Disparities In Criminal Justice Essay

There should not be any special treatment for anyone based on color, income or sexuallity. If you did the same crime as someone else, you should get the same treatment. For example, let’s say a white man and a black man killed someone else. So because they both committed a homicide, they should face the same charges. Sadly, this doesn’t always happen, what tends to happen is that the police can assume the black person was involved in a gang and sentence him to 5 more years..

The biggest disparity that was found was when a death penalty case involved a white victim and a black defendant. After reviewing the death penalty cases, there was an indication that “twenty-two percent of cases received the death penalty when a black defendant and white victim were involved….compared to only three percent when there was a black victim and white defendant involved.” The study broke this data down further and looked at the percentages of when a prosecutor seeks the death penalty. The study found that prosecutors sought the death penalty in “seventy percent of cases that involved white victims and black defendants and only nineteen percent when the roles were reversed.”

The system that is meant to be equal represents a gap between people viewed as superior and imfeorior. From Marc Mauer’s, “Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System Need to Be Addressed” article, a statistic “In 2005, African Americans represented 14 percent of current drug users, yet they constituted 33.9 percent of persons arrested for a drug offense and 53 percent of persons sentenced to prison for a drug offense.” this confirms that the many arrests that do not correspond with the percentage that actually commit the crimes are unfairly convicted. Like this statistic, the active one actually participating in these crimes are not caught and convicted but the people who are, are minorities or poverty stricken individuals are profiled for crimes they never committed due to fitting the picture of people who carry out those crimes. Instead of decreasing the number of crimes like drug use, the Justice System fails to apprehend people who have issues with drug use which further increases the frequency of the crime.

A study by the California Judicial Council Advisory Committee on Racial and Ethnic Bias in the Courts found that the justice system gives little attention or resources to investigating crimes against minorities and that minority defendants receive harsh treatment compared to white defendants in similar circumstances. The study also found that black-on-black crime or Latino-on-Latino crime is not taken as seriously as crimes against whites. Judges seem to believe that violence is more "acceptable" to black women because they are viewed as coming from violent communities. Minorities were judged by white, middle-class values in family law matters, and were the victims of racial and cultural stereotypes, which affects the courts '

Source A argues that disparities between blacks and whites have been appalling in court. According to Source A, “If a black person kills a white person, they are twice as likely to receive the death sentence as white person who kills a black person” (2). This reveals that a black person has a higher rate of receiving the death sentence when tried for murdering a white person. If a white person is tried for a killing of a black person they have a 50% chance of getting the death sentence, then that means that a black person would receive a 100% chance of getting the death sentence for killing a white person.

These policies do not directly involve race. An example of this is more African Americans are sentenced to jail than Whites. This type of discrimination results from past practices that are put into law. In pure justice, all people would be sentenced based on the crimes committed, no matter the race even if there were extenuating circumstances, like self-defense. The person would still be sentenced for what they did.

According to the book Corrections The Essentials by Mary K. Stohr and Anthony Walsh, a sentencing disparity occurs when there is a wide variation in sentences received by different offender that may be legitimate or discriminatory. A disparity is legitimate if it is based on crime seriousness and/ or prior record. If it is not then it is considered discriminatory. Sentencing guidelines can help attempts to address these disparities by determining how long a person should go to jail for each crime they committed.

Statistics prove that Mandatory Minimums affect minorities disproportionately. In fact, African Americans are over 10 times more likely to enter prison for drug offenses than their Caucasian counterparts despite both racial groups using drugs in equal amounts. This shows the racial bias of the Justice System at work by using Mandatory Minimums to punish minorities with harsher sentences. Blacks and Hispanics make up 74.4 percent of the people convicted of drug charges while only making up less than 30 percent of the population. Indicative of this widespread problem, 39.4 percent of convictions in 2011 involved Mandatory Minimum Sentencing (United States Sentencing Commission 148).

At a glance, the judicial system appears to have been set up to make sure that every one is punished fairly and equally no matter what your race is, your gender or your beliefs. But, once you begin to delve into the judicial systems background and trends you will begin to notice things that continuously happen to specific groups of people. You will begin to see that clearly some races are treated way different than other races which is not how the judicial system should be set up. Racism in the judicial system has been around since the beginning of the judicial system´s existence. It is a prime example of out many that showcase how the social justice of minorities are infringed upon.

There are many indicators of the huge impact in disparities in sentencing women as compared to men and more so when it revolves around minorities ( race and class). Though there are lower crime rates among women as compared to men, there are significant disparities which tend to show favouritism to women. Research has shown that men get 63 per cent longer custodial sentences than women. In addition, it is twice more likely to have women get non custodial sentences even after conviction. However, as mentioned the disparities are more profound when issues of race and class are intertwined in the sentencing.

As indicated by Bartollas and Siegel, there is evidence which lends to the widely perceived view by many that a correlation exists between an individual’s social class and the type of justice and consequently the sentence an individual receives. As lower socio-economic offenders are less likely to afford quality legal representation, often enduring to suffer the consequences of the overworked public defender and be compelled into accepting a plea or are unable to secure to make bail, thus, as Bartollas states, “lower-class offenders have typically expected to receive longer prison sentences than higher class defendants” (2013). While justice should be blind to the gender of the offender, Bartollas states “women receive more favorable outcomes

The justice system bases the punishment of a person off the status of their race and

Women convicted of “other property offenses” – a category of crimes that includes arson, receiving stolen property and breaking and entering — received shorter prison sentences. • Black female defendants were, in some ways, treated differently than white female defendants. Black women were assigned higher bond amounts and were more likely to be sent to prison than white women. Women of both races were equally likely to be released prior to

To support my claims I will be talking about incarceration, pullover rates & situations and police training in great detail. When it comes to the sentencing of convicted criminals, there are racial, ethnic and gender disparities. In 1984 the Sentencing Guidelines and Policy Statements of the Sentencing Reform Act, or short for SRA, was designed to eliminate sentencing disparities and states clearly that race, gender, ethnicity, and

The Huffington Post says, “The U.S. incarcerates nearly seven times as many people, measured as a share of population, as Canada does. People of color are disproportionately represented in the American prison population and are typically punished more severely than white peers for the same crimes” (Daniel Marans). Racism against people of color has caused them to be represented poorly in society as potential criminals, especially black. MIT informs its viewers that “according to the United States census Bureau, blacks are twice as likely to be poor compared to other races, and eight times as likely to be imprisoned. Blacks are also three times more likely to be convicted of drug violations than whites.