There are many types of criminal acts commited in law enforcement but their are three that stand out the most. The three are homicide, violent crimes, and property crimes. Homicide is the worse of all crimes because it is the taking of a human life. Homicide has existed in all cultures since the start of civilization and even prior. The next is violent crimes which entail a series of criminal activities which one will discuss in the next sections. And the final one is property crimes. Property crimes affect everyone because of the impact they can have financially, psychogically, and emotionally. All three of these crimes can involve the other two or the other way around. What makes these crimes important to dicuss is because of the significance they have to society and law enforcement. Homicide cariers the harshest pentaly which is the death pentaly which varies in each State on how they deal with the conviction and punishment of the crime. In the United States the murder rate has flucuated up and down throughout the last decade.
Leading to many homicides is the violent crimes that occur beforehand in the United States and world. Many times a person will not intend to commit a murder but end up doing such while commiting another crime in the act. For example, a robbery maybe designed for financial purposes but during the commission of the crime someone maybe shot and killed. But not all violent crimes lead to murder some cause injuries or traumatic events which will affect the person the rest of their lives such as an sexual assault or aggreviated assault. Violent crimes in this country have been down over this decade statistically overall. The way law enforcment deals with violent crime with incarceration for a longer period of time then most other crimes. Property crimes occur in this country daily and affect each person. Most property crimes affect people financially but they can also lead to the person being killed or involved in an act of a violent crime. Property crimes range from home invasions to people stealing their identities from a computer and then using it to buy false credit and running it up on goods. All variations of this crime. Property crime also includes larcerny, theft, motor vehicle damage, and bulgarly. Property crimes are a large category of crimes that occur in so many different ways in different states across the United States.
All three of these crimes i wish to discuss in length and variety about how they affect our society and how they are dealt with in our nation. I will examine each crime individually and summarize them with statistics and analytically review each of these three crimes. In the end I hope to give the readers some insight into the world that law enforcement deals with everyday. I want to start with the worse of all crimes which is considered homicide and discuss how America deals with it and the act itself.
Comprehension of Homicide Today
Comprehening the idea of homicide existing in today’s world one truly must understand the history of murder. Murder, which can be defined throughout time as the the act in which someone or many end the existence of human beings life. In the earliest text murder was considered an act that was wrong and immoral. To comprhend homicide again one must understand murder which dates back to the earliest civilization between Summeria and Babylonian not to mention to the Oriental culture. In one case,” that dates back 430,000 years.
Deep in a cave in northern Spain, archaeologists have uncovered fragments of a skull with protruding eyebrow ridges and a smaller brain area than you would find in a modern-day human. Researchers say it belongs to an early human relative that predates even the Neanderthals. It took scientists years to reconstruct the ancient cranium from 52 bits of bone, each about the size of a quarter. But when they finally did, they noticed something strange: The skull had two holes just left of the center of the forehead.The pattern of fractures revealed that the bone broke while still enmeshed in living tissue. It was also clear the victim, probably a male in his early 20s, could not have survived long after the blows were inflicted. The two wounds were almost identical, and could not have been caused by a fall, an attack by a predator or an accidental collision with a tree or rock, the archaeologists said. And so they came to a dark conclusion: This ancient skull is evidence of the earliest known murder among our ancestors.One implication of the study is that murder is a very ancient human behavior.
- Rolf Quam, paleoanthropologist at Binghamton UniversityThe findings, published this week in ythe journal PLOS One, suggest that interpersonal violence may be baked into the human experience. ‘One implication of the study is that murder is a very ancient human behavior,’said Rolf Quam, a paleoanthropologist at Binghamton University in New York who worked on the study. The pieces of bone that make up what the team calls ‘Cranium 17’ were unearthed over the course of several years at an underground cave known as Sima de los Huesos, or the “Pit of Bones.’Using forensic techniques similar to those on ‘CSI,’ they determined that the victim was alive when the attack occurred because the fractures on the forehead were characterized by oblique angles and smooth surfaces. Fractures that occur after death have right angles and jagged surfaces because the bone has started to dry out. Manot Cave skull suggests link between Neanderthals and modern human. Manot Cave skull suggests link between Neanderthals and modern human. Based on the impact trajectories, the researchers believe the victim was facing his assailant when the violence occurred. “We don’t know whether it is face-to-face combat or an ambush,” said Quam. “What we can definitely say is it is intentional.”
