The death penalty is one of the most controversial issues on American soil. Blacks are more likely to face the death penalty than whites in the commission of identical crimes(CNN, 2014). The history of capital punishment dates back to the days before Christ. The Old Testament adage 'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,' has survived throughout the ages despite the New Testament's rendition of 'thou shall not kill'. Today's American victims endure a more demure of style of cruel and unusual punishment; death by lethal injection has replaced the barbaric traditions of the past.
Statistics prove that for many years the death penalty has fallen disproportionately on racial minorities in the United States. For example, since 1930 nearly 90% of those executed for the crime of rape in this country were African-Americans, and currently, about 50% of those on the nation's death rows are from minority populations representing only 20% of this country's population. Nearly 40% of those executed since 1976 have been black, even though blacks constitute only 12% of the population. And in almost every death penalty case, the race of the victim is white. Of the 229 executions that have occurred since the death penalty was reinstated, only one has involved a white defendant for the murder of a black person (Race and the Death Penalty, 2003). Does this mean that minorities are inherently criminals, or is there an undercurrent of racial segregation affecting the views of the majority in our society? T.V. shows, such as Cops, often depict persons of color as the criminal element, reinforcing the myth that minorities are to be feared.
Blacks are sentenced to jail and the death penalty more often that any other minority in America. As the national inmate population has increased in recent decades, the impact of these changes on minority communities has been particularly dramatic. Two-thirds of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities, and for black males in their twenties, one in every eight is in prison or jail on any given day. Moreover, black males born today have a one in three chance of going to prison during their lifetime, compared to a one in seventeen chance for white males. These trends have been exacerbated by the impact of the "war on drugs," with three-fourths of all drug offenders being persons of color, far out of proportion to thei...
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...people and it should be abolished.
References
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https://www.aclu.org/race-and-death-penalty
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Fessenden, Ford. 2000. Deadly Statistics: A Survey of Crime and Punishment. The New York Times September 22, 2000. Available: www.nytimes.com
Goertzel, T. (2004, July) Capital Punishment and Homicide: Sociological Realities and Econometric Illusions, Available: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.
Kalogeras, S., & Mauer, M. (2004, May) The Sentencing Project: Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System, Available: http://www.sentencingproject.org/
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Staff, CNN. "Death Penalty Facts That May Surprise You." CNN. Cable News Network, 8 Sept. 2014. Web. 28 Nov. 2015.
criminal justice system. If the current trends persist, one out of every three African American men can expect to go to prison over the course of his life, as can one out of every six Latino males, compared to only one in seventeen white males (Bonczar 2003). For females, the figures are significantly lower, but racial and ethnic disparities are very similar. For instance, one out of every eighteen African American females can expect to go to prison, as can one out of every 45 Latino females, and one out of every one-hundred and eleven white females (Bonczar 2003). The racial disparities in imprisonment have been felt the most by young African American males (Western and Pettit 2010). Males are a significant majority of the prison and jail populations, accounting for around ninety percent of the population (Western and Pettit 2010). Racial disparities in incarceration are astounding when one counts the men who have been incarcerated in their lifetime rather than those serving time on any given day (Western and Pettit 2002). For instance, in 1989, approximately two percent of white men in their early thirties had been in prison compared to thirteen percent of African American men in their early thirties (Western and Pettit 2002). These extreme racial disparities disproportionately affect communities of color and have significant collateral effects such as family stress and dissolution,
Many would argue that the reason why the incarceration rate for African Americans is sustainably higher compared to white American is because of economic situations, and because of past arrest patterns. While it is true that the economic opportunity someone has will affect their decisions, this argument doesn’t fully explain the real reason of why the rates are higher. To fully understand the reason why one must look back on America’s history and how African Americans were treated. The past arrest patterns do not explain why the gap continues to increase, however it is clear that the past arrest patterns is more an indicator of institutional racism that exists in this country. One study found that African Americans believe the reason for the high incarceration rates is becau...
