American Me
The intergenerational and racial components to familiar crime, as viewed through the American criminal justice system or Not a Wiseguy -- the text of Henry Hill, "American Me" and Clear and Cole's Chapter 19 on "Race and Punishment"
It is often alleged that the criminal justice system has unjustly persecuted individuals whom are members of minority groups, based solely upon their minority status. Advocates of this point-of-view, according to Chapter 19 of T.R. Clear and Cole's textbook American Corrections, cite jury's disproportionate tendency to convict minorities, as well as to impose more lengthy and weighty sentences upon defendants who are minorities. This presumption often suggests that the defendant in question must be innocent, or is only a cog in the wheel of a much larger crime machine. But what transpires when indeed a defendant is guilty and is indeed a member of a gang or crime family? Does race and systemic racial biases still come into play in such instances?
One way to examine, if not answer this question is to compare the text of such books as Wiseguy, which chronicles the American mafia from an insider's point-of-view, with the insider's view of an American crime family located in a Hispanic community.
The comparison of Wiseguy, the written text, and "American Me" the film cannot answer such broad sociological questions in a definitive manner, of course. However, the comparison does suggest that even when the American system of criminal justice attempts to punish members of organized crime families, the justice system is more willing to collaborate with the 'businessmen' of crime...
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