Posted: July 9th, 2022

Comparative Analysis

Comparative Analysis
Read the following article: Why are so many Americans in prison? Right a 500 – 600 word comparative analysis between Loury’s article and Jeffery Reiman’s position from your reading in Issue 2: Is Criminal Behavior Determined Biologically?

Include in your analysis/discussion:

1. Discuss whether they reach the same conclusion and in what way.

2. Do they differ in either their opinion or approach to understanding the crime problem? If so how.

3. What are some of the specifically things that both authors point to as known sources of crime?

Please provide references for your sources in APA format.
Comparative Analysis Of Glenn Loury. “Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?” and Jeffrey Reiman, “Issue 2: Is Criminal Behavior Determined Biologically?”
The two authors reach a similar conclusion on incarceration, which leads to more crime and hence further incarceration in American society. This is mainly due to the prevalent social conditions that make it difficult for prisoners to live reformed lives. According to Loury 20078), one way to look into the punitive prison system is to consider the racial composition of the prisoners. For the longest time, American society has had a public culture characterized by secondary social meanings given to the black community members. The social policies created to fight crime have been created with a race perception that has been bleak on the Blacks.
For instance, in the War on Drugs, the efforts were triggered by the fact that the use of drugs was highly used by the white, middle-class American communities. It became an urgent problem that needed an immediate solution. The solution was a criminalization of underclass children who primarily affected those from the Black Community (Loury, 2007). After they are incarcerated, the prison conditions make them more robust, and the outside community will not readily accept the imprisoned population. Therefore, the community deals with high numbers of incarcerated communities, and those released quickly find themselves doing crime and then back into the prison system. Jeffrey (1998) does insist on the issue of recidivism rates for previous prisoners. He indicates that the fact that the American society is not changing the nature of their prisons and the outside community is now characterized by weaker inner-city institutions that should propagate for social control.
The two have not differed in the understanding of the crime problem. Both agree that the race perspective taken to handling the crime challenge would only cause many blacks to be thrown into prison. Additionally, the communities back home continue to live in deplorable conditions with declining economic conditions, relationship strains between families, and a voter disenfranchisement that makes their political economy weaker (Reiman, 1998). The prisoner coming out finds it difficult even to get a legitimate employment opportunity that they choose to do the crime. There are no proper community institutions to stand with these individuals, and this stigma makes them go back to doing the thing of the past. Therefore, when considering the crime challenge, the two authors assert that the solutions lie in understanding the current policies in place. It is an analysis of knowing that the incarceration policies were just efforts to put certain people away from the community. No development is done in their regard to making their lives better. They are better off remaining confined in those systems. These imprisoned individuals grow up believing that the lack of resources to improve their lives pushes them to do further crime.
Some of the specific things that the two authors point out as the sources of crime include poverty, drugs, high unemployment rates, the punitive prison system, and the lack of proper community institutions to stand with these individuals (Loury, (2007); Reiman, (1998)). Each of them plays a significant role in pushing individuals into further crime. The right measures to handle crime will not contain a racial perspective, but the view of improving welfare conditions for every individual in the community.

References
Loury, G. C. (2007, May 28). Why are so many Americans in prison? Retrieved from https://bostonreview.net/loury-why-are-so-many-americans-in-prison
Reiman, J. (1998). Crime Control In America. The Rich Get Richer, And the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice. Pearson Education