To encourage healthier eating Essay Example for Free

To encourage healthier eating Essay To encourage healthier eating, higher the taxes on junk food Although some people might say it’s unnecessary to have higher taxes on junk food, I strongly believe that it’s going to affect the processing of a human body because the amount of fat is going to be lower. First of all, people will spend less money on junk food and it will lead to people saving money, which they can later use to buy something useful. High prices will get people to think about their money. It could even teach young individuals to save money already from an earlier stage of their lives, which is helpful in many ways. Money is an issue for many middle class people and it wouldn’t be reasonable for them to spend much money on junk food when they don’t have plenty of money. Once the prices are higher, people might think twice before paying that much money on something that is not going to help them with anything. Secondly, it would mean a great deal of improvement in a human body. Obesity is a big issue nowadays which even causes death for many people. If the prices were higher, people would buy less junk food which would mean that there will be less people suffering with heart diseases. Many fat people sometimes feel that they would love to be in shape so that they don’t have to be embarrassed in front of people. Consuming less junk food would be the first step and it would get people to maybe go to the gym and get in shape. So higher prices wouldn’t just reduce heart diseases and such but also encourage people to get in shape. Some may say that it’s not going to have any affect and people will still buy junk food because they like to eat it. Those people should be replied with the fact that everything needs a chance to prove. Instead of having negative comments about it before it has even happened, they should think of what it could do if it really worked. Many lives would be saved and obviously money would be saved.

Broken Windows Theory Analysis

Broken Windows Theory Analysis Assessing the theory of Broken Windows Wicked people exist. Nothing avails except to set them apart from innocent peopleWe have trifled with the wicked, made sport of the innocent, and encouraged the calculators. Justice suffers, and so do we all James Wilson The basic idea for the Broken Windows theory is that any kind of urban blight – a broken window, graffitied walls, rubbish on the streets, etc. – does no harm to a neighbourhood if it is immediately remedied. However, if left untended, it signifies a lack of care in the community, the kind of environment in which it is acceptable for residents to relinquish any notions of concern. And while the initial damage and disrepair is physical, the next stage is psychological. That is, if it becomes acceptable for people to litter and vandalise at will, why not walk around drunk, or beg for money, or mug others for it? Why not even kill for it? Why follow any kind of rules at all? In sum, the Broken Windows theory postulates that the smallest symptoms can lead to the greatest crimes. This paper will examine the effectiveness of this idea. The Broken Windows theory first became widely known in 1982, when James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling published an article in the Atlantic Monthly called Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety. The article articulated the reasons why minor neighbourhood slights should not be ignored: A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers (Wilson and Kelling, 1982). On the surface, this idea, that small acts of antisocial behaviour can act as catalysts for others, and that a broken window sends a signal to criminals that it okay to break the law, seems perfectly reasonable and logical. The notion that once people begin disregarding the norms that keep order in a community, both order and community unravel, even follows the concept of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics (systems naturally progress from a state of order to disorder). And almost from its inception, the idea took hold. While the Wilson/Kelling article did the most to publicise the theory, there were some precedents, namely Philip Zimbardos 1969 experiment, in which he left two identical 1959 Oldsmobiles in different neighbourhoods, one near the Bronx campus of New York University and one near the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, California. The license plates of both cars were removed and the hoods opened to provide the necessary releaser signals (Zimbardo, 1969). In the Bronx, within ten minutes, the car was vandalised, and by the end of the day was stripped bare. In Palo Alto, the car remained untouched for a week, until Zimbardo himself broke one of its windows with a sledgehammer, at which point others joined in. Within a few hours, the car was completely destroyed. (Gladwell, 1996). Zimbardos focus was on the psychological aspects of authority and anonymity, and his experiment aimed to understand what factors and to what extent human behaviour was governed by environmental and physiological stimuli, a process known as deindividuation: a series of antecedent social conditions lead to a change in perception of self and others, and thereby to a lowered threshold of normally restrained behavior (Zimbardo, 1969). Wilson and Kellings article, however, was more prescriptive, and was focused on applying the Broken Windows theory to law enforcement procedures. And it is in this way that politicians and police have regarded the theory over the past twenty-five years, paving the way for a slate of reforms aimed at promoting deterrence through arrests, imprisonment and harsh sentencing, with a heavy reliance on the criminal justice system to impart severe and swift penalties (Conklin, 1992). Within the article, the authors discuss the historical function of police work, which they describe as maintaining public order: From the earliest days of the nation, the police function was seen primarily as that of a night watchman: to maintain order against the chief threats to order – fire, wild animals, and disreputable behavior. Solving crimes was viewed not as