Aiden H. Minnesota

Our Peace and Justice System Needs Improvement.

Improving the United States Justice System.

Dear Future President,

Congratulations on winning the 2016 presidential election. With your new position as president of the United States you now have a lot of power and respect. With that power and respect you can make this world better or worse, your choice. If you were to make it better here is something you should do.

As you probably already know some third world countries are war torn and have received very little support from countries themselves, and are solely relying on the weak army of the UN and their own for protection. Even in the U.S., crime rates are high and many people are traumatized each year due to it. With many of those third world countries scouring for soldiers “In 2012 child soldiers were used in the armed conflicts of 19 countries.”(Peace Alliance.org) And with the “U.S., youth homicide rates are more than 10 times that of other leading industrialized nations.”(Peace Alliance.org) you know there is a problem that must be solved. So I believe Peace and Justice should be your primary goal for the United States, due to it halting our progress in other goals that you have.

I suggest these proposals because, I stand as a person who wants to grow up in a country where I can feel safe and not in constant fear of terrorist groups attacking or the threat of crime. I live near the location of a recent terrorist attack that occurred September of 2016. As a result of this occurrence, I have become more aware of not only my surroundings but also increased security of public locations. This event and these changes have created in me a feeling as if others cannot protect me 100%. With these constantly happening this leads to the U.S. having a very high crime rate that needs to be dealt with. And the U.S. coming in “With less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States has nearly 25 percent – 2.3 million – of its prisoners.”(Egelko) While India having the highest population of a country on Earth with only having “332,000 prisoners”. (BBC News) This matters because it shows that crime is being allowed and people are being arrested afterwards, when they should be cracked down on before it happens in the first place. Therefore I believe that the police and the CPRC (Crime Prevention Research Center) should have an increased budget to stop crime from happening in the first place. This would be to improve upon what “The American Civil Liberties Union found that the value of military equipment used by American police departments has risen from $1 million in 1990 to nearly $450 million in 2013.”(economist.com) This matters because it shows how much money is put into the police system and crime rates are still exponential, even though they have decreased since the 90’s. In conclusion,I believe that based on the facts I have presented from the United States continues to have a growing domestic crime rate, yet have a larger than national focus, increased budget, expanded resources. The continued increase of crime, terrorist attacks and the cost of fighting domestic crime are creating large scale sustainability issues to our local cities and governments.

As being the president you probably already know that another problem the U.S. is facing is Jail overflow. So some may think that having our jails overflowing is a positive thing and can show that our police are doing the right thing. And with the U.S. jails overflowing it shows that the police are doing the correct thing and bringing non law-abiding citizens to justice. Also “These ridiculous statistics show no sign of slowing down, as the American prison population has constantly increased over the last 50 years. In fact, the number of prisoners in the United States has more than quadrupled since 1980. In the 1970s, only 1 in 1,000 Americans were in prison. At the end of 2010, the rate had soared to 7.43 per 1000.”(Warner) Which ”Prison overcrowding is caused by a variety of issues, such as not enough room in prisons, fluctuating crime rates, changes to laws and improvements to law enforcement tactics.” (Portland State University) This matters because it shows that our justice system is doing the correct thing and arresting people who break the law. In conclusion, I believe someone could make a counter debate against my claims that our justice system needs budget improvements along with overall improvement.

Overall I believe the you should increase the budget of our justice system to around one billion dollars. Which can lead to better equipment, better training and better research or predicting of crimes. These plans are most closely related to the Global Goal of “Peace and Justice” This would help the U.S. support the U.N. because it can decrease the crime and worries here at home and let us focus more on helping the rest of the world. This should be a priority of yours because it will save countless lives in America and let us start to prioritize work outside of the U.S. and save countless more lives.

The picture below shows how much money is used by the cities with the most crime in the US.

Chaska Middle School East

Mrs. Johnson's 8th Grade Global Studies

Global Studies class letters connecting national issues to the UN's Global Goals.

All letters from this group →