The authors are not sure what type of weapon was used, but a wooden spear or stone hand-ax are likely candidates, the researchers said. Metal tools had not yet been invented.
“We are pretty sure that these two fractures are the result of two repeated blows with the same implement,’ Quam said. ‘And that implies a clear intent to kill. ‘ There is evidence of cannibalism among early humans dating back 900,000 years, but evidence of murder has been harder to find throughout the midde-east because of the waring.”(D.Neturn,2016)Homicide is more common in the United States then many Americans realize, it is committed more in the United States then any place in the world. Homicide is also one of earliest defined crimes in the world and a crime that can be excepted when it involves warfare or protecting one's self from an attacker who you believe is threatening your life. Homicide is not just a crime that is morally debated but it is also considered the most serious through a seocietal view through religion and through our Consitution which is based on religious values.
Violent Crime And Statistics
Accoring to the U.S. homicide rate declined by nearly half (49%), from 9.3 homicides per
100,000 U.S. residents in 1992 to 4.7 in 2011, falling to the lowest level since 1963. From
2003 the average homicide rate for males was 3.6 times higher than the rate for females.
“The average homicide rate for blacks was 6.3 times higher than the rate for whites.
From 2002 to 2011, young adults ages 18 to 24 had the highest homicide rate of any age
group and experienced the greatest rate decline (down 22%) over the 10-year period, from
15.2 per 100,000 in 2002 to 11.9 in 2011.
The rate of homicides involving a firearm decreased by 49% from 1992 to 2011, while the
percentage of homicide victims killed by a firearm (67%) remained stable.
Large cities of 100,000 or more residents experienced the largest decline (23%) in homicide
rates from 2002 to 2011, compared to communities with less than 100,000 residents.
From 2002 to 2011, the majority (95%) of homicide incidents involved a single victim. In 2011, 66% of homicides with a single victim involved a firearm, compared to 79% of homicide incidents with multiple victims.”(US Bureau of Statistics,2016) Homicide continues to be a huge problem within the United States and there has been a small advancement in what law enforcement can do to prevent this crime but they are using sciene to one day perhaps prevent this crime. So how is science doing such? Well they have identified through genetics that almost every person who committed murder carriers a certain Chromosone as a identifying marker. This does not mean that everyone who carriers this Chromonsone will commit a murder but so far everyone who has, does these have these identifying markers and they believe that by eliminating or perhaps monitoring people with this Chromosone known as the,”Aggressive Gene” could allow law enforcement to prevent such.
So has homicide descreased or increased over the last few decades? Well, according to the statistics I receive above from the Federal Bureau of Statics involving homicide rates it appears that all races in all varieties of cities and suburbs have seen a sharp decline in the homicide rates across the nation. Now, this could be due to new policies involving the purchasing of guns and also public media reports on the subect itself. Also, along with programs designed to prevent gun violence there has been a strong effort to curve the youth from being involved in gang activity acorss America. A theory I personally have as well is that I believe that since Sepetmber 11, 2001 after the trade tower attacks by Osama Bin laden the creation of Homeland Security and the Patroit act did two things which had an affect of homicide in our nation. The first part is that the security level in purchasing weapons is more monitored and shared amongst law enforcment so much more easily which allows information to be able to be viewed state to state in minutes. Second, the tightening of the borders has allowed the United States to keep out drugs which fuel gang activity and lead to homicide rates increasing. On another note the Patriot act, or what it is known as today in Congress is the Sunshine Extension of the Patriot Act it allows law enforcement to be able to conduct more wire taps and therefore listen to events that would lead to group homicides by gangs.
Property Crimes
What is the most common trend or method used when commiting a homicide? Well, at first
glance one would believe the answer would be as easy as looking up what is the method
most used but after reviewing graphs there are alot of issues in determining such. First,
women for example kill less then men in a method that is statsically much different overall.
