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Income Inequality In Sociological Research

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The underlying causes, ideology, and history surrounding crime and social classes lie within social constructs in society that deliberately deny people freedom and liberty for the privilege of others. The law defines what actions are harmful and this gives direction to the powers created that make the judicial system function. Therefore law and order can be used as an oppressive mechanism employed to protect privilege of other unequally or it can be the call of conscience reminding us that we should establish equality for everyone. One of the concepts that intersect in all of crime is social class along with others like race, gender, age, etc. One prevailing ideology of the 20th century was Marxism which asserted that all of human history …show more content…

Although exposure to violence affects all SES groups, lower SES individuals and families appear to have increased exposure. Browne, Salomon, & Bassuk (1999) found that women who resided in households that earned less than $10,000 annually had a 4-times-greater risk of experiencing violence than women in wealthier households. Bassuk et al. (1996) found that homeless mothers reported significantly more severe instances of physical and sexual assault over their lifetime than low-income housed mothers. Buka, Stichick, Birdthistle, & Felton, (2001) found youths from low-income neighborhoods witnessed significantly more severe violence (viz., murders and stabbings) than youths from middle- and upper-income neighborhoods. African American children are three times more likely to live in poverty than Caucasian children. American Indian/Alaska Native, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian families are more likely than Caucasian and Asian families to live in poverty (Costello, Keeler, & Angold, 2001; National Center for Education Statistics, 2007). Unemployment rates for African Americans are typically double those of Caucasian Americans. African American men working full time earn 72 percent of the average earnings of comparable Caucasian men and 85 percent of the earnings of Caucasian women (Rodgers, 2008). A criminal record reduces one 's opportunities for employment; thus, they are more likely to …show more content…

It is being proposed that people should not criminalize poverty. Drugs are intensively criminalized among the poor but largely unregulated among the rich. One policy that has been enacted that helps to do that is The Fair Sentencing Act. In 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which reduced the sentencing disparity between offenses for crack and powder cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1. The scientifically unjustifiable 100:1 ratio meant that people faced longer sentences for offenses involving crack cocaine than for offenses involving the same amount of powder cocaine – two forms of the same drug. Most disturbingly, because the majority of people arrested for crack offenses are African American, the 100:1 ratio resulted in vast racial disparities in the average length of sentences for comparable offenses. On average, under the 100:1 regime, African Americans served virtually as much time in prison for non-violent drug offenses as whites did for violent

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She points out that in some states, 80-90% of those sent to prison on drug charges are African American. This enormous discrepancy cannot be blamed either on black culture or “old-fashioned,” deliberate racism. Rather, much of the racial injustice of mass incarceration can in fact be attributed to unconscious bias. This is made worse by laws that may appear to be race-neutral on the surface, but in fact operate in deeply racist ways; this includes the one hundred-to-one ratio in sentencing recommendations for crack versus powder cocaine. Whereas there is little substantial difference between the two forms of cocaine, crack is more closely associated with black people—and carries sentences a hundred times longer than powder cocaine, which is generally associated with wealthy whites.

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In the past 40 years, drug offenses have been on the rise as a priority offense. According to Prison Policy, 1 in 5 incarcerated inmates are locked up for a drug offense. At the same time, black people make up 40% of the prison/jail population, which is more than the white population of 39%. Considering that black people only make up 13% of the nation, this disproportionate rate of black people being arrested is quite evident. Conversely, when it comes to drugs, black people are the highest demographic arrested for drug offenses, even though all races and ethnicities sell drugs at very similar rates.

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In 2010, the US Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) which reduced the sentencing difference between offenses for crack and powder cocaine. Many people in law enforcement believed that there is more violence associated with a crack cocaine crime, rather than a powder cocaine offense. Due to the increasing amount of reports and cases of aggressive offenses, Urban Leaders in America allowed the sentences of the crime to be extended because of the violence in a drug trafficking offense. In the article, “Data Show Racial Disparity in Crack Sentencing” by Danielle Kurtzleben, states that, “The figures for the 6,020 powder cocaine cases are far less skewed: 17 percent of these offenders were white, 28 percent were black, and 53 percent were

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There are many other factors that are also considered, such as the current laws, the “degree of involvement in a crime, disparate law enforcement practices, sentencing and parole policies and practices, and biased decision making” (Mauer, 2011). Take for example the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. The purpose of this act was to ensure mandatory sentences for serious drug traffickers involved in the preparation, selling and packaging of crack cocaine. However, Congress’s haltingly decision to address this concern left the penalty structure completely skewed. Although there is a distinct physical difference between crack cocaine and powder cocaine, both share the same pharmacological roots.

