Race In The Criminal Justice System

Imagine being a child who has not seen their father in years. Not being able to celebrate holidays with a loved one and being a fatherless child. Especially being a black child of an incarceration black male there are many stereotypes that set you aside from other people. For many years in the criminal justice system in America it has been undergoing a massive growth. According the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) there are over two million black men in jail and most of them stay there for a life time. This fact puts a load on the black community because many families are left with no father in a single parent home, the unemployment rate for black male has increased and now it seems like going to jail is a

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.

1.The theory/concept of intersectionality is a theory centered around oppression, domination and discrimination through various mediums from the social and cultural elements of society.

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.

On September 26,2016 the first presidential debate commences between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. One of the topics that was extensively debated on was the Criminal Justice system and the issue of systemic racism in this country. Donald Trump took the stance of Law and Order in order to solve the issue that are prevalent in our society today. In contrast, Hillary Clinton approach was one of Criminal Justice Reform. By analyzing the candidate’s responses in relation to outside reliable sources we can the verify which running mate is truthful.

“African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population.” The majority group of this statistic are people who come from african american backgrounds. The fact that black people are to make up nearly half of the prison population alone, really conveys the rate at which they are being arrested. Black men are often victims of racial profiling by police. They are targeted by police officers, and security guards, and are accused of crimes unrelated to them, simply on the basis of their skin color. Racial profiling plays a major role in the amount of black men and boys being sent to

In her book, The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander who was a civil rights lawyer and legal scholar, reveals many of America’s harsh truths regarding race within the criminal justice system. Though the Jim Crow laws have long been abolished, a new form has surfaced, a contemporary system of racial control through mass incarceration. In this book, mass incarceration not only refers to the criminal justice system, but also a bigger picture, which controls criminals both in and out of prison through laws, rules, policies and customs. The New Jim Crow that Alexander speaks of has redesigned the racial caste system, by putting millions of mainly blacks, as well as Hispanics and some whites, behind bars

There are numerous issues that deal with the American criminal justice system, but the two I found most prominant that occur on a daily basis is the abuse from police officers and clear racism shown by the American criminal justice system. To begin, racism as we know is a prejudice directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior. In the criminal justice system African Americans are directly targeted and punished in a higher more aggressive way, than say someone who is caucasian and committed the same exact crime. Racism is more often than not, the motive for official misconduct. There are examples of racism from every known region in the United States, spanning across centuries from slavery to

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.

A large cause for the writing of this book is that there is currently not much research or call for a criminal justice reform. According to Alexander the main goal of the book is to “stimulate a much-needed conversation about the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetuating racial hierarchy in the United States” (2012:16). Another premise for this research is that it is no longer socially correct to use race to discriminate against people, and Alexander argues that society as a whole is now using the

Many people would answer yes to the controversial topic of do minorities get unfairly targeted by law enforcement. But not only are minorities targeted unfairly, they also get treated unfairly through the legal system.

Michelle Alexander proceeds with another rhetorical question to allow the audience to further reflect on the current situation and stress the corruption of the justice system “If McCleskey’s evidence was not enough to prove discrimination in the absence of some kind of racist utterance, what would be?” (Alexander 67). She uses facts and statistics prior to this “the researchers found that defendants charged with killing white victims were 4.3 times more likely to receive a death sentence than defendants charged with killing blacks” (Dissenting 321; referenced by Alexander 67) to assert evidence of the racial profiling present in the American justice system. The persuasive technique is used to assert her opinion towards the audience by relating

We live in a society where ethnic minorities are target for every minimal action and/or crimes, which is a cause to be sentenced up to 50 years in jail. African Americans and Latinos are the ethnic minorities with highest policing crimes. In chapter two of Michelle Alexander’s book, The Lockdown, we are exposed to the different “crimes” that affects African American and Latino minorities. The criminal justice system is a topic discussed in this chapter that argues the inequality that people of color as well as other Americans are exposed to not knowing their rights. Incarceration rates, unreasonable suspicions, and pre-texts used by officers are things that play a huge role in encountering the criminal justice system, which affects the way

Kamalu, Ngozi Caleb, Margery Coulson-Clark, and Nkechi Margaret Kamalu. "Racial Disparities in Sentencing: Implications for the Criminal Justice System and the African American Community." African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies: AJCJS 4.1 (2010): 1-31. ProQuest. 6 Nov. 2017

While growing up in an urban area, it’s easy to dismiss the injustices and racism that one has grown up around, this is seen as normal. As a minority, when one is stopped by a police officer, the two most common outcomes are either death or being a brutally violent arrested. The United States is infamous for the number of incarcerated citizens: 670 per 100,000. Shockingly enough, the numbers continue to rise. How is it that the nation that extols the virtues of life, liberty and justice also maintains one of the most draconian prison systems in the world? In the past couple of years, there has been an increase in the public's exposure to police brutality. This topic was highly discussed after the death