a police responsibility but as a private one (Wilson and Kelling, 1982). However, this eventually changed, and detective work (solving crimes) took on a greater role, a shift that the authors feel should be reversed: A great deal was accomplished during this transition, as both police chiefs and outside experts emphasized the crime-fighting function in their plans, in the allocation of resources, and in deployment of personnel. The police may well have become better crime-fighters as a result. And doubtless they remained aware of their responsibility for order. But the link between order-maintenance and crime-prevention, so obvious to earlier generations, was forgotten (ibid). Another criticism felled by Wilson and Kelling was the lack of community policing, or the beat officer on foot, patrolling the neighbourhood. Instead, there had been a steady shift towards keeping the officers in their squad cards, in which case they were isolated, removed from the people of the neighbourhood and the life on the street, whereas what foot-patrol officers did was to elevate, to the extent that they could, the level of public order in these neighborhoods (ibid). In short, the officer on foot was not only more accessible, and thus a part of the community; he was better able to understand it and serve it. The majority of the theory, however, has to do with a new focus on smaller crimes – beggars, drunks, teenagers, litter, etc. – rather than big ones. These so-called gateway crimes are where the real offenses take root; eliminate these, and the major crimes will be stopped before they have a chance to foster and spread: The citizen who fears the ill-smelling drunk, the rowdy teenager, or the importuning beggar is not merely expressing his distaste for unseemly behavior; he is also giving voice to a bit of folk wisdom that happens to be a correct generalization – namely that serious street crime flourishes in areas in which disorderly behavior goes unchecked. The unchecked panhandler is, in effect, the first broken window (ibid). But does the theory work? As of yet, there has been no scientific evidence proving it does. Even Wilson himself a few years ago admitted: People have not understood that this was a speculation (Hurley, 2004). It should be noted that on the very first page of the Atlantic Monthly article, where the authors were giving a history of community policing in Newark, NJ, they mentioned a study by the Police Foundation that discovered that while foot patrol had not reduced crime rates, residents seemed to feel more secure than persons in other areas (Wilson and Kelling, 1982). On the surface, this seems pretty straightforward – because foot patrols did not lead to a drop in crime rates, they didnt do anything to make neighbourhoods safer. However, Wilson and Kelling use the residents testimony to argue that, in fact, the community is safer, because disorder itself is something to be feared: We understand what most often frightens people in public places. Many citizens, of course, are primarily frightened by crime, especially crime involving a sudden, violent attack by a stranger. This risk is very real, in Newark as in many large cities. But we tend to overlook another source of fearthe fear of being bothered by disorderly people (ibid). This is all very well and good, that people appreciate not having to deal with aggressive and disorderly people. But how then is safety being measured, if not by crime rates? The authors certainly arent implying that it can be measured by residents feelings of safety? Regardless, the rest of the article makes no mention of this issue, and concentrates primarily on perceived dangers (how to curb a communitys fears of being bothered by disorderly persons), rather than actual ones (curbing crime rates themselves). The theory had its first test in the early 90s, when the Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, implemented his own version of it to target the citys high crime rate. This didnt happen simply by chance; George Kelling was a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute, and was one of Giulianis advisors (DePalma, 2002). The term that was used to describe the new initiative was the no tolerance policy. This phrase, along with another that soon followed (quality of life), acted as the cornerstones for Giulianis mayorship. He aimed to aggressively target even minor infractions (no tolerance) in order to clean up the city and make New York a safe place to live (improved quality of life). Police were given powers that they never before had, and were encouraged to hand out tickets and arrests for anything and everything. For the cops, Chief of Police William Bratton commented, they were a bonanza. Every arrest was like opening a box of Cracker Jacks. What kind of toy am I going to get? Got a gun? Got a knife? Got a warrant? Do we have a murderer here? Each cop wanted to be the one who came up with the big collar. It was exhilarating for the cops and demoralizing for the crooks (Bratton, 1998). In addition to the usual list of offenders – drunks, panhandlers, juvenile delinquents – were added jaywalkers and squeegee men, those homeless men and women who aggressively and without asking would clean a cars windshield while the driver was stuck in traffic, and then demand payment. The effect of the new procedures was instant and irrevocable: crime dropped to its lowest figures in four decades, and stayed there. At the present moment, New York City is the safest big city in America. However, whether this decline can solely or even partially be attributed to Broken Windows is up for debate. At the same time the police were implementing harsh no tolerance crackdowns, the crack cocaine market bottomed out, which resulted in less drug deals, fewer addicts on the street and a reduction in violent turf wars, all of which at one time were responsible for numerous muggings and murders (Harcourt, 2002). In addition, over the same time period, there were dramatic improvement s in emergency response capabilities and medical care, which ended up saving the lives of countless people who previously would have died (Lizza, 2002). There were also important changes at the New