Disparity In The Criminal Justice System Essay

In “The Color of Justice,” Alexander addresses the intersection of race with the justice system. She details a study comparing the treatment of Black and White victims in homicide cases, where “defendants charged with killing white victims received the death penalty eleven times more often than defendants charged with killing black victims. Georgia prosecutors seemed largely to blame for the disparity; they sought the death penalty 70 percent of cases involving black defendants and white victim, but only 19 percent of cases involving white defendants and black victims” (Alexander 110). These studies indicate the vast disparity between the treatment of White victims and Black victims. This implies a harsher treatment against Black victims, because these cases were sought by the Georgia prosecution. This major disparity represents the larger treatment of Black people, because the prosecution would not be so harsh unless this harsh treatment was deemed acceptable the justice system. These statistics are not random. Regardless of the circumstances of each individual case, the common theme among all of these cases are the implicit bias that target the Black population. The importance of these statistics goes beyond the statistics itself. The Court established these statistics as “valid,” but the court “insisted that evidence of conscious, racial bias in McClesky’s individual

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.

In 2010, the U.S. Sentencing Commission reported that African Americans receive 10% longer sentences than whites through the federal system for the same crimes. In the 19th and early 20th century, that percentage was higher. Many people think that the US 's legal system truly provides justice for all people unlike back in the early 1900s, but the fact written above could be very easily compared to what racism was like in the 1930s. Although the United States’ legal system has improved some over the past 60 years through the Great Depression and many other hardships, this country’s legal system is still failing at providing justice for all people.

Is our justice system corrupted, racist or is it perfect? Did you know African Americans now constitute for nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population? This is probably the case because Blacks are incarcerated six times the rate of whites. African Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people. I believe race, ethnicity and gender disparities play a large role in how our system is executed. To support my claims I will be talking about incarceration, pullover rates & situations and police training in great detail.

Racial and Ethnic Disparities actually begin before one even enters the Criminal Justice System. It all starts with Discrimination, a term that has been poisoning the world’s most ethnically diverse country for decades. And from Discrimination stems the problem of Disparity. The topic of Disparity and Discrimination go hand in hand. Robert Simpson brings an insightful point to the table when he writes, “ Race and Ethnic disparities in violent offending and victimization are pronounced and long standing. Black’s, and to a lesser extent Hispanics, suffer much higher rates of robbery and homicide victimization than do whites. Homicide is the leading cause of death among young black males and females These differences result in part from social forces that ecologically concentrate race with poverty and other social dislocations” (311). This suggests that certain races and ethnicities are predisposed to certain crimes and the reason behind this is the results of long standing social forces and bias that have been embedded in American

Unfortunately, there are racial disparities in the United States in the legal system. Prison sentences imposed on African American males in the federal system are nearly 20 percent longer than white males convicted of similar crimes. The 1994 Crime Bill signed by President Clinton established mandatory minimum sentences. African American and Latino offenders sentenced in state and federal courts face greater odds of incarceration than white offenders who are in similar situations and receive longer sentences than whites in some jurisdictions. Research has shown that race plays a significant role in determination on which homicide cases resulted in death sentences.

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.

In every country, criminals are punished differently such that some are sentenced to prison, others the public becomes the judge and the jury while for the case of the United States we usually have a trial to prove that they are not guilty and if they are indeed guilty then they will be just sentenced them to jail. In the article “How to Dismantle the “New Jim Crow”? it states how the number of inmates have increased since the late 1960’s. In some cases, the prisons are filled with minority race within the community for example; the African American, Latinos, and many more that’s why they call it the new Jim Crow. With this kind of treatment of the minority, some people have different reasons as to why the minority race is the one that is mostly

Minority groups, such as African Americans, have long experienced injustices within the criminal justice system. Although we have indeed seen a substantial reduction in overt racial prejudice over the last half-century, racial inequality within the criminal justice system is far from extinct. Over the course of the criminal justice system in the United States, African Americans have been unjustly profiled, pursued, and unlawfully convicted. While not discounting the progress that has been made in the treatment of African Americans, it is important to keep in mind that discrimination is still present. Further, racial biases are likely to exist outside of the White-Black dynamic, which is a question that should be addressed in future

Fast forward to the present day, we have the Ferguson, Mike Brown of Emmitt Till’s still occurring in our justice system. A person must view the criminal justice threw a godly telescope to see the inequalities that exit, and need to come to the forefront of our government, and the population worldwide. Sentencingproject.org statistically show that African American men, women, and juvenile are arrested more often than any other races across the nations. This report will prove, and argues that racial disparity in the justice system is at large in our system. This research paper will further explain, and presents evidence that display the presence of racial bias in the criminal justice system in America.

Do you believe there is a new Jim Crow in America 's justice system? Well, in the book The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, Alexander believes that America 's criminal justice system is racially biased. Furthermore, she believes that the legal system is trying to punish African Americans. There are many people that believe Alexander statements is very bold and not true. Adam Gopnik who wrote the article How We Misunderstand And Mass Incarceration believes that America criminal justice system is not racially biased, but the system has political motives. America’s criminal justice system is racially biased and influenced due to the fact that the punishment a person gets is not related to the crime that 's done, funds that help African

One of the biggest controversies in society today is concerning whether or not the criminal justice system is racially bias. It is clear that blacks are overrepresented in America’s prison system. For example, they are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of white people and “constitute for nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population” (Criminal Justice). Although this is true, the disproportionate number of black men serving time in the criminal justice system is due to circumstance, not necessarily race. While there are some judges, police officers, or other officials who may have a racial bias towards black people, in the majority of cases blacks are not arrested because their race, they are arrested because they

A severe issue with the reliability of the legal system is the large amounts of cases in which individuals that are falsely convicted on capital crimes facing punishment by death (Harmon, 2004). Upon further investigation, the discovery was made through extensive research about the increased pressures in the courtrooms due to the races present. While the race of the victim plays a substantial role in the discrimination process of the courtroom, it is also an issue of who is facing the capital penalties. Officials on cases are influenced by the pressures in the courtroom including the amount of evidence identifying the defendant, but in some cases, a nonwhite defendant is convicted on less evidence presented than a white defendant (Harmon,

The Baldus study itself was a combination of two studies. Both studies reviewed over 2,000 cases in the state of Georgia during the 1970’s. The study’s main focus was to evaluate the influence of racial factors in the death sentencing phase. In most aspects of the study, the findings were not surprising except for one outcome. The study concluded that there was a racial disparity in the sentencing process. 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.” However, despite all of the racial disparities found, there was one conclusion that was quite surprising and contradicting. The figures from the cases reviewed suggested that there is a reverse racial disparity in the sentencing process. After

Forty years have gone by and I think it’s finally time we acknowledge the inconvenient truth; Capital punishment is not a fair means of punishment and disproportionately affects minorities.