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The Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) is an act initiated by Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin, and passed by Congress, to become law on August 3, 2010 (Phillips 2012 ). The FSA intent is to reduce the gap between the amount of crack cocaine and powder cocaine needed to initiate federal criminal penalties from a 100:1 weight ratio to an 18:1 weight ratio. The FSA also eliminates the five-year mandatory minimum sentence for the possession of crack cocaine (Reid 2012). The FSA replaced the controversial Anti-Drug Abuse Act (ADAA) of 1986, that was seen as a racially bias, expensive, and unfair legislation from the Reagan Administration 's “War on Drugs” from the mid 1980s ().

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Many solutions, such as social investment, early childhood education, job training for young adults are avenues for addressing the shrinking middle class. Many of these ideas have been around since the 1990s, and most know that they will work, however, no one wants to pay the cost of such social investments. Thus, this is a fine example of how one topic, income inequality, can be addressed from two different angles, that of economist and that of sociologists, and what contributes to the inequality can be supported based on what is actually measured. In this specific comparison, due to the differences in disciplines addressing the same issue, the variables measured are completely different and as a result, yield very different results.

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An 18 year old first time offender caught with less than two ounces of cocaine received a 10 year sentence. A 46 year old father of three who sold some of his painkillers to someone he thought was his friend, received a 25 year sentence. In 2006 37.5% of all state and federal prisoners were black. One in 33 african american men were in jail, compared to one in 205 white men and one in 79 hispanic men.

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Inequality is often associated with racial injustice, but actually goes beyond that and has created new ways for social inequality to exist among various circumstances in our country. It affects millions in terms of their way/ quality of life. In the United States and around the world, civilians struggle to receive adequate health care at the expense of their day jobs, hindering them from this as they cannot afford it. The middle has been struggling for decades over the same issues, yet permanent action has yet to transform the country. The issue of inequality has recinfoced itself in health care and income and continues to manifest itself in our society today leading to social problems in which we cannot escape making it an institutional

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There is no difference between whites and blacks using or dealing drugs, however blacks are four to eleven times more likely to be arrested for drug offenses, according to the Human Rights Watch. This is a repetition of history, as African American communities are yet again disproportionally

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Statistics prove that Mandatory Minimums affect minorities disproportionately. In fact, African Americans are over 10 times more likely to enter prison for drug offenses than their Caucasian counterparts despite both racial groups using drugs in equal amounts. This shows the racial bias of the Justice System at work by using Mandatory Minimums to punish minorities with harsher sentences. Blacks and Hispanics make up 74.4 percent of the people convicted of drug charges while only making up less than 30 percent of the population. Indicative of this widespread problem, 39.4 percent of convictions in 2011 involved Mandatory Minimum Sentencing (United States Sentencing Commission 148).

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More interestingly, the drugs that are more common to be either produce, used or sold by African-Americans are given harsher penalties than drugs that are often used by the white population such as powder cocaine. Which has in turn, greatly contributes to the high incarceration rates among blacks, and the discretions of sentences given to blacks over other races. The heightened prison population has affected the taxpayers. Due to a

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This law led to people being arrested crack being sentenced to much harsher punishments than those for cocaine. The people being for crack were predominately black and for cocaine predominately white. “Crack was largely a inner-city issue and crack was largely a suburban issue”(13th). After the war on drugs Bill Clinton became president, and pasted more to crack down harder on crime. One of them being mandatory minimums this didn’t let the judges decide the crimes.

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The Huffington Post says, “The U.S. incarcerates nearly seven times as many people, measured as a share of population, as Canada does. People of color are disproportionately represented in the American prison population and are typically punished more severely than white peers for the same crimes” (Daniel Marans). Racism against people of color has caused them to be represented poorly in society as potential criminals, especially black. MIT informs its viewers that “according to the United States census Bureau, blacks are twice as likely to be poor compared to other races, and eight times as likely to be imprisoned. Blacks are also three times more likely to be convicted of drug violations than whites.

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Income Inequality Income Inequality or “wage gap” is a big topic for freedom fighters and liberals for the simple fact that it isn’t equal for everyone. Because the wage gap is so prominent it's one of the biggest “facts” that discrimination is still apart of everyday American society. The wage gap from these radical interest groups think the economy is get a dollar take a dollar instead of a free flow economy. This misguided idea of the economy is absolutely not true and isn’t at the fault of the Government, but the people.

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In 2002, black Americans constitute over 80% of those who are sentenced for drug-related offenses even though more than 2/3 of cocaine users are actually white or

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