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Racial inequality in the US justice system
Racial inequalities in the criminal justice system
Racial discrimination in the criminal justice system
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Throughout history many African Americans have been treated cruelly. Slavery and Jim Crow Laws have really hurt African American families in the past. Many people today believe that the justice system is bias towards African Americans. Many people would say there is still racial inequality from: arrest rates, bailing acceptance, and sentencing of African Americans. African Americans are suffering from discrimination throughout America from the Criminal Justice System.
According to “Is the Criminal Justice System Racist?” President Obama said blacks and whites are arrested at very different rates. A white man could commit the same crime as a black man, but the black man would receive the harshest punishment. Also if a white man was found dead, and a black man was standing over him the black man is considered a criminal. Heather Mac Donald says “cops over-arrest blacks and ignore white criminals.” I believe this to be true. Many African Americans get caught at the wrong place at the wrong time, and serve the ultimate price, death. While whites are out on the streets torturing blacks, but they
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The article “What It’s like to Be Black in the Criminal Justice System “ say that blacks are more likely to be jailed while awaiting trial. Many would say that the defendants and their families could not afford to pay their bail, which may have been true, but he may have not even been allowed a bond at all. Not being able to be bailed out of jail causes a lot of hurt to a family physically, emotionally and economically. According to the article “Is the Criminal Justice System Racist” racism is not why more blacks were in prison proportionately than whites and for longer terms. They say blacks are more likely to be imprisoned for crimes, but who really knows the truth. All we know is that blacks are not treated fairly when it comes to bonds and
Just Mercy’s Bryan Stevenson exposes some of these disparities woven around his presentation of the Walter McMillian case, and the overrepresentation of African-American men in our criminal justice system. His accounts of actors in the criminal justice system such as Judge Robert E. Lee and the D.A. Tom Chapman who refused to open up the case or provide support regardless of the overwhelmingly amount of inconsistencies found in the case. The fact that there were instances where policemen paid people off to testify falsely against McMillian others on death row significantly supports this perpetuation of racism. For many of the people of color featured in Stevenson’s book, the justice system was unfair to them wrongfully or excessively punishing them for crimes both violent and nonviolent compared to their white counterparts. Racism towards those of color has caused a “lack of concern and responsiveness by police, prosecutors, and victims’ services providers” and ultimately leads to the mass incarceration of this population (Stevenson, 2014, p. 141). Moreover the lack of diversity within the jury system and those in power plays into the already existing racism. African-American men are quickly becoming disenfranchised in our country through such racist biases leading to over 1/3 of this population “missing” from the overall American population because they are within the criminal justice
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
Many Americans pretend that the days of racism are far behind; however it is clear that institutional racism still exists in this country. One way of viewing this institutional racism is looking at our nation’s prison system and how the incarceration rates are skewed towards African American men. The reasons for the incarceration rate disparity are argued and different between races, but history points out and starts to show the reason of why the disparity began. Families and children of the incarcerated are adversely affected due to the discrimination as well as the discrimination against African American students and their likelihood of going to prison compared to the white student. African American women are also affected by the discrimination in the incarceration rate. Many white Americans don’t see how racism affects incarceration rates, and that African Americans are more likely to face discrimination from the police as well as being falsely arrested.
According to Alexander (2010), states the United States, has switched to a new form of racism know as color blind racism. Color blind racism refers to contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics. The types of practices that take place under color blind racism are subtle, institutional and apparently nonracial. These practices are not racially overt in nature, such as racism under slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow laws. Instead, color blind racism flourishes on the idea that a potential cause of such disproportionately high incarceration rates for African Americans is that they are disproportionately poor. When black people were emancipated many things were in a shamble for all people. Whites didn’t know what type of control they were going to have over the people of color. At least when blacks were in slavery the racial order was most effectively maintained, by contact between slave owners and their slaves, they had the control for supervision and discipline, and there was less resistance or rebellion behavior when they had control. This threatens slave owner’s interest and created a social distance or an inferior behavior from slaves. It would seem that white control was unclear since slavery was gone (Alexander 2010). There is nothing new about the lack of correlation between earlier system, crime and punishment. Punishment is primarily a tool of social control, the extent or severity in which a person receives is based on the crime. The reality is that the American penal system has emerged as a system of social control
Much progress has and is currently being made over history for the laws concerning the equal treatment, but this civil rights crisis seems like the criminal system does not follow its own laws. There are more African American males arrested and incarcerated than Hispanic or White males. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2010, the Black male imprisonment rate was 3,074 per 1000,000 U.S. Black males in total. They are incarcerated at seven times higher than Whites (The Sentencing
Historically racism has pervaded the administration of justice in America and Canada. Racial biases against blacks are still apparent today through the many different arenas of the criminal justice system. Black Americans argue that they are treated unequally and more brutally than whites at all levels in the criminal justice system. As a result of this unequal treatment blacks are more likely to be arrested, charged, convicted and receive longer sentences then whites for the same crimes. Black Americans make up about 12% of the US population and they account for more then 30% of all arrests, 44% of all prisoners and 40% of prisoners on death row (Hunt, 1999:74).
