Alex Piquero

Throughout the last couple of years, tensions between the African American community and police departments across America have been at an all-time high. According to Alex Piquero’s Race, Punishment, and the Michael Vick Experience, “Blacks are generally less trustworthy of police and have been or know someone who has been mistreated by them” (537). This may be because the United States’ criminal justice system, as described by Rachel Feinstein, can be seen as a white-dominated institution, functioning in the interests of white people (“White Privilege, Juvenile Justice, Criminal Identities” 315). If the criminal justice system is operated mostly by whites, then they have little to no consciousness of the negative and dangerous effects its

If law enforcement and the people that they are serving cannot work together to better their communities, then the gap between them will continuously grow which results in the way that minorities perceive the criminal justice system. Piquero says that these minorities, mostly African Americans perceive injustices in the criminal justice system. For example, the case for the murder of Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old African American male, was a case that brought police brutality in America to the light. His murderer, George Zimmerman, a man whom is biracial, was determined by a Florida jury in which they decided to excuse him of all charges related to the death of the young African American. Again, the judicial system failed the African American community. Feinstein says, “Legal systems and police forces are predominantly white, shaping race relations in the United States to benefit whites at the expense of people of color” (“White Privilege, Juvenile Justice, Criminal Identities”

Turner was a college student at Stanford University that was caught raping an intoxicated and unconscious 22 year old woman on campus. He was arrested but posted a bail amounted nat 150,000 dollars, and was released the next day. The crimes that Turner was convicted of typically get a sentencing of about 14 years, but he received only 6 months in jail. Brock Turner is a white male and also a part of the wealthier class. Naeemah Clark expressed that, “White privilege benefits the majority and white people are born with ‘systematic advantages’”(1). There was a lot of backlash from people in regards to Turner’s sentencing. Many people believed that because Turner was a white male, the judge let him off easy for a crime that a typical person would be rightfully punished for. His victim, who was addressed as, “Emily Doe”, wrote a letter and “called out both the attacker who claimed their encounter had been consensual and a legal system that put her on trial”(Truesdell, “Questions & Controversy Stanford Rape Case”1). The letter went viral as it addressed how violated and disrespected the victim felt after her attack was taken as what she felt like was a joke. Many people fought for the removal of the judge that made the decision because while Turner was sentenced to 6 months of jail time, he was released in only three months. The fact that because Turner was a student athlete