Governing Through Crime- Study And Thought Question

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1. On page 4, Simon discusses the three specific and important corollaries to the title claim of governing through crime. What are they?

For starters, crime has recently become a significant strategic problem. Across all types of institutional setting, people are viewed as operating legitimately when they aim at preventing crime as well as other disturbing behavior that can be defined as a crime. Secondly, people can deploy the category of crime to rightful intervention that contains no motivation state. Lastly, the technologies discourse, representing criminal justice, have become visible in all type of institution as they gravitate them to become new opportunities for the government.

2. How does Simon distinguish “governing through crime” from “governing Crime”?

According to Simon, the phrase “governing through crime” and “governing crime” differ entirely in the way they are implemented. Governing crime focuses more ion the legal attempts the government bodies are initiating to help mitigate and respond to real danger and attacks while trying to reduce the crime rate. Governing through crime, on the other hand, entails the attempt to legitimize the application of government authority by using crime as a strategic option.

3. What is the consequence of governing through crime”?

The war on crime has slowly turned and changed the three branches of government i.e. the executive, legislative and judiciary and has resulted in mass imprisonment. This has been because American Prosecutors have been turned into a vessel for political authority making them gain extensive jurisdiction over the society and thus feel they can do as they please. Additionally, governing through crime has resulted in legislation having minimal discretion of judges making it difficult to hear cases as they fear to challenge the superior political will.

4. On page 10, Simon states his project is describing the ways that governing through crime has distorted American institutional priorities across a wide variety of domains”. What does he hope to accomplish by doing this?

According to Simon, a majority of his ideas, when it comes to the war on crime, focus on bettering the United States governments. Instead of asking politicians as well as policymakers how and what the government is going to fight the war on terror, Simon aims at letting the society focus on asking if indeed there exist a governmental problem to which a solution is offered by crime. With his arguments, Simon hopes people and society at large will stop thinking profoundly on the problems of how to punish crime, we should think about the real cost of investing a lot in crime. By doing this, Simon believes new movements that focus on restoring crime as a social problem will be awakened.

5. According to Simon, when did the current phase of governing through crime start?

According to Simon, the phase of governing through crime phase began after the September 11 attack. This attack found America and to prevent this from happening, lawmakers ran to the table and formulate the Patriot Act with an aim of hardening technological security and being vigilant to terrorists. From this day onward, the American government has continuously been governing through crime hoping to never again be found off guard.

6. In Chapter 1. Simon claims that the war on crime has deformed American priorities. What is the different about the way we have governed crime since the 1960s?

Comparing the current groveling with crime phase and the 60s phase, one thing that is different is the fact there exist no civil right fights. The introduction of 3 strike laws, as well as mass incarceration, has brought about these changes. Currently the number of mass incarnation especially the people of color has continued to increase tremendously. Moreover, President Trump is even seen caging immigrant families and aims at building a border wall costing nearly eight billion.

7. Throughout the book, Simon provides examples of governing through crime. Name at least two

Due to juvenile crimes, measures have been adopted in schools that largely result in students being treated as victims and criminal. The education system is continuing to tumble down as learning facilities focus more on crime rate rather than academic failure. Additionally, criminal accusations today have gradually replaced the traditional standard of marital dissolution law and as a result, the family ends up being treated as a focus of suspicions (pg 9). Parents have also become an extension of law enforcement.

8. As part of the war on terror, Americans have developed a new social and political order that focuses on the issue of violent crime. In this new policy, values such as equality as well as freedom have further been revised to appoint that is now shocking. New forms of power have been institutionalized all in the name of fighting violent crime. These fresh civil and political policies can be defined in a modern ear as a type of “governing through crime.”This is because they have been formulated as a result of fear and crime has been made the core focus when developing the laws and as a result, the number of mass incarceration continues to baffle.