York Police department during this time that could have explained the drop in crime, including a significant increase in the number of police officers. In 1992, Giulianis predecessor, David Dinkins, hired over two thousand new officers under the Safe Streets, Safe City project, and Giuliani himself hired another four thousand, and merged another six thousand Transit and Housing Authority officers into the ranks of the New York Police Department (Harcourt, 2002). Because of this, the department increased from 26,856 in 1991 to 39,779 in 2000, giving New York the largest police force in the country, with the highest ratio of officers to civilians of any major city (U.S. Department of Justice, 1992). Another argument against the success of Broken Windows is that the 1990s were generally a boom time. The stock market, employment and wages were all at record highs throughout the United States, and crime rates are usually more prevalent when times are hard. For example, crime fell in many large cities – San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston, Boston and others – at exactly the same time, and in some cases in an even more dramatic fashion: One study found that New York Citys drop in homicides, though impressive, is neither unparalleled nor unprecedented. Houstons drop in homicides of 59 percent between 1991 and 1996 outpaced New York Citys 51 percent decline over the same period. Another study looked at the rates of decline in homicides in the seventeen largest U.S. cities from 1976 to 1998 and found that New York Citys recent decline, though above average, was the fifth largest, behind San Diego, Washington, D.C., St. Louis, and Houston (Joanes, 1999). And many of these cities did not implement the kind of order-maintenance procedures that New York did. For example, the San Diego police department instilled a model based on community-police relations. Their strategy was one of sharing the responsibility of identifying and solving crimes with neighbourhood residents. Because of this, San Diego not saw a marked decrease in crime, but experienced a 15 percent drop in arrests, and an 8 percent drop in complaints of police misconduct (Greene, 1999). In addition, San Francisco made community involvement a priority, and felony incarcerations dropped from 2,136 in 1993 to 703 in 1998, and rape, robbery, aggravated assault and total violent crime decreased more than the rate in New York over the same period (Khaled and Macallair, 2002). Other cities, including Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, also experienced significant decreases in crime without adopting as coherent a policing strategy as New York or San Diego. The fact is that there was a remarkable drop in crime in many major cities in the United States during the 1990s, many of which used a variety of different strategies. To attribute New Yorks declining crime rates to merely their implementation of more aggressive initiatives is overly simplistic. However, New Yorks success got the most publicity, and much of the country wanted to learn from Giuliani and to implement their own no tolerance policies. And its popularity in the U.S. was only matched by its appeal abroad. In 1998, representatives from over 150 police departments from around the world visited New York to learn about order-maintenance policing, and in 2000, another 235 police departments, the vast majority from overseas, followed suit (Gootman, 2000). However, even if the Broken Windows theory is correct, it has still never been fully explained as to how it works. It could be argued that those who choose to commit crimes, denied the signals they would normally receive from low-grade disorder, move on to different locales. But where do they go? And if such places existed, couldnt they implement their own Broken Windows initiatives? One possible answer comes from writer and social theorist Malcolm Gladwell, who suggests that crime actually does increase or decrease much like an epidemic, and at certain thresholds will turn, rather than rise and fall in a typical linear fashion (Gladwell, 1996). Wilson and Kelling for their part fail to talk much about the specifics by which public disorder turns into crime. They simply say it does, as do most of the theorys supporters. However, some seem to have taken the idea to illogical extremes, such as a Lancaster, Pennsylvania reporter commenting on the citys new quality of life initiatives: If you put a couch out in a backyard, somebody could get raped on that couch (Van Nguyan, 2001). Bernard Harcourt, who has written extensively on the issue, believes that the aggressive prosecution of disorderly behaviour has had little effect on crime rates dropping. His argument is that the increased number of arrests, searchers, surveillance, and police officers on the streets has had the fairly straightforward effect of bringing more small offenses to light, and that no provable connection has ever made between disorder and crime (Harcourt, 2002). His worry is that this sets a dangerous precedent, and that the unfounded power of the police will only lead to more drastic action against less drastic offenses, especially minorities: Incidents like the NYPDs alleged torture of a Haitian naturally reinforce minority citizens distrust of the police. This mistrust has been boosted of late by numerous television videotapes showing police officers beating up unresisting citizens. In most cases, the cops were white and those on the receiving end of their clubs were black or Latino (McNamara, 1997). However, this is exactly in line with what Wilson and Kelling argue for, this bygone era of policing: The police in this earlier period assisted in that reassertion of authority by acting, sometimes violently, on behalf of the community. Young toughs were roughed up, people were arrested on suspicion or for vagrancy, and prostitutes and petty thieves were routed. Rights were something enjoyed by decent folk, and perhaps also by the serious professional criminal, who avoided violence and could afford a lawyer (Wilson and Kelling, 1982). Kelling himself spent some time accompanying an officer (Kelly) on his beat, the experience of which again illustrates a