Racial representation in death row proves that justice system consistently shows bias, primarily through crime victim treatment. Though originally the Supreme Court
Kansal, T. (2005). In M. Mauer (Ed.), Racial disparity in sentencing: A review of the literature. Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project. Retrieved April 12, 2005, from The Sentenceing Project Web site: http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/disparity.pdf
This research essay discusses racial disparities in the sentencing policies and process, which is one of the major factors contributing to the current overrepresentation of minorities in the judicial system, further threatening the African American and Latino communities. This is also evident from the fact that Blacks are almost 7 times more likely to be incarcerated than are Whites (Kartz, 2000). The argument presented in the essay is that how the laws that have been established for sentencing tend to target the people of color more and therefore their chances of ending up on prison are higher than the whites. The essay further goes on to talk about the judges and the prosecutors who due to different factors, tend to make their decisions
One could argue that race and ethnicity shows up a great deal in sentencing more than any other stage in our justice system. If we look at cases from the past, we can see a lot of examples of disparity amongst different ethnic groups. African Americans for example were sentenced to harsh imprisonment or death for crimes they may or may not even committed, as opposed to non-African Americans who either got off free or were sentenced to only a few months. For example, in the past African American male who committed rape against a white female would be sentenced harshly, however, a white person who committed rape against a African American female would serve little to no jail time, and this is still occurring today, maybe not as overtly as the past. Disparities of different ethnic groups occurred then as much as does now. Minorities are still being harshly punished in our justice system. Minorities serve a higher chance of being sentenced in comparison to non- minorities by a long shot. According to an article posted on the Huffington post, minorities are directly targeted and are sentenced to harsher sentences than whites. In the article written by Bill Quigley, called “Fourteen Examples of Racism in Criminal Justice System”, he states that, “U.S. Sentencing Commission reported in March 2010 that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10% longer than white offenders for
The past quarter century of American history has been profoundly impacted by the “war on drugs.” Ever since the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 was passed by President Richard Nixon, the number of yearly incarcerations for drug violations has grown exponentially. America’s drug policies have cost billions of dollars and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Americans, yet rates of drug, property, and violent crime have failed to decrease. Yassaman Saadatmand summates the consequences of Nixon’s policies: “Not only has the drug war failed to reduce violent and property crime, but it has also shifted criminal justice resources (the police, courts, prisons, probation officers, etc.) away from directly fighting violent and property crime.” The issue is further complicated by racial inequalities in the rates of drug use and crime. Whereas Whites consist the majority of the population of any state, they are outnumbered by African-Americans in both state and federal prisons (E. Ann Carson 2013). This incongruity is paralleled with many other races, such as an overrepresentation of Native Americans and an underrepresentation of Asians in rates of drug use. What causes this imbalance? What purpose do the higher rates of incarceration for certain minorities serve? As this topic is explored, it becomes evident that the racial disparity in drug crime is perpetuated by America’s legacy of bigotry and racism, capitalism, and a cycle of poverty.
Racial disparity in drug related convictions has been a wide spread problem in the United States since the War on Drugs in the early 1980s. It was prevalent before that time, but minorities became the target of drug related crimes in startling numbers at this time. There are several hypotheses for this alarming situation, but the bottom line remains that racism is the leading cause of racial disparity in drug related convictions. Minorities from inner cities, with low-incomes and socioeconomic statuses who get caught in a downward spiral, are the easiest targets for the government to point the finger at for drug problems in the United States. The statistics will show that while more White people use illicit drugs in the United States, more African Americans and other minorities will be convicted, and more harshly than their White counterparts, for the same crimes.
