American Me Term Paper

American Me

The intergenerational and racial components to familiar crime, as viewed through the American criminal justice system or Not a Wiseguy -- the text of Henry Hill, "American Me" and Clear and Cole's Chapter 19 on "Race and Punishment"

It is often alleged that the criminal justice system has unjustly persecuted individuals whom are members of minority groups, based solely upon their minority status. Advocates of this point-of-view, according to Chapter 19 of T.R. Clear and Cole's textbook American Corrections, cite jury's disproportionate tendency to convict minorities, as well as to impose more lengthy and weighty sentences upon defendants who are minorities. This presumption often suggests that the defendant in question must be innocent, or is only a cog in the wheel of a much larger crime machine. But what transpires when indeed a defendant is guilty and is indeed a member of a gang or crime family? Does race and systemic racial biases still come into play in such instances?

One way to examine, if not answer this question is to compare the text of such books as Wiseguy, which chronicles the American mafia from an insider's point-of-view, with the insider's view of an American crime family located in a Hispanic community.

The comparison of Wiseguy, the written text, and "American Me" the film cannot answer such broad sociological questions in a definitive manner, of course. However, the comparison does suggest that even when the American system of criminal justice attempts to punish members of organized crime families, the justice system is more willing to collaborate with the 'businessmen' of crime of the Italian mafia, such as Henry Hill, as opposed to those involved in non-white organized crime families, whom are viewed simply as gang members, indiscriminately. Furthermore, the texts of these two works suggests that the lives of those whom are discriminated against by their race and ethnicity, such as in "American Me" are less able to survive and suffer the stresses of a criminal life, and emerge from the experience battered and calcified, emotionally, by their criminal encounters.

One of the most horrifying scenes of Olmos' film "American Me" suggests this in vivid detail. The scene depicts how, when one of the central protagonists Santana, wishes to sexually demonstrate his affection for his new girlfriend Julie, portrayed by Evelina Fernandez, he can only do so in imitation of the gang rapes he himself has suffered and witnessed in prison. Although Santana has ruled the streets from his cell and he loves this good and pure-hearted single mother from his community, he is unable to express his affection in any other fashion.

Santana's experiences in prison stand in striking contrast to the book that inspired Martin Scorsese's later film "Wiseguy." In Wiseguy, the former mobster turned informant Henry Hill describes an almost paradise-like situation, where drugs were easily got and sold for profit, concealed in presents from Hill's loyal and loving wife. Hill states that prison affected him hardly at all, unlike Santana. In Hill's reality, individuals of Santana's Hispanic ethnic background and African-Americans are merely patsies of the Italian mob, inside and outside of prison,…