strange tolerance for lawlessness on the part of the police: Sometimes what Kelly did could be described as enforcing the law, but just as often it involved taking informal or extralegal steps to help protect what the neighborhood had decided was the appropriate level of public order. Some of the things he did probably would not withstand a legal challenge (ibid). After all, what can extralegal possibly mean other than illegal? It seems odd that this is the sort of behaviour the authors advocate, one in which officers are allowed to take the law into their own hands, but anyone who commits even the smallest of trespasses – jaywalking, littering, urinating in public – needs to be several punished. It certainly doesnt put much faith in the fairness of the model. And, in fact, the Broken Windows model is far from fair. One of its constant critiques is that the kinds of offenses it targets are primarily those carried out by the poor. There is no mention of embezzlement, crooked accountants, insurance scams, loan sharks or slumlords, crimes typical of the wealthy. And these offenses, certainly, can have just as detrimental effect on a community as a host of unsightly behaviours, if not more so. The broken windows metaphor is interesting in that it is actually up to landlords to fix real-life broken windows, while it is often those who are not in a position to do so, the community, who are held responsible for the damage. Aside from more people being arrested and subsequently incarcerated, the theory doesnt actually do much to aid a neighbourhood. If the aim is improved public order, couldnt that be achieved with homeless shelters, urban renewal projects and social workers? (Harcourt, 2002). In many ways, the philosophy behind it is almost out of sight, out of mind. And, in fact, this seems to be the view expressed by Kelling and his wife Catherine Coles in Fixing Broken Windows, a book-length exploration of the policing strategies first advocated in 1982: Kelling and Coles take a tough-minded view of who the street denizens we frequently label the homeless really are and what they are doing, sidestepping the politically constructed images of claimants like the homeless that little resemble the aggressive, conniving, often drug-crazed schemers that Kelling and Coles see populating the streets (Skogan, 1997). Skogan, in fact, is so skeptical of the motives of the poor that he cannot even use the word homeless without quotation marks, as if they all have houses somewhere. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it leads to a dangerous two worlds model, where people are either decent and respectable or disingenuous and no good. And, naturally, all the problems in neighbourhoods arise from the actions of the latter. This kind of precedent was set down by Wilson as far back as 1968: The teenager hanging out on a street corner late at night, especially one dressed in an eccentric manner, a Negro wearing a conk rag (a piece of cloth tied around the head to hold flat hair being processed – that is, straightened), girls in short skirts and boys in long hair parked in a flashy car talking loudly to friends on the curb, or interracial couples – all of these are seen by many police officers as persons displaying unconventional and improper behavior (Wilson, 1968). If the police are allowed to restore public order according to their own beliefs and judgments, what is to stop them from carrying out whatever action they deem necessary against the unconventional and improper, including using extralegal measures? Unfortunately, cultural hegemony is nothing new, and many neighbourhoods have enforced rules that govern the actions and abodes of its residents. In every community there is a house that doesnt conform to the aesthetic principles of the rest, a lawn that is never tended or strewn with toys or trash, a derelict car that doesnt meet environmental standards, all of which raise resident ire. But should these things be dealt with under the Broken Windows theory? For example, the town of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, adopted Broken Windows measures in the late 90s, and in 2002, the local newspaper received this letter: This being almost mid-April, shouldnt homeowners have had sufficient time to remove their December holiday decorations? Icicle lights hung year round give the impression of a homeowner with an aversion to work and negatively impacts on neighborhoods (Kelly, 2002). While there are obvious differences between public drunks and icicle lights, in other cases the line is much finer, and the potential for abuse is obvious. Wilson and Kelling, for their part, are aware of the problem, and speak out against it: The concern about equity is more serious. We might agree that certain behavior makes one person more undesirable than another but how do we ensure that age or skin color or national origin or harmless mannerisms will not also become the basis for distinguishing the undesirable from the desirable? How do we ensure, in short, that the police do not become the agents of neighborhood bigotry? We can offer no wholly satisfactory answer to this important question. We are not confident that there is a satisfactory answer except to hope that by their selection, training, and supervision, the police will be inculcated with a clear sense of the outer limit of their discretionary authority. That limit, roughly, is this the police exist to help regulate behavior, not to maintain the racial or ethnic purity of a neighborhood (Wilson and Kelling, 1982). Unfortunately, their only solution is to again have the community put its faith in the integrity and judgment of the law enforcement officer, a notion that does little to quell the doubts of those who might be wrongly typecast as criminal because of their race, age or class. In such a subjective atmosphere, with so much at stake, it seems dubious to give one party the last word, or the ability to render judgment (especially if that party is the one with the gun). By taking the focus off the community, and putting it on the individual, a dangerous precedent is being set. However, not everyone agrees with this line of thinking. In fact, many people, including