Institutional racism is racism that is shown through government organizations and political institutions. In a report done by David Baldus in 1998, he discovered that when it comes to the death penalty, blacks are more likely sentenced to death than whites, and those who kill whites are more likely to be given the death penalty than the killing of blacks (Touré). In several cases and studies, there is a substantial amount of racial bias in the criminal justice system. In fact, the 1978 McClesky conviction has proven to support Baldus’s study in 1998. Warren McClesky, an African American male, was found guilty of killing a Georgia police officer. The legal team who represented McClesky exposed a study that showed how biased racial inequality is in the death penalty, but the court contended the argument because “disparities in sentencing are an inevitable part of our criminal justice system” (Touré). Furthermore, race has always been a serious matter in the Supreme Court and other government administrations, but they fail to recognize the
According to statistics since the early 1970’s there has been a 500% increase in the number of people being incarcerated with an average total of 2.2 million people behind bars. The increase in rate of people being incarcerated has also brought about an increasingly disproportionate racial composition. The jails and prisons have a high rate of African Americans incarcerated with an average of 900,000 out of the 2.2 million incarcerateed being African American. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 1 in 6 African American males has been incarcerated at some point in time as of the year 2001. In theory if this trend continues it is estimated that about 1 in 3 black males being born can be expected to spend time in prison and some point in his life. One in nine African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 are currently incarcerated. Although the rate of imprisonment for women is considerably lower than males African American women are incarc...
“A report by the United States General Accounting Office in 1990 concluded that 82 percent of the empirically valid studies on the subject show that the race of the victim has an impact on capital charging decisions or sentencing verdicts or both” (86).
The majority of our prison population is made up of African Americans of low social and economic classes, who come from low income houses and have low levels of education. The chapter also discusses the amount of money the United States loses yearly due to white collar crime as compared to the cost of violent crime. Another main point was the factors that make it more likely for a poor person to be incarcerated, such as the difficulty they would have in accessing adequate legal counsel and their inability to pay bail. This chapter addresses the inequality of sentencing in regards to race, it supplies us with NCVS data that shows less than one-fourth of assailants are perceived as black even though they are arrested at a much higher rate. In addition to African Americans being more likely to be charged with a crime, they are also more likely to receive harsher punishments for the same crimes- which can be seen in the crack/cocaine disparities. These harsher punishments are also shown in the higher rates of African Americans sentenced to
Race plays a large factor in showing how you are viewed in society. Although there is no longer slavery and separate water fountains, we can still see areas of our daily life clearly affected by race. One of these areas is the criminal justice system and that is because the color of your skin can easily yet unfairly determine if you receive the death penalty. The controversial evidence showing that race is a large contributing factor in death penalty cases shows that there needs to be a change in the system and action taken against these biases. The issue is wide spread throughout the United States and can be proven with statistics. There is a higher probability that a black on white crime will result in a death penalty verdict than black on black or white on black. Race will ultimately define the final ruling of the sentence which is evident in the racial disparities of the death penalty. The amount of blacks on death row can easily be seen considering the majority of the prison population is black or blacks that committed the same crime as a white person but got a harsher sentence. The biases and prejudices that are in our society relating to race come to light when a jury is selected to determine a death sentence. So what is the relationship between race and the death penalty? This paper is set out to prove findings of different race related sentences and why blacks are sentenced to death more for a black on white crime. Looking at the racial divide we once had in early American history and statistics from sources and data regarding the number of blacks on death row/executed, we can expose the issues with this racial dilemma.
“Facts about the Death Penalty.” Deathpenaltyinfo.org. 26 Jan 2011. Death Penalty Information Center. 31 Jan 2011. Web.
For instance, the 1972 Furman V. Georgia case abolished the death penalty for four years on the grounds that capital punishment was extensive with racial inequalities (Latzer 21). Over twenty five years later, those inequalities are higher than ever. The statistics says that African Americans are twelve percent of the U.S. population, but are 43 percent of the prisoners on death row. Although blacks make up 50 percent of all murder victims, 83 percent of the victims in death penalty cases are white. Since 1976 only ten executions involved a white defendant who had killed a bl...