Racism In The Justice System Essay

In the United States of America there has always been a record of systematic racism in the justice system. Some people falsely believe that this systematic racism ended with the civil rights movement, but it has been proven in recent decades that people of colour are still disproportionately incarcerated and harmed by the justice system. This gaping disparity greatly affects the communities and children of the people who are incarcerated and and it creates a sense of hopelessness in people who have done nothing wrong. Furthermore, injustice due to incarceration continues inside the prison and in the lives of those targeted after as well. Overall, the evolution of justice has always tipped the scale in favour of white people and disproportionate

In the Civil Rights era of the 1960’s there was still a wide gap between white and black incarceration rates. In these times there were much less people in prison, but black people were still 5 times more likely to be incarcerated than white people. This is not a surprise because racism was more open and accepted in these times. This era is what allowed for the systematic imprisonment and racism we see in our institutions today. Although black people made great strides in reaching for equality in this decade, there were still many systems put in place that continue to disadvantage people of colour in the justice system. This time period normalized heavy black imprisonment, so that in the future this disparity was seen as the norm. This heavy incarceration was a way for white people in positions of power to continue to be in charge of black and hispanic people’s lives. In a way, the huge amounts of arrests of black and hispanic people over time was an attempt to reinstate state sanctioned slavery. This will be expanded further later, but it can be seen that the people who wished to continue white supremacy in the 1960 may have seen prisons as a way to do this without it being common