police officers, understand that the only way for Broken Windows or any other community enforcement project to succeed is by people working together: Without the full cooperation of the community, local government and the courts community policing will not work (police officer Daniel Jenkins, 2002). Unfortunately, the authors themselves dont focus too much on this notion of working together, and, if anything, since the Atlantic Monthly article, have gone even further to highlight the vast differences between people. For example, in 1985, Wilson co-authored with Richard Herrnstein a book called Crime and Human Nature, which describes the various traits by which to classify and identify criminals. The book deals not only with age, class and race but body types, painstakingly sorting and measuring these and other attributes into definable composites of law-abiders and law-breakers. The authors conclusions are fairly predictable, describing those prone to commit crimes as an: Unattached, young, most often racialized other. The youth or young adult, threatening, defiant, suspicious, often black, wearing distinctive designer-label clothes. Or the down-and-out street person in a dirty oversized coat. Or the squeegee man, the panhandler, the homeless person, the turnstile jumper, the public drunk (Harcourt, 2002). In stark opposition to this are the ideas of Felton Earls and his colleagues, who conducted a large-scale study of street crime in Chicago in 1997. The studys main focus was on collective efficacy, which was defined as social cohesion among neighbors and their willingness to intervene on behalf of the common good (Sampson, Raudenbush and Earls, 1997). The concept, according to the study, is the greatest predictor of street crime, and not Broken Windows or any form of disorder: Testing broken windows was not the point of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, the study planned and conducted by Dr. Earls and colleagues to unravel the social, familial, educational and personal threads that weave together into lives of crime and violenceNonetheless the data gathered for it, with a precision rarely seen in social science, directly contradicted Dr. Wilsons notions (Hurley, 2004). Thus, the seemingly obvious and incontestable connection between crime and disorder may, in fact, not exist at all. Community presence and action may actually be what ultimately fells crime. According to Earls: Its not so much that broken glass or disarray in neighborhoods is the source or root of crime, its really in the social relationships that exist among neighbors, among people who work in neighborhoods, among services and so forth, that the social conditions are there to engage or not to engage citizens, neighbors in watching out for crime or crime-related activity in the neighborhoods (Earls, 2004). And in another no less extensive study two years later, Sampson and Raudenbush found that  disorder and predatory crime were moderately related, but that, when antecedent characteristics were added (such as poverty and neighbourhood trust), the connection between the two vanished in four out of five tests – including homicide, arguably our best measure of violence (Sampson and Raudenbush, 1999). In addition, they discovered that while disorder may have indirect effects on crime by influencing migration patterns, investment by businesses, and overall neighborhood viabilityattacking public order through tough police tactics was politically popular but an analytically weak strategy to reduce crime (ibid). In short, the central tenets of Broken Windows – that disorder leads to crime, and that said crimes are generally carried out by individuals belonging to a criminal class – are questionable. This is not to say that the entire theory is at fault; certainly the notion that a safe neighbourhood is one in which the residents feel secure enough to participate in its defense still holds water. In addition, Wilson and Kelling are correct in urging the community to work with police, and for police to become a part of the community. What they seem to have missed is that the focus of this kind of relationship should rest on there being a real and active presence in the community, and not on crime and disorder. One related irony is that, in the use of Broken Windows policing in New York, for all their effectiveness in cracking down on a wide range of antisocial behaviors, the New York City police never repaired a single broken window, fixed up a single house, or cleaned one vacant lot (Grogan and Proscio, 2000). Furthermore, because of the new aggressive tactics, the city experienced illegal strip searches, extensive sums lost to police misconduct charges, clogged courts and countless traumatic encounters for innocent, ordinary individuals (Harcourt, 2002). In addition, the implementation of a policy of arrest may have had unintended consequences: Someone arrested for turnstile jumping may be fired for missing work; and strained police-civilian relations can create friction between the community and the police force that may be detrimental to solving crimes (ibid). However, this has not stopped cities across the world from emulating Broken Windows procedures, or, for that matter, Giuliani and the Manhattan Institute from exporting their policing philosophies to places like Latin America (despite reservations that what worked in an economic boom in the U.S. may not do as well in extremely poor cities undergoing violent crime and corrupt police) (Village Voice, 2002). The truth of the matter is that Broken Windows is not applicable everywhere, and even within the theory itself there are vagaries, namely the categories of disorder and the disorderly. The concepts are not well-defined; while we identify certain acts as disorderly – panhandling, public drunkenness, litter, prostitution – others – police brutality, tax evasion, accounting fraud – we do not. In addition, the acts themselves are sometimes ambiguous. For example, while people loitering on a buildings front steps or the presence graffiti may signify that a community is disorderly, it is only if they are seen as such. In some neighbourhoods, people loitering may represent strong community bonds, and graffiti may be seen as an art form, or as political or social commentary. The darker truth about Broken Windows is that it attempts to enforce an aesthetically sterile and safe environment, in which one community looks like the next looks like the next. While no one can argue that panhandlers, prostitutes and homeless people, along with litter, dirt and broken windows themselves are not eyesores, their removal is not necessarily a sign of progress. And for those subject to countless and unnecessary searches, acts of intimidation, arrests, imprisonments and the like, it is anything but. Bibliography Bratton, William J. Turnaround: How Americas Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic. New York: Random House, 1998. Conklin, John E. Criminology. