Aleah Fitzgerald Ms. Clifford-Weiss March 15, 2023 AP Language and Composition The Criminal Justice System and its Criminally Unjust Connection to Slavery When the average person thinks of a criminal, the stereotypical image of a person of a wrongdoer: a thief, or a murderer. However, the image of a criminal became polluted by the criminal justice system. African American people are criminalized because they have become the poster face of criminal behavior because of the racism embedded in society. Racist ideologies get them put in prison or even removed from their homes. There is an ongoing problem of marginalization and discrimination of African Americans in the criminal justice system, rooted in racist attitudes and prejudices inherited …show more content…
Upon exiting prison, people that were convicted work hard to rebuild their lives and join society. However, for African Americans, rebuilding their lives comes with an extra roadblock. Most African American people that entered the prison system entered when they were in their adolescents. The criminal justice system, however, “move[d] to deny prisoners’ educational services, disadvantaging their job and career prospects when released” (Miller and Garan 95). Because they lacked the basic “educational services” needed to get a job after being incarcerated, African American people aren't able to provide for themselves immediately. They can't get a job because of their lack of education, but they need money to get such an education; without a job, they won't be able to get an education. And, thus a never-ending cycle repeats. The government is supposed to provide relief to people that have recently been released from prison. However, most programs of this sort are inaccessible. They are “few and inadequate, so those who try to return to their communities after incarceration often lack skills, counseling, training, and other necessary supports, all of which contribute to high rates of recidivism” (Miller and Garan 95). Not having access to programs that could provide support and relief to a person after they were imprisoned causes them to lack the ability to become functioning citizens and better themselves. They are willing to commit crimes in order to make ends meet, which causes their ‘high rates of recidivism”. By committing crimes to support themselves after being failed by the justice system, African American people are painted as having criminal and violent tendencies. Mass hysteria about crime arises which “invoke[s] the society-must-be-defended logic” (Brown and Baragainer 213). Therefore, people of
Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black.” We must change the
The fourth chapter explores how the system of mass incarceration affects African American communities both during incarceration and after being released with the title of being a felon. The fifth chapter is where the author explains the title of the book, being the idea of how the “Age of Colorblindness” has created a world where the discrimination is harder to witness from the outside since it is under the disguise of the criminal justice system. This chapter also compares the potential for harm in the modern system to the harm that came from the Jim Crow laws. The sixth and final chapter explores the ideas of how the status quo in society makes it harder to dismantle the system of mass
Today, Black people are subjected to a criminal justice system where race plays a central role in constructing presumptions of criminality (Davis 28).
African-Americans are disproportionately imprisoned by discriminatory laws and deprived of their civil rights by our supposed democracy. This country’s criminal justice system still has not escaped the influence of racial prejudice. The criminal injustice system has transformed enslavement and institutionalized the violence and horror of previous generations, as slaves are no longer held in captivity on plantations, but rather in
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, M. (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: The New Press. Michelle Alexander in her book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" argues that law enforcement officials routinely racially profile minorities to deny them socially, politically, and economically as was accustomed in the Jim Crow era.
African Americans continue to face significant challenges and a lack of opportunities that hinder their socio-economic advancement. This Write-Up explores the systemic inequities that contribute to the persistent disparities faced by African Americans in various spheres of life, including education, employment, housing, and criminal justice. The average African American youth must think either Basketball, Football or Music will give them a way out and a chance to experience the world just like everyone else. Factors that lead that conclusion include Lack of Proper Education, Employment Challenges and the Justice System One of the key factors contributing to the lack of opportunities for African Americans is the education system's inequities. Many predominantly African American neighborhoods lack adequate resources, resulting in underfunded schools, outdated facilities, and limited access to quality teachers.
Michelle Alexander, similarly, points out the same truth that African American men are targeted substantially by the criminal justice system due to the long history leading to racial bias and mass incarceration within her text “The New Jim Crow”. Both Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Michelle Alexander’s text exhibit the brutality and social injustice that the African American community experiences, which ultimately expedites the mass incarceration of African American men, reflecting the current flawed prison system in the U.S. The American prison system is flawed in numerous ways as both King and Alexander points out. A significant flaw that was identified is the injustice of specifically targeting African American men for crimes due to the racial stereotypes formed as a result of racial formation. Racial formation is the accumulation of racial identities and categories that are formed, reconstructed, and abrogated throughout history.
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
Soon after slavery was abolished in the south, as a form of retaliation, southern states utilized “criminal justice for racial control”(Eji). All in all, by using criminal justice for racial control, the south effectively executed the mass incarceration of African Americans, which had become so deeply ingrained in American society that it is still present in today’s world. Not only are black people in disadvantaged communities, but they are constantly criminalized, and because of this, represent a high percentage of the prison population. The effects of slavery are still present in the current criminal justice system and it is important to acknowledge that even though efforts are being made to reduce its presence, it will likely take decades to fully eradicate the racial bias that African Americans face in the criminal justice system. Furthermore, slavery contributed to the racial bias in the criminal justice system by forming a gap
Racism in the Criminal Justice System Over the years, several people have studied the subject of racism. Moreover, several people have argued about numerous topics they assert to be racist. One side of the story claims that one’s action establish his retribution, while the other side of the story says that racism is still a tremendous botheration today, especially in the Criminal Justice System. The Criminal Justice System accumulates tremendous criticism for being assumed to be racist and incriminating too many blacks.
People of all different races and ethnicities are locked behind bars because they have been convicted of committing a crime and they are paying for the consequences. When looking at the racial composition of a prison in the United States, it does not mimic the population. This is because some races and ethnicities are over represented in the correctional system in the U.S. (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2018). According Walker et al. (2018), African-Americans/Blacks make up less than fifteen percent of the U.S. population, while this race has around thirty-seven percent of the population in the correctional system today.
This article talks about Black Criminal Stereotypes and Racial Profiling. It begins explaining how racial profiling was always apart of American culture but after the civil war, blacks started to become more involved in racial profiling when it came to crime. The word “criminal predator” started to become a way to describe young black males. It is stated that this bad reputation that they have dates back to the enslavement of Africans in the United States. Blacks are seen as physically threatening because of their “biological flow”.
Annotated Bibliography Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Alexander opens up on the history of the criminal justice system, disciplinary crime policy and race in the U.S. detailing the ways in which crime policy and mass incarceration have worked together to continue the reduction and defeat of black Americans.
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.
So when public discourse dwells on offenders, what usually comes to mind are racially charged subtexts. For instance, while poor and black women became targets of the criminal justice system, middle- and upper-class women escaped scrutiny (). In other words, “crime” is more than the violation of a legalized social norm, and “justice” is more than the equal application of laws.