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Criminal Justice System And Minorities Essay

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Minorities and the Criminal Justice System
While in recent years police brutality has received the majority of media attention, there is a far more deadly poison running through the veins of our nation’s criminal justice system. This poison is the full discriminatory power minorities fall victim to in every stage of their prosecution. This poison has led to the mass incarceration of minorities and the creation of a well-disguised form of racial control. Today, over 2 million minorities are under the control of the prison system and as such will forever be tainted by their most outstanding label, criminal (Alexander). When these American citizens are denied the basic human right of a fair and unbiased trial their lives are forever changed: …show more content…

Indeed, minorities represent a far greater population of prisoners than majorities. Currently, people of color make up 60% of the United States prison system, though they represent only 12% of the total population (Hagler). The mass incarceration of minorities is a crisis sweeping the nation, tearing multitudes of minorities from their homes and jobs. “More than two million African Americans are currently under the control of the criminal-justice system—in prison or jail, on probation or parole. During the past few decades, millions more have cycled in and out of the system; indeed, nearly 70 percent of people released from prison are rearrested within three years” ( Alexander). Minorities are also much more likely to be arrested, experts estimate that at the rate of current trends 1 in 3 black men will be arrested in their lifetime compared to 1 in 17 white men (Hagler). The obvious disparities in these statistics reveal just how far deep racial discrimination runs in the criminal justice system. Minorities are discriminated against in every stage of their prosecution: from stop-and-frisk, to arrest, to sentencing and

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