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1992. DePalma, Anthony. The Americas Court: a Group That Changed New York. The New York Times, Nov. 11, 2002. Felton, Earls. National Public Radio, Weekend Edition. Jan. 17, 2004. Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point. The New Yorker, June 3, 1996. Gootman, Elissa. A Police Departments Growing Allure: Crime Fighters From Around World Visit for Tips. The New York Times, Oct. 24, 2000. Greene, Judith A. Zero-Tolerance: A Case Study of Police Policies and Practices in New York City. Crime and Delinquency 45, 1999. Grogan, Paul, and Proscio, Tony. Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival. Boulder: Westview Press, 2000. Harcourt, Bernard. Policing Disorder: Can We Reduce Serious Crime by Punishing Petty Offenses? Boston Review, April/May, 2002. Hurley, Dan. Scientist at Work – Felton Earls: On Crime as Science (A Neighbor at a Time). The New York Times, Jan. 6, 2004. Jenkins, Daniel. Community Policing Problems: Most People Dont Want to Become Involved. The Sunday News, June 30, 2002. Joanes, Ana. Does the New York City Police Department Deserve Credit for the Decline in New York Citys Homicide Rates? A Cross-City Comparison of Policing Strategies and Homicide Rates. Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems, 33, 1999. Kelling, George L. and Coles, Catherine M. Fixing Broken Windows. New York: The Free Press, 199

My Philosophy of Education Essay -- Philosophy of Teaching Teachers Es

My Philosophy of Education â€Å"Though your beginning was insignificant, yet your end will increase greatly† â€Å"A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove, but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child† Anonymous I can remember the days of yester when my childhood friends and I played pretend teacher. The reasons that I decided to enter the teaching profession were very simple indeed. I have never known a day throughout my life thus far that I did not have a love for children. Throughout my youth I was involved in my church nursery, Sunday school, and vacation bible school. I have always tried to involve myself in anything that revolved around children. As my youth progressed into adolescence my love for children only grew. Today as study towards my degree I only grow anxious awaiting the day I will hear the voice a child say â€Å"Good morning Mrs. Rushbrook.† Philosophies of Education began many years ago when individuals began to express their own views and opinions to others. The views and opinions they expressed then became called philosophies. Many great educators have developed philosophies in which they feel very strongly about. Today, however I am at the point in which I will allow the world to know my philosophy of education. Students are the building blocks of life. They are the ones who will endure after â€Å"we as a people† are gone. They will then pass on the knowledge granted to them to others and so on until the end of days. The cycle never ends. If â€Å"we as a people† do not pass on the knowledge in which â€Å"we† want to stay then â€Å"we† show that o... ...n out of the room and talked to one on one if he or she has a disciplinary problem. Interacting one on one with the child is the only that he or she can full express himself or herself. Eye to eye contact can work miracles. I will try my utmost not to take unnecessary disciplinary actions. If a student is rhythmic in his or her actions then he or she shall be punished. I feel that my philosophy of education has been expressed. I believe my views and opinions about becoming a future educator can be seen very vividly. I admire those entire teachers who are out in the world today and are changing the lives of each child who enters their room. â€Å"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops† Henry Adams â€Å"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you will land among the stars† Les (Lester Louis) Brown

The Rise Of Women In France Essay -- essays research papers

The Rise of Women in French Society During the Middle Ages, French society, along with the rest of Europe, revolved around the warrior class. In order to gain land and power nobles gave their services in the military and lived violent lifestyles. Treatment toward women during this period was harsh. "In a society of landed nobility dispersed fairly loosely across the country in their castles and estates, the likelihood of a preponderance of the man over the woman and thus of a more or less unconcealed male dominance, is very great." (Elias, Page 325.) Men beat their wives and typically had little respect for them. Marriage was based not on love but on increase in influence and wealth. "But often enough we hear of the other side, of a warrior, whether a king or a simple seigneur, beating his wife. It seems almost an established habit for the knight, flying into a rage, to punch his wife of the nose till blood flows." (Page 324.) However, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries dramatic pol itical changes emerged throughout Europe and a high court system developed in France. Power shifted to revolve around the monarch who created palace life. "By and large it can be said that a more peaceable social life formed about the lady of the court†¦" (Page 325.) When feudalism ended, so did the glory of battle. France was in a relatively peaceful state. Thus, in order to gain favo...

