Crime & Public Safety in America
... not intended to guarantee a right to personal weapons. I think that tough prison sentences are a very good idea. The majority of prisoners are second or more time offenders and by letting them come in and out of prison is clearly not reducing the number of crimes. The more officials let them out of prison, the higher the risk of them committing crimes again. So why not just keep them in prison and sentence them with tough prison sentences, like life in prison. Also I think the harsh prison laws are very good for those criminals who are extremely violent. But with all laws and charges, there never be discrimination allowed. For example, just because an African American or Latin person is tried for a first time offense, should not get a really bad prison sentence if the crime they committed was petty. There is a lot of discrimination when it comes to the sentencing of minorities than there is to Caucasian people, and that’s the one thing I do not agree with. In the mid-Nineteenth century, the death penalty was just beginning. More states were moving the death penalty out of the public eye and were building state penitentiaries to execute their criminals. Then came the electric chair. It was first introduced in 1888 by the state of New York. During the twentieth century was when the death penalty suddenly increased. More forms of execution were introduced. For example, in 1924, Nevada wanted a more civilized way of executing its criminals by the use of cyanide gas, subsequently building the gas chamber. The 1930s holds the record for the most executions in a decade in the history of American. As the years went on, the number of criminal executions dropped. In the 1940s, there were about 1,289 executions, then 715 in the 1950s, then between the years of 1960 to 1976, the number of executions dramatically dropped to about 191. During a number of 10 years - from 1967 to 1977- the U.S. Supreme Court brought a short-term stop to all executions while they struggled with de...