America spent $40 billion in 2007 fighting the War on Drugs, but the American public still debates its effectiveness, notes a writer on the Crime Report website. Organizations such as the Drug Policy Alliance advocate legalizing drugs to put dealers out of work and treating drug use as a public health problem instead of a criminal act. Other people say that drug use leads to violent crime such as robbery and murder, and that drugs erode America's moral fabric, according to the Crime Report writer.
You could research the War on Drugs along with the arguments for and against it. Examine how other countries treat their drug users. You could then compare those countries' drug use and violent crime rates to America's.
In 2008, a study from the Pew Center on the States discovered that nearly one in 100 Americans was incarcerated, reports Adam Liptak, writing in the New York Times. For minorities, that rate is even higher. America's rate outpaces that of other countries. Criminology experts attribute the high rate to the nation's tendency toward violent crime and tougher sentencing rules, among other things, Liptak writes.
Examine why America jails such a high proportion of its citizens. Compare worldwide rates of violent crime and incarceration, and then develop an opinion about why the country's sentencing system works as it does. Is it effective? Could it use improvement?
The American Academy of Child And Adolescent Psychiatry links violent television to aggressive behavior in young people. In play, action figures have evolved into bloody video games in which kids kill to score points. Schools even in well-to-do neighborhoods can have lock-downs, shootings and fights. Still, some criminology experts say that American schools are safe, according the Crime Report.
Investigate the debate. Pick a handful of years throughout the last few decades and compare statistics for violence among youth. Develop theories about why school shootings and other youth violence are occurring. Is it easy access to guns? Violence on video games or television? Or, maybe schools really are as safe as they have ever been.