Rosa Parks Essay -- Rosa Park Biography Biographies Bio Essays

Rosa Parks One of the most influential and inspirational women of all time was Rosa Parks. By one action she helped change the lives of a majority of African Americans and more importantly society as a whole. Rosa Parks sparked the attention of America when she refused to settle for the black (lower class)standards. Not only did she help change the lives for many African Americans but she helped equality for all men and women in the United States. By one brave women our world will be forever thankful. Rosa Parks was raised in her Grandparents house in pine level, Montgomery County, in Alabama. Her Mother's name was Leona Edwards and her father James McCauley was a carpenter. On February 4, 1913 Rosa was born, ya year after her parents were married. At around the age of two her father took off North looking for a better like. As a child Rosa and her brother grew up with segregation and such societies as the Ku Klux Klan. Her grandfather would often sleep with a rifle by his side due to the unsafe environment. By the time Rosa Parks went to school she began to feel unhappy about the society she was living in. She soon noticed the segregation of their society when she saw the empty and little school for blacks compared to the glamorous and bih school the whites had. At that point on in Rosa's life she decided she was going to be a person with dignity and self-respect. She promised herself she would never set her dreams lower than anyone else in the world simply because she was b lack. She wanted a change and was determined to make it happen. At age nineteen Rosa married a man named Raymond Park, who died of cancer in 1977 after a close fifty years of marriage. When Raymond was living he had always influenced her to become more active in civil rights among blacks. Her hopes for a better future were just beginning. By 1945 Rosa was a leader in the Montgomery Voters League and the secretary of the Nationals Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). One evening in early December 1955 Rosa was sitting inthe front seat of the colored section of the bus on her way home. It was like almost every day all the blacks would sit in the white section of the bus and as soon as the whites filled in the blacks would routinely move to the back. In an instance Rosa found her chance of freedom. Somehow she had changed the laws. She w... ... had no knowledge of what was going on or where they were going. It was outright not fair and morally wrong. Onthese ships the living conditions were very harmful to their lives. They received barley any food and the floor to sleep on at nights. Of the few that would survive the long journey once they arrived in Europe they would be auctioned off the Americans or people to do what they desire with them. From that day on African AMericans were viewed as the whites toys and games. Rosa PArks had the courage to finally begin to put a stop to this and she will be well resprected for all her life. Today, Rosa Parks tried to use her negative memories of segregation and racism to continue her goal towards complete justice, freedom, and equality. She believes that the children are future of the world and hope that they will fulfill the dreams of society in the future. Rosa Parks was a true role model to our nation and granted the dreams and wishes of many African Americans. Her words and actions pertaining to the struggle for desegregation continue to ring like church bells today. This bell rings throughout the world for all to hear, and millions of people follow the beat.

Macbeth Good vs Evil Essay

â€Å"Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it† â€Å"let not light see my deep and dark desires† â€Å"to alter favour ever is to fear† â€Å"The service and the loyalty I owe† â€Å"Point against point, rebellious arm ‘gainst arm† 1. How are they corrupted by the evil in them? After reaching the highest level success Macbeth still desires more and is willing to fall to any level to achieve it. When the evil presents Macbeth with the opportunity, he puts all his trust in it later to find out evil has played a double game. 2. Is Lady Macbeth totally evil? Lady Macbeth is not evil she is only trying to help her husband in his ambition, she takes support of evil to fulfil her ambition when she pushes Macbeth to kill Duncan and challenges his manhood that she forgets her morals because she is too lost in her ambition. 3. Find examples in the play in which characters try to hide the truth from around them? Macbeth hallucinates about Banquo’s ghost who symbolises Macbeth’s goodness but to hide his guilty conscious he becomes cruel towards others. Banquo hides the prophecy from the rest of the kingdom because he doesn’t believe them to be true, but still doubts Macbeth for Duncan’s murder. 4. Why do they do it? Macbeth hid his 3 prophecies from others because he didn’t know whether it would be true or not and because once he heard that Malcolm will inherit his father’s throne. He and Lady Macbeth planned to kill the king therefore, if people knew about his prophecies they would have suspect him in an instant the King is dead. 5. What does this tell us about the world around them? The world is very small and they would go to any limits to protect themselves and achieve their goals. 6. Macbeth and Banquo’s reactions to the witches’ prophecies are very different. In what ways? Macbeth doesn’t believe at first but when he is promoted he starts to believe and uses the prophecies as guide towards his ambition whereas Banquo never believed in the witched and always thought they were evil. 7. What are the different consequences of their attitudes? Macbeth believed in evil and let it guide him into an instant of success which eventually leads him to his own destruction, death. Banquo doesn’t believe in evil and let good guide his way, but is murdered by Macbeth because he was so good that Macbeth got scared for his safety. 8. Would you consider Macbeth’s ambition to be flaw in his character? Macbeth ambition is too great for him to handle, and he put all of his trust on those prophecies which lead to his downfall. Those prophecies can be seen as hallucination and instead of trusting his surroundings, his friends. 9. What about Lady Macbeth’s ambition? Is she ambitious for herself or her husband? Lady Macbeth’s ambition only started when she got the letter from Macbeth and she wanted to help her husband make the prophecies come true. The only thing that’s in the way to make the prophecy came true is Malcolm. 10. What has the play got to tell us about selfish, unchecked ambition? The play tells the audience that being selfish will display and illusion success would disappear if the person stops to feel human emotions. 11. Why does Banquo’s ghost only appear to Macbeth during the banquet? Banquo’s ghost only appeared to Macbeth during the banquet is because it was Macbeth’s conscience and guilt that take shape to form Banquo’s ghost. No one else in the banquet knew that it was Macbeth who plotted his friend’s death. 12. What does this tell us about Macbeth’s conscience? It tells us that Macbeth is guilty of the crimes he had committed, and soon realises that once his left alone no one he could trust, like Banquo. 13. Find examples in the play to comment on this theme When Duncan is King of Scotland, it seems that the place is peaceful and everyone can trust each other. Whereas when Macbeth is King there are chaos everywhere and people couldn’t trust each other because they afraid that the other person might be Macbeth’s spies and their lives would be in danger if they said anything against Macbeth. 14. Consider Banquo’s sense of honour Banquo might as well be a little responsible for Duncan death because he hide the prophecies from the kingdom though he always remained loyal to his serving king. 15. Why is Malcolm so suspicious of an honourable character like Macduff? Malcolm was so suspicious of Macduff because the former Thane of Cawdor was an honourable man and yet he betrayed Duncan. Malcolm wanted to make sure that when he would be surrounded by trustworthy and loyal Thanes and not the ones that would be power hungry like Macbeth. 16. Review and list again the qualities Shakespeare thinks are needed by a king to govern a country Honesty Kind Fair Loyalty Generosity Courage 17. List the things that are not what they seem to be, and people whose reality is different from their appearance †¢Duncan visits Macbeth’s castle and was amazed at the view of the castle but didn’t know that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth plotted to kill him. †¢The old Thane of Cawdor seems like he’s very noble but he ended up being a traitor. A dagger – A A wood – B False promises – A A ghost – A Two guilty grooms – A A wicked prince- A A ‘foul and fair’ day – B.

Middle Range Theory Essay

Middle-range theory, developed by Robert K. Merton, is an approach to sociological theorizing aimed at integrating theory and empirical research. It is currently the de facto dominant approach to sociological theory construction,[1] especially in the United States. Middle-range theory starts with an empirical phenomenon (as opposed to a broad abstract entity like the social system) and abstracts from it to create general statements that can be verified by data.[2] This approach stands in contrast to the earlier â€Å"grand† theorizing of social theory, such as functionalism and many conflict theories. Raymond Boudon has argued that â€Å"middle-range theory† is the same concept that most other sciences simply call ‘theory’.[3] The analytical sociology movement has as its aim the unification of such theories into a coherent paradigm at a greater level of abstraction. The midrange approach was developed by Robert Merton as a departure from the general social theorizing of Talcott Parsons. Merton agreed with Parsons that a narrow empiricism consisting entirely of simple statistical or observational regularities cannot arrive at successful theory. However, he found that Parsons’ â€Å"formulations were remote from providing a problematics and a direction for theory-oriented empirical inquiry into the observable worlds of culture and society†.[4] He was thus directly opposed to the abstract theorizing of scholars who are engaged in the attempt to construct a total theoretical system covering all aspects of social life. With the introduction of the middle range theory program, he advocated that sociologists should concentrate on measurable aspects of social reality that can be studied as separate social phenomena, rather than attempting to explain the entire social world. He saw both the middle-range theory approach and middle-range theories themselves as temporary: when they matured, as natural sciences already had, the body of middle range theories would b ecome a system of universal laws; but, until that time, social sciences should avoid trying to create a universal theory.[5] Merton’s original foil in the construction was Talcott Parsons, whose action theory Merton classified as a â€Å"grand theory†. (Parsons vehemently rejected this categorization.) Middle range theories are normally constructed by applying theory building techniques to empirical research, which produce generic propositions about the social world, which in turn can also be empirically tested. Examples of middle range theories are theories of reference groups,  social mobility, normalization processes, role conflict and the formation of social norms.[3] The middle-range approach has played a key role in turning sociology into an increasingly empirically-oriented discipline.[6] This was also important in post-war thought. In the post-war period, middle-range theory became the dominant approach to theory construction in all variable-based social sciences.[5] Middle range theory has also been applied to the archaeological realm by Lewis R. Binford, and to financial theory by Harvard Business School Professor Robert C. Merton,[7][8] Robert K. Merton’s son. In the recent decades, the analytical sociology program has emerged as an attempt synthesizing middle-range theories into a more coherent abstract framework (as Merton had hoped would eventually happen). Peter Hedstrom at Oxford is the scholar most associated with this approach,[9] while Peter Bearman is its most prominent American advocate. Middle Range Theory (Final) MRT approach was developed by R K Merton in contrast to abstract theorizing of total system in all aspect of social life by scholars particularly Talcott Parson. Hence it opposed the grand theorizing of social theory like functionalism, conflict theories etc. MRT is an approach to sociological theorizing that integrates Theory and Empirical research. They are constructed by applying theory building techniques to empirical data. These produce general statement about the social phenomenon under study which can be this verified by data. Examples: theories of reference groups; Social mobility; role conflict etc. However he agreed with Talcott Parson that narrow empiricism cannot arrive at successful theory. He saw MRT approach and theories as temporary that would become a system of universal laws on maturity, so before that he says that social science should avoid trying to create a Universal Theory. Currently MRT approach has become a dominant approach to Sociological theory construction and has been applied to other fields like archaeology, finance etc. as of now analytical sociology program is attempting to unify MRTs into coherent abstract framework as hoped by Merton.