The intention of my research is to expose the racist tactics in the criminal justice system that have been camouflaged. I am prepared to explain how racism contributes to the vast number of incarcerated African Americans, and other minorities. The criminal justice system has created and perpetuated racial hierarchy in the United States, and has done so throughout history. I propose the question: Are minorities being targeted within the Criminal Justice System? African Americans are criminalized and targeted because of their skin color, and it is not fair. This argument connects to the theory of Law in the Book vs. Law in Action, and relates to how this type of discrimination from the law affects society. In particular, the way the Law is written in codes, statutes, judicial opinions that supposedly support the righteousness of justice, is a far cry from the way the Law actually operates. Despite substantial progress in recent years, racial discrimination remains a significant problem in the United States. I will prove this argument with the help of various peer-reviewed articles, and non-scholarly article that examine this unequal behavior.
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.
Even before our nation’s founding, people of color have been discriminated. Decades pass and the criminal justice system is still “racist” labeling people of color as criminal, meaning black equal criminals therefore is fine to discriminate people of color just because they’re criminals. In “The New Jim Crow” the system targets black men because they are associated with crime, meaning crime stands in for race. In the other hand, As Heather Mac Donald writes in her book “The War on Cops”, “The criminal-justice system does treat individual suspects and criminals equally, they concede. But the problem is how society defines crime and criminals” (154). Society is the one who chooses who is criminal. In this case society is stripping off the rights of people of color. As Barack Obama say in “The War on Cops”, “blacks and whites are arrested at very different rates, are
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
I believe that the federal justice system is just and unbiased. The federal justice system has guidelines and rules to keep them from using power improperly and targeting groups of people based on their race. This is talked about in article “Is the Criminal Justice System Racist”. There are statistics given pertaining to the prison sentences given to African Americans, prosecution during a felony trial, and crime/prison rates.
The author found that more people of color, especially black males are under the control our criminal justice system than were enslaved in 1850. The author supports the pervious idea by using specific examples such as the “War on Drugs” to show people of color are targeted more by law enforcement officers and scrutinize harsher by our courts for drug laws but the drug usage is used at the same rate by blacks and whites. With the help of mass-media, the “crack” epidemic in inner cities, the War on Drugs policies, the “Get tough on crime” policies, and the propaganda about people of color all have influenced the way mainstream society thinks about blacks. The author found that mainstream society believes that black people commits more crime and uses more drugs than white people, so therefore blacks deserved to incarcerated. However, Michelle Alexander disproves in “The New Jim Crow” that blacks commit more crimes than whites, the drug usage rates are the same between both races, propaganda has influenced the way mainstream society views blacks and that the “War on Drugs” and the “Get Tough on Crime” was policies targeted towards inner cities and people of color with the intent to enslave them in the criminal justice system by giving them felonies in which people of color are disenfranchise by society. The author calls this a “Racial Caste System” because it discriminates like it never has before, since it allows anyone who is labeled a “felon” to be legally discriminated against with housing, education, employment and voting rights. Since many more people of color are made felons than white by mass incarceration, racial discrimination is a powerful as it was under slavery or under the post-slavery era of Jim Crow
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.
Police have faced armed white people that were threatening to shoot and the worst punishment they were given was arrest. While the criminals were yelling threats towards them, the police were trying to calm them down and get them to put down their weapons for even up to an hour long. There has been similar moments with non white people that were unarmed and causing no harm but still the police chose to shoot the offender for the slightest threat. The police need to keep everyone secure no matter what without considering a person 's ethnicity. Police are supposed to be heroes, grant us safety, and end the day with justice.
Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander published in 2012, is a 261 page book detailing how mass incarceration has become the new form of legalized discrimination.
This novel written by Michelle Alexander presents research on the issue of colorblindness and mass incarceration of minorities in African American and latino racial groups which is a result of bias judgment. The author’s research indicates that people of African American and Latino ethnicity are more likely to be searched and imprisoned than white Americans although the crime rate of African Americans and Hispanics are roughly at the same rate or slightly lower than the white American crime rate. This is important to the criminal justice system in general because it shows that the government is encouraging an issue great civil rights activists have worked hard and gave their life fighting to improve.
Racial and ethnicity discrimination in the justice system have been around since the beginning of this country against “Negroid” . Writing this research paper brings me back to the first book I ever read; “The Emmett Till Story;” which should be a reminder how awful our justice system can be. The problem we are having today in America is that Emmett Till’s story is still going on in 2017. The story goes like this per emmetttillmurder.com “While visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman four days earlier.” Now this is we their system have fail, and continued to nose-dive the Negroid around in America. With all the evidence at hands, and witnesses like Moses’ Wright on September 23, the all-white jury deliberated for less than an hour before issuing a verdict of “not guilty,”
This essay will examine three types of disparities that happen under the United States sentencing today. Judges tend to look at the characteristics of the victim involved in the crime to determine the outcome of the sentence. Why should someone’s race, gender, or even religion effect the time they receive for their jail sentence? The 1984 Sentencing Reform Act (SRA) was created to eliminate disparities, basically explaining how one’s ethnicity, gender, and religion should not affect their sentencing. Even with this act existing, race and gender has still plays a huge part on unnecessary sentencing lengths.
For years now there has been a lot of controversy involving the looming question: Is the criminal justice system racist? Racism is prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one 's own race is superior. Ever since the Trayvon Martin case of 2012, the justice system has been in a complete downfall including all of the police brutality cases since then also. According to sources, 1 of every 4 African American males born this decade are expected to go to prison in their lifetime. Census Bureau reports that the U.S. is 13 percent percent black, 61 percent white, and 17 percent latino.
Police brutality will be an issue until a solution is created. Many individuals are victims of this form of assault on daily basis. The liberties held by law enforcement are challenged each time they perform their duties. Police officers should abide by the same laws that each citizen is expected to abide by. Although police officers are granted with the right to determine laws as constitutional, civilians are sometimes treated in ways that are beyond unlawful.