ipl-logo

Aspects Of Punishment: Problems With The Criminal Justice System

597 Words3 Pages

Aspects of punishment, including problems with the criminal justice system are explored throughout this source. Analyzing the criminal justice system, she concludes that laws and acts unfairly punish specific individuals such as people of colour, women and the lower class. In terms of African Americans and Hispanics, Ezorsky claims that the system creates a new racial caste system in America, producing a racial hierarchy and ensuring restrictions of rights on people of colour. Conclusions are made that the system does target and label coloured people “criminal” as the new means of a justification to discriminate against them. Afterwards the author discusses women in prison, noting that incarceration negatively impacts families. Focusing on mothers imprisoned being at risk of losing their children in foster care, she states that this is due to minimum sentences exceeding the set time before their children are put up for adoption and their limited access to legal representation to help in this matter. …show more content…

Also, the crimes commonly committed by the poor are more harmfully punished than crimes committed by the rich, such as street crime versus white collar crime. This source, specifically the lower class component applies to my paper by how these claims supported by the author show the bias in the criminal system by how the system focuses more on crimes committed by the poor and their associated punishments to be harsher than those of the rich. Even when the upper classes crimes may cause more harm to society or are the same as the lower class, the poor are the ones more likely to be convicted, charged and sentenced. The only reason this occurs is discrimination towards socioeconomic status in the criminal justice system which is the main idea of my

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

    1658 Words  | 7 Pages

    In the book, The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, readers are given a look at the long and extensive history of racism towards African-Americans. From there, the reader is shown how racism towards African-Americans has not gone away and is still very much common in modern society. Throughout the novel, Alexander argues and discusses how African-Americans are being discriminated against in the form of mass incarceration. “Mass incarceration refers not only to the criminal justice system but also to the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control those labeled criminals both in and out of prison” (Alexander 14). The War On Drugs can largely be put to blame for the increase in incarcerations.

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Jail And The New Jim Crow

    694 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Jail and The New Jim Crow both describe how our justice system is generally based on people’s conceptions of things, and how our own justice system is creating a new way of discriminating people by labeling, incarcerating the same disreputables and lower class that have come to be labeled as the rabble class. In chapter two, of The New Jim Crow, supporting the claim that our justice system has created a new way of segregating people; Michelle Alexander describes how the process of mass incarceration actually works and how at the end the people that we usually find being arrested, sent to jail, and later on sent to prison, are the same low class persons’ with no knowledge and resources. These people commit petty crimes that cost them their

    Read More

  • Mass Incarceration In Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow

    358 Words  | 2 Pages

    It is an existing theory that our society is constructed via racial dimensions, and that racial equality is a figment of the imagination. This very principle is highlighted in Michelle Alexander’s novel, “The New Jim Crow.” The specific dimensions covered within the text include the unjust aspects of the federal drug policy, and by connection that of mass incarceration as well. Alexander claims that racism is still very prominent in present day society and is direct and frank about the heavy influence of white supremacy. One of the main arguments pushed by Alexander in this book is that mass incarceration is “ a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar

    Read More

  • Review Of Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness By Michelle Alexander

    924 Words  | 4 Pages

    The fourth chapter explores how the system of mass incarceration affects African American communities both during incarceration and after being released with the title of being a felon. The fifth chapter is where the author explains the title of the book, being the idea of how the “Age of Colorblindness” has created a world where the discrimination is harder to witness from the outside since it is under the disguise of the criminal justice system. This chapter also compares the potential for harm in the modern system to the harm that came from the Jim Crow laws. The sixth and final chapter explores the ideas of how the status quo in society makes it harder to dismantle the system of mass

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Criminal Justice System By Michelle Alexander

    1031 Words  | 5 Pages

    This novel highlights the fact of the injustices people of color are faced with in everyday life. In the introduction of this book, Michelle Alexander highlights the criminal justice system and how rather than identifying people by their race, people of color are labeled as criminals. I believe the criminal justice system, racial caste, ideology, and global examples of racial caste are all connected to racial inequality. I feel that the race and criminal justice system are connected on the basis that people of color are seen as unequal when compared to Caucasians. In the reading the author provides good examples of how officers are well trained at defending against claims of racial bias in policing.

