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Sentencing in the criminal justice system
Essay on the history of the us criminal justice system
Sentencing in the criminal justice system
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The basis of William Stuntz’s work, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, is that the modern-day American criminal justice system unraveled and there are signs of our dysfunctional justice system present with the presence of overpopulated prison systems that have a higher proportion of African American males. The reasons behind the collapse of the criminal justice systems are many: the collapse of the rule of law, discrimination against black suspects, and a sharp rise in the criminal population during the 1960s and 1970s. During the 1960s, the criminal justice system was riddled with rising constitutional regulation of criminal punishment (Chapter 7) followed by Earl Warren’s Supreme Court which “exacerbated the inequality and instability …show more content…
that plagued the twentieth-century criminal justice” (Stuntz 9). From Stuntz’s view, with the rise of constitutional regulation, there was steadily worsening outcomes for black crime victims and black suspects (Stuntz 2). Although the Equal Protection clause should have kept the criminal justice field accountable and equal, the Supreme Court should have interpreted the rule of law with equality and to eliminate racial discrimination.
2 But with United States v. Cruikshank (1875), the Equal Protection Clause was overturned because the Supreme Court ruled with the majority opinion. The positions that the Supreme Court adopted during pivotal moments in history allowed racial discrimination to proliferate within the criminal justice system. Although the modern day prison system reflects the disproportion racial demographics and emphasizes the harshness of the criminal justice system, Stuntz suggests reforms that can be made to improve these conditions. Firstly, the “revival of the ideal of equal protection of laws” must be encouraged because criminal punishment is unable to control crime at acceptable costs because the “law’s protection is provided discriminatorily” (Stuntz 8). Secondly, the rise of community policing in concurrence with local police responsiveness must be further championed. Communities may have variations on what the local norms are and what types of punishment is acceptable in the community. Regaining the local character of law will consequently result in fair punishment and less harsh racially shaped criminal …show more content…
punishment. Stuntz defended his arguments well in the various chapters providing support for his claims through historical data, trends, facts, and figures.
For example, we have over 2.3 million people incarcerated resulting in the harshest criminal justice system thus far in American history (Stuntz 5). Further, racial discrimination is prominent with the incarceration rates for African American being twice that of imprisonment rates in Russia during Stalin’s reign (Stuntz 48). Finally, today’s criminal justice system outcomes are mainly defined by plea bargains (95% of cases) rather than legal rule of law (Stuntz 7). Stuntz also supports his conclusions by comparing these outcomes with the two migrations: European immigration to the U.S. in the years before World War I and the Southern Exodus when African Americans migrated from southern U.S. to the northern regions from 1900s. These migrations were to the same cities but the effects of crime were vastly different with the Southern Exodus bringing higher homicide rates and crime. Stuntz then through careful observation of major theories behind the rise and fall of crime rates in the 20th century America, there were legitimate explanations for the changes in crime rates when looking at legitimacy, economic and punishment theories. With African Americans lacking judicial power and where most court rulings are held in counties dominated by whites, criminal justice can be skewed in these
neighborhoods. Most intriguing to me as a reader is that I never realized how criminal law over time throughout the 20th century has shifted hands from the state and local law to federal law. Federal laws leave less room for interpretation. The lack of local criminal justice and democracy for the neighborhoods leads to crimes in neighborhoods which have the least legitimacy and the least control over the criminal justice system although those are the ones who are most affected. These ideas that Stuntz proposes should be implemented in the city of Chicago where I was born and raised in. I’ve seen the effects that the collapse of the criminal justice system has had on my family, friends, and relatives. To take these reform issues to light would most certainly bring about positive changes to a criminal justice system that has unraveled, as Stuntz has explained.
We can conclude with her analyses that the criminal justice in America is biased an even though I don’t agree with the suggestion Alexander has heard from other people that mass incarceration is a “conspiracy to put blacks back in their place” (p.5). It is clear that the justice system in the US is not completely fair, and that collective action must arise to struggle it.
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 first five chapters of The Collapse of American Criminal Justice by William Stuntz discusses the history of the criminal justice, and it’s flaws as well. He goes in details how things work, and of course the collapse of the system. Stuntz seems to believe although their has been improvements in the constitution, it’s still not perfect. He also suggests some of the things that need to be change.
In many nation states, it is noticed that there is a disproportionate number of black people especially those youngsters going through the criminal justice system. The overrepresentation is illustrated by related data released by the U.S. Department of Justice and the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee. In America, almost 3500 per 100,000 residents of the black male were sent to jail in 2013 which was over seven times more than the ratio their white counterpart had and in England and Wales, 8.5% of young black people aged between 10-17 were arrested during the same period .This essay aims to explore the reasons behind the ethnic overrepresentation in the criminal justice system and believes that the higher rate of offending for some race groups and the existence of systematic racist which partially stems from the contemporary media distortion are attributive to the overrepresentation.
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
The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for a number of reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. The ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system is caused by mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism.
The criminal justice system has been evolving since the first colonists came to America. At first, the colonists used a criminal justice system that mirrored those in England, France, and Holland. Slowly the French and Dutch influences faded away leaving what was considered the English common law system. The common law system was nothing more than a set of rules used to solve problems within the communities. This system was not based on laws or codes, but simply that of previous decisions handed down by judges. Although rudimentary, this common law system did make the distinction between misdemeanors and the more serious crimes known as felonies.
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
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.
These authors’ arguments are both well-articulated and comprehensive, addressing virtually every pertinent concept in the issue of explaining racially disparate arrest rates. In The Myth of a Racist Criminal Justice System, Wilbanks insists that racial discrimination in the criminal justice system is a fabrication, explaining the over-representation of African Americans in arrest numbers simply through higher incidence of crime. Walker, Spohn and DeLone’s The Color of Justice dissents that not only are African Americans not anywhere near the disproportionate level of crime that police statistics would indicate, they are also arrested more because they are policed discriminately. Walker, Spohn and DeLone addi...
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 the United States, the rate of incarceration has increased shockingly over the past few years. In 2008, it was said that one in 100 U.S. adults were behind bars, meaning more than 2.3 million people. Even more surprising than this high rate is the fact that African Americans have been disproportionately incarcerated, especially low-income and lowly educated blacks. This is racialized mass incarceration. There are a few reasons why racialized mass incarceration occurs and how it negatively affects poor black communities.
According to the Oxford Index, “whether called mass incarceration, mass imprisonment, the prison boom, or hyper incarceration, this phenomenon refers to the current American experiment in incarceration, which is defined by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment and by the concentration of imprisonment among young, African American men living in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage.” It should be noted that there is much ambiguity in the scholarly definition of the newly controversial social welfare issue as well as a specific determination in regards to the causes and consequences to American society. While some pro arguments cry act as a crime prevention technique, especially in the scope of the “war on drugs’.
The definition of justice and the means by which it must be distributed differ depending on an individual’s background, culture, and own personal morals. As a country of many individualistic citizens, the United States has always tried its best to protect, but not coddle, its people in this area. Therefore, the criminal justice history of the United States is quite extensive and diverse; with each introduction of a new era, more modern technologies and ideals are incorporated into government, all with American citizens’ best interests in mind.
In this paper, I propose to talk about how all the three parts of the criminal justice system works and also delve a little bit on the issue of racism in context of the criminal justice system as a lot of people believe that the system most of the times acts keeping the individual’s race in mind.