The basis of our justice system has learned to treat criminals with punishing sentences to jail. The problem is, our jails are beyond their intended capacity. This has forced our way of justice to shift from jail sentencing to more help type programs. This has paved the road for Anti-crime legislation and other help programs. These programs were created for people with a wide variety of problems. However, I am going to concentrate on sex crimes and violent crimes programs and laws. A sex crime program that attacks the core of child pornography is the programs ACPO (Anti-Child Pornography Organization).
This program was set up to rid the Internet of loose links. By loose links, meaning the links that transfer an online user to a site that they are not looking for. For example, if you typed in car, and were sent to a pornographic site, that would classify as a loose link. The people who shut these sites down are called net nannies. They surf the web looking for sites where average words will send the link to a pornographic site. This is especially aimed at the types of words persons younger than 18 would look for. This program has been extremely effective because it attacks the source of the problem.
Once the net nannies find a site that violates this conduct they contact the site provider, and shut it down. This penalty may be harsh, but the web providers know the rules, and if they violate those rules they should be shut down. A law dealing with the prevention of child pornography that was created in 1994, was the Cyber Law. This law protected the rights of the net nannies to shut down private sites that people could gain access to. This law strengthened the ACPO, because it gave them more power to deal with the legal ramifications of shutting down private web sites.
However, it gave the porn sites slightly more leeway, because instead of only finding one word to shut a site down, the ACPO would have to find 3 words. Meaning if the site had 2 words that a child might use, they could not shut the site down until they had 3 words. A crime that is more prominent in the US, and often more heard about is rape. Rape accounts for 60% of the sex crimes in the US. However, startling facts show that only 55% of these rapes were reported to police officials, and only 17% were by strangers. This means, that 83% of the rapists were of people the victims knew.
Various rape prevention sites concluded that you are 4 times more susceptible to get raped by a person you know then a stranger. The second aspect of anti crime programs that I am going to discuss is how do deal with violent crime. There are many programs that have grown in the past 10 years to reform past violent offenders. The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) is an anti racism organization. This program is to assist people by educating them about racial conflicts. A law that has been administered to stop children from bringing guns into school is the Cease-Fire Movement.
This movement remarkably was organized and issued to congress by children. This law was passed by a unanimous congressional vote in 1992. This law has been significant, because instead of making a direct arrest for the child who choose to bring guns into school; instead, they serve many hours of community service, and go to counseling. I have a hard time accepting the fact that the punishment is so little for such a monumental event. If a firearm is brought into a school the holder should with out a question be in custody.
The last and possibly the most effective program that was created is All Stars. All Stars is a mentoring based program. Like the ACPO for child pornography it attacks the problem at the source. It is designed to keep kids off the street and becoming gang members. This program is prominent is inner city settings, where the most at risk children live. This program is structured for children 11-14 years old. It tried to prevent the mishaps that children these ages might be coming involved in. Also, it does take 1st time offenders into the program to reform the kids.
The program deals with children that have experienced substance abuse, violent behavior, and pre mature sex. This program has been very effective so far and in turn receives a lot of money for the government. The overall effectiveness of these programs is moderate in terms of turning offenders of violent and sex crimes straight. The web sites that offer up the information are also questionable in that some of their statistics sound far fetched. A majority of them talk about what the violent crime is and how much instead of what they are doing to prevent and stop it. The same goes for the sex crime web sites.