Women the majority of time commit murder either for self protection or due to the
involvment of drugs and alcohol and according to the national data bank on how women
commit this crime is usually throw a gun. While on the other hand men are more likely to
commit homicide and using the method of stabbing. But again this is based on the
geographic area and overall changes. Race is vital in understanding not just the method but
why the act alone is committed. After reviewing a report conducted by a professor of law, a
quote that best explained this is,”African-Americans are six times as likely as white
Americans to die at the hands of a murderer, and roughly seven times as likely to murder
someone. Young black men are Ofteen timesas likely to be murdered as young white men.
This disparity is historic and pervasive, and cannot be accounted for by individual
characteristics. Culture-of-violence and tail-of-the-distribution
theories are also inadequate to explain the geographic and demographic pattern of the
disparity. We argue that any satisfactory explanation must take into account the fact that
murder can have a preemptive motive: people sometimes kill simply to avoid being killed.
As result, disputes can escalate dramatically in environments (endogenously) perceived to
be dangerous, resulting in self-fufiling expectations of violence for particular dyadic
interactions, and significant racial disparities in rates of murder and victimization. Because
of strategic complementarity, small diferences in fundamentals can cause large diferences in
murder rates. Differences in the manner in which the criminal justice system treats murders
with victims from different groups, and differences across groups in involvement in street
vice, may be sufficient to explain the size and pattern of the racial disparity.” (Flarrety,B.2015)
The overview of homicide is a complex subject both in the and moral undestanding of this
crime. What is one to do when society dictates that it is ok to act upon a homicide if it is for
Capital Punishment or for warfare but at the sametime it is not when it violates the law.
Also, homicide is a ever changing crime and one who studies the statisics of homicides and
the acts of how it is committed are ever changing. In some regions of the nation stabbing
for example is the number one cause but overall we learn the gun violence is the top cause
of homicide. Besides race, color,creed, faith,sex, and beliefs homicide is a crime that is
something that at times has no logical reason why the person did such an act as and other
times it is clear cut.
Overall, money many times today seems to be the reason that people commit murder by accident or deliberate. Armed robberies many times lead to homicides or a homicide being commited due to the intensity of the robbery. Other crimes such as theft, bulgarly, and even arguments lead to homicides being commited. Drug deals gone wrong or drug addicts who are deperate for money or drugs usually commit homicide.
Conclusions
In conculsion guns today in America need a more stringent waiting period and backround testing and even at gun shows where anyone can purchase a hun as a collector’s only item need stricter regulations. Al Gore, our former Vice President of the United States, suggested a new technology that would be added to new guns that would prevent anyone that did not have the fingerpirnt that macthed the owner. One truly should reexamine this idea again eventhough so many believe that it violates our rights because we may need weapon to defend ourself against the Government. But the truth of the matter is the citizens really cannot do anything and eventhough our Constitution within the fifth amendement states that if our Government is corrupt then we may use our guns to revolt which any person would realize is abolsutely the most ridiclous idea, guns would abolsutely do nothing if the Governement decided to seize the people. The United States Government has precision missile-guided weapons and bombs that could could heat up the hous eand kill i the people inside, not to mention drones. So, the truth of the matter is “to be or not to be” in todays’ world where guns that civilians have would amost not damage nro have any affect so the excuse that we need it for the protection of the Government is simply unfounded.
All three of these crimes are as I mentioned in the beginning, are crimes law enforcement deals with daily. All criminal activities and behavior is treated just as equally as these crimes but in my opinion these crimes are the worse of criminal activity. Whatever steps are taken to deal with these crimes to lessen them throughout our nation will tremendously affect the majority of other crimes committed since these are usually the root cause of criminal activity most of the time besides homicide which is the result of. With all the technology we have today hopefully this can be applied to all of these three crimes.
References:
FBI.GOV
(Flarety,B.2015) Flarety,B,(2015) Race and Homicide
(Jefferson,C. 1998) Jefferson, C. (1998) “Homicide in America
(D.Netburn,2016) D.Netburn (2016) “Earliest Murder.”
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