    Read More

  • Mass Incarceration In The Grapes Of Wrath By Michelle Alexander

    960 Words  | 4 Pages

    Alexander uncovers the system of mass incarceration. A system of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control criminals both in prison and out of prison. The book also highlights major themes and issues in society today such as racism, inequality, and social justice. Alexander uses statistics and legal citations to argue that the approach Nixon administered, which was more of a get-tough approach to crime, and Reagan’s declaration of the War on Drugs, has devastated African Americans. The main idea that Alexander tries to make is that beginning with slavery and continuing with Jim Crow segregation, mass incarceration places entire groups of people of color into discriminatory positions in society,

    Read More

  • The Never Ending Racism: The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

    600 Words  | 3 Pages

    The New Jim Crow, Mass incarceration, is the rebirth of the caste system in the United States. People of color, blacks in particular, are being disproportional discriminated through the criminal justice system. The Criminal Justice System is being Mass incarceration creates a cycle that never ends for people that are locked up. This cycle perpetuates racial hierarchy because most of the people are black men and being in prison ruins their

    Read More

  • Role Of Injustice In The Criminal Justice System

    98 Words  | 1 Pages

    Injustice in The Criminal Justice System Due to several injustices within the American justice system, society has become more divided. The criminal justice system in the United States has been criticized for being a race-based establishment Institutions where minorities are subjected to more strenuous punishments than their white counterparts. Nonetheless, it goes without any debate that racism exists in the justice system. Are these realities the errors of a moral justice system, or does it prove that the criminal bias organization is working as expected? Is the criminal justice system utilized to regulate and manage the minority population?

    Read More

  • The New Jim Crow Analysis

    1721 Words  | 7 Pages

    Michelle Alexander, similarly, points out the same truth that African American men are targeted substantially by the criminal justice system due to the long history leading to racial bias and mass incarceration within her text “The New Jim Crow”. Both Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Michelle Alexander’s text exhibit the brutality and social injustice that the African American community experiences, which ultimately expedites the mass incarceration of African American men, reflecting the current flawed prison system in the U.S. The American prison system is flawed in numerous ways as both King and Alexander points out. A significant flaw that was identified is the injustice of specifically targeting African American men for crimes due to the racial stereotypes formed as a result of racial formation. Racial formation is the accumulation of racial identities and categories that are formed, reconstructed, and abrogated throughout history.

    Read More

  • Disparities In Criminal Justice Essay

    618 Words  | 3 Pages

    Courts are a major evaluative stage of the criminal justice system and we rely on these courts to determine our outcomes based on the crime that was committed. Today, there is more diversity of leadership in the court system but, race still plays a role in the outcome of the offender. This could range from petty crimes being committed like traffic infractions or facing the death penalty based on the race of the offender or victim. This paper will examine the three types of disparities that cause biased sentencing in the courts. The three types of disparities are race, social class, and gender and these all play a huge factor when making a decision based off an offender.

    Read More

  • Essay On Mass Incarceration

    712 Words  | 3 Pages

    The amount of mass incarceration in the United States as reached an all time high over the years. Mass Incarceration is the incarceration of a person or race based off of them being different and can be identified as a trend among law enforcements. These tensions have reached a certain extent and has received the attention of American citizens and the nation’s government. The laws of the United States seems fair, however with the enforcement of these laws, specific groups are targeted and abused by them daily.

    Read More

  • New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander: Book Review

    666 Words  | 3 Pages

    Michelle Alexander argues in her introduction to the New Jim Crow that the racial caste in America has not ended and that it just has been redesigned. She highlights the ways that the justice system of the United States controls blacks through deliberately imposed legal restrictions. The United States has the leading incarceration rates in the world and most of the individuals involved with the country’s correctional system are African-American men. This essay seeks to discuss the author’s overall argument in the book. The essay will also discuss how the topics in the first three chapters of the book help Alexander develop this argument.

    Read More

  • Annotated Bibliography: The New Jim Crow

    1343 Words  | 6 Pages

    Coker gives great evidence that supports racial injustice in the criminal justice system. She discusses on the Supreme Court’s rulings and accusations of racial preference in the system. This article is helpful because it supports my thesis on race playing a role on the system of criminal justice. Hurwitz, J., & Peffley, M. (1997). Public perceptions of race and crime: The role of racial stereotypes.

    Read More

  • Pyrrhic Defeat Theory

    774 Words  | 4 Pages

    The United States prides itself on being a country of opportunities where the underprivileged can rise up and everyone is treated equally, but is that really the case? In reality the income of an individual gives them advantages of going above the system. The sociological explanation of the influence of the wealthy over the criminal justice system is described in the of the Pyrrhic defeat theory written in Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton book The Rich Get Richer and the Poor get Prison Ideology, class and Criminal Justice. The Pyrrhic defeat theory emphasizes the failure of the criminal justice is the consequence of success for those in power, who are taking advantage of the system.

    Read More

  • Mass Incarceration Literature Review

    1728 Words  | 7 Pages

    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 several 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. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.

    Read More

More about Aspects Of Punishment: Problems With The Criminal Justice System

Open Document