1. Why do Black and Minority Ethnic young people experience differential treatment in the Youth Justