said that majority of the arrestees use drugs heavily. In a similar question majority of the respondents said black Americans are most likely to commit a crime, followed by Hispanics and whites. It’s worth noticing that none of the respondents think Asians either commit crime or take drugs. Also, an overwhelming majority of the respondents think arrestees convicted for theft (and petty crimes) and tested for drug use, usually rank positive are black Americans.
The questionnaire gauged out some of the disparities ingrained in the US justice system stemming from age old discrimination and stereotypes that exist in the belief systems of most Americans since centuries. In a survey report of the US Justice Policy Institute, it was found that policy measures differed across races and that policy formulation was highly skewed according to racial biases and that federal lawmakers don’t deny this fact especially its factuality about juvenile justice system. Most disparities exist in the detainment law of drug abusers.
While black Americans consist of 17% of the American youth population, they make up for more than 27% of all drug arrestees, although according to the Monitoring the Future Survey (2005) the drug abuse rate in black Americans is relatively lower than whites. In a survey launched on high school students it was found that whites rank higher in use of all categories of drugs including cocaine, crack cocaine and marijuana than black Americans and use heroine about as much as blacks do. Still, black Americans are arrested at about twice the rate of their white counter parts. As far as the possession and carrying a weapon goes, both black Americans and whites reported similar rates in the survey. In a study aiming at finding out the probability of aggressive attacks, both whites and African Americans report similar rates, yet blacks are more often convicted and arrested as opposed to whites. (Institute, 2005)
As far as the correlation between drug use and crimes go, most prisoners said they commit crimes for obtaining money for drugs, so drugs are the motivation behind crimes generally among the youth. The studies found and thus conclude that blacks are not a terrorist community and that these convictions are largely fed upon by the disproportionate rate of arrests and trials as opposed to actual perpetration of crime by these races. As the questionnaire findings also suggest people in the social security service think blacks are more prone to commit crime under the influence of drugs. (Jones, 2005) The formal policy laws and rules govern these disproportionate practices and officials acknowledge this disparity of the US justice system, so the main challenge facing the system right now is not whether black is inherently a criminal race or it’s the justice system at flaw.
Bibliography
Institute, J. P. (2005). CRIME, RACE AND JUVENILE JUSTICE POLICY IN PERSPECTIVE. Web.
Jones, V. (2005). Are Blacks a Criminal Race? Web.