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9.4: Crime and Punishment

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    Chapter 9 Part 3. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

    Where people violate the rules and norms of society and how they are punished is a matter of significant interest to geographers. Spatial perspectives and a variety of tools used by geographers are successfully applied to the study of crime, advancing both public safety and our understanding of the myriad effects of the criminal justice system.

    The criminal justice system in the United States is massive. Since the 1980s, “get tough on crime” programs have caused prison and jail populations to explode. In 2017, more than two million people were locked up in the United States. This is easily the highest number in the world. At around one percent of all Americans, our incarceration rate is also one of the world’s highest. An additional 5 million people are on parole. America’s criminal justice system is also heavily burdened by a history of racism. Criminal activity, and how we deal with it, presents a massive challenge that we seem unable to address.

    Crime is a huge industry. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, around three million Americans work in police and sheriff’s departments, the penal system, as security guards, in parking enforcement and other related protective service occupations. An additional one million work in legal occupations (judges, lawyers, clerks, etc.). About 100,000 people are probation officers. Nearly 20,000 teach others about the criminal justice system.

    Geography offers some answers that other disciplines do not when it comes to crime. The spatial patterns of crime, victimization, laws, and punishment/rehabilitation strategies vary wildly across the United States. Analyzing these patterns from a spatial perspective offers forceful insight into why crime is such a problem. Criminal justice issues simultaneously provide a rich environment in which to apply epistemological and methodological approaches favored by geographers. This chapter, therefore, is shorter and focuses on applied geography in a specific subfield of geography.

    Louisiana State Penitentiary.png

    Figure Angola, LA- The infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary,located in a swampy bend of the Mississippi River has a notorious past and a poor record of rehabilitation.


    9.4: Crime and Punishment is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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