2010, “Racial Disparities in Sentencing: Implications for the Criminal Justice System and the African American Community”, African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies 4(1): 1-31, in this Albonetti’s study is discussed in which it was found that minority status alone accounted for an additional sentence length of “one to seven months.” African American defendants were “likely to receive pretrial release but were more likely to be convicted, and be given harsher sentences after conviction than white defendants charged with the same crimes.” One of the reasons behind this are the sentencing laws, it is seen that these laws are designed in a way that they tend to be harsher towards a certain group of people, generally towards the people of color than others thus leading to inequality with the sentencing
The criminal justice system is united under one basic law body, in which no racism is present. Personal beliefs and anecdotes prove nothing, the criminal justice system isn’t racist. Although it may seem African Americans are highly discriminated upon in the justice system, there is ample amounts of data to prove otherwise. The criminal justice system is united under one basic law body, in which no racism is present. The system is not to blame for the racial differences found in the United States criminal justice system. The racial issues found in the system are due to inner city isolation and common crime patterns involving drugs even if it may seem as if the system is racist.
For the past two decades, the criminal justice system in the United States has been undergoing a tremendous expansion. There are now more than one million black men in jail and that one out of every four black males will go on prison in there lifetime. Knowing these statistics it put a burden on the black community because many families are left with single family home, the unemployment rate for black male go up, they can not vote and now they make jail seem like it is fun to go to.
Even though racism has always been a problem since the beginning of time, recently in the United States, there has been a rise in discrimination and violence has been directed towards the African American minority primarily from those in the white majority who believe they are more superior, especially in our criminal justice system. There are many different reasons for the ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system between the majority and the minority, but some key reasons are differential involvement, individual racism, and institutional racism to why racial disparities exist in
Statistical accounts show consistent accord in that African Americans are disproportionately arrested over whites. What is much less lucid, however, is the real reason for this disparity. Both criminologists and political scientists alike have expounded remarkably polarized explanations for this phenomenon. Exemplary of this are two arguments as developed as they are diametrically opposed, that of William Wilbanks and that of Samuel Walker, Cassia Spohn and Miriam DeLone.
Many inequalities exist within the justice system that need to be brought to light and addressed. Statistics show that African American men are arrested more often than females and people of other races. There are some measures that can and need to be taken to reduce the racial disparity in the justice system.
These statistics demonstrate that racialized mass incarceration exists in the U.S. There are a few reasons why African Americans are discriminated against by the legal system. The primary cause is inequitable protection by the law and unequal enforcement of it. Unequal protection is when the legal system offers less protection to African Americans that are victimized by whites. It is unequal enforcement because discriminatory treatment of African Americans that are labeled as criminal suspects is more accepted.
When a person of color is being sentenced the unjustness of sentencing is blatantly shown such as in the article Race Sentencing and Testimony which stated, “ These scholars conclude that black male arrestees “face significantly more severe charges conditional on arrest offense and other observed characteristics” and attribute this primarily to prosecution charging decisions” (Mauer 4). This piece of writing explains that for no other reason than race do these people get convicted far more significantly than others who have the same charge but are white, which continues as far as giving a person of color the max sentence that they can have on a certain charge just for the color of their skin. The justice system has turned into the opposite of what it claims to be and continues to grow as a racist overseer, bashing down on those that they believe should be punished as harshly as possible simply for the color of their skin. The system has gone as deep as to making it so that even if a person has not committed a crime, but are being charged for it they can agree to a plea bargain, which makes it so even though the person did not do it the system is going to have them convicted of it anyway (Quigley 1). “As one young man told me ‘who wouldn’t rather do three years for a crime they didn’t commit than risk twenty-five years
According to A Report issued by the Justice Policy Institute, it showed that in 2002 the number of African American males in prison have grown to five times the rate it was twenty years ago (“Prison”). Many have speculated that reasons the population of African Americans in prison are so high is that the Justice System is corrupted and shows that Racism is alive and well. In some cases they may have been guilty, but there should never be a case were a citizen was striped from their rights and accused of a crime they didn’t commit or was protecting themselves from being killed. The Justice System is corrupted towards the African American race because they are given poor legal representation, death penalty with insufficient evidence and longer sentences than any other races that statistics can show.