Crime Prism
Crime takes many dimensions in society and likewise has different causal factors. Different people look at crime from different angles and therefore it is more likely that there will be very many explanations as to why a certain criminal activity occurred. Crime prism could be among the reasons as to why criminal investigations take a long time to be concluded. Factors such as the specific content of the crime, the social setting, the location, the historical period, the prevailing situation contribute towards the various forms that crime takes. The consensus approach towards crime is based on the fact that society as a whole agrees to what constitutes a crime in terms of behavior. On the other hand, the conflict approach is based on the fact that the society comprises of different groups of people who have different interests including the definition of what crime should be.
According to Bekiempis, in The Guardian, Jeffrey Epstein is a billionaire charged with sexual assault of minors as from the year 2005. According to the indictment, the accused enticed and recruited young girls below the sexual consent age into sexual activities after which he would offer them a huge amount of money for compensation. He is accused of paying more money to some of his victims in order for them to bring him more minors to keep his victim supply flowing. He was aware of the fact that hi victims were below the age of 18 years because some of them confessed their age. He openly named president Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, and former president Bill Clinton as some of the friends he had formed a network within the sexual assault scandal (Bekiempis, 2019). The case has left many out of bars who should be behind bars as a result of money and power triumphing over crime.
The sexual assault is a crime of the powerful given that Jeffrey is a billionaire and his accomplices are current and previous presidents inclusive of a prince. The subjects of the crime at the time were young girls who had no power to make decisions on their own. Bill Clinton has been accused of sexual assault before and so ha Donald Trump. In an ordinary circumstance, the media would be all over the case on Donald Trump after being mentioned as an accomplice to Jeffrey but it chose to downplay the accusation. The move by the media is an outright show that power is in use to silence the situation which undermines the ability of the young female adults, who were by then minors, to get justice.
The blue arrow is a mark on where the Sexual Assault crime on Jeffrey falls on the prism
Sexual assaults fall under the relatively invisible crimes and in the given case, they were not committed in broad daylight. The society is harmed in the essence that power has been used to silence the media from following up on the accusations on Donald Trump despite Jeffrey claiming that trump was among the elites in his network. At the time of the assaults more than a decade ago, the minors did not see any harm in taking part because they were given a huge sum of money which they probably had no use of at the time. Today, the harm done to the minors is felt at the social level because the accused were individuals of power who instead of protecting the welfare of the community, used the powerless minors to their advantage.
Reference
Bekiempis, V. (2019). Jeffrey Epstein charged with federal sex trafficking crimes. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/08/jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking- charges-court
