Many of the busts in the ghetto are drug-related, and Hilfiker notes that our society punishes petty drug offences far more severely than crimes committed by people who are wealthy. Meantime, the mandatory minimum sentence takes away the possibility of any plea bargaining; it takes away the judge's previous alternative of giving probation for a petty crime and hands the power to the prosecutor, who runs for office on a "law and order" theme.
"Deserving" poor vs. "Undeserving" poor:
It has been customary in America for society to attempt to separate the "undeserving" poor from the "deserving" poor. The deserving poor are those who have supposedly found themselves down on their luck through no fault of their own; while the undeserving are reportedly "lazy" and likely on some government assistance program (Hilfiker, pp. 69-71)....
Hilfiker is particularly sensitive to the source of poverty in African-American inner-city ghettoes. His recommendation for ending poverty, was one new program: universal health coverage, to which he argued convincingly, would save all of us as a nation on current health costs and yet could include the 43 million presently uninsured (Seven Stories Press). He also suggested three other existing programs: 1) the earned income tax credit, shown by the economists as
Children There Written by Alex Kotlowitz, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, the book There Are No Children There follows two boys' activities around the Henry Horner Homes, a low-income public housing project in Chicago, Illinois. The book covers the time period from the summer of 1987 through September, 1989, and follows the protagonists, Lafeyette Rivers (nearly 12 years old) and Pharoah Rivers (nine years old). This is not
Street Gangs and Loitering Laws Los Angeles politicians have recently come together behind a proposed city ordinance that would allow police to arrest loitering street gang members. Mayor James K. Hahn, voiced his support for this new weapon in the battle against gang violence and drug trafficking. "Law abiding citizens shouldn't be afraid to go get a carton of milk at night," he said. "This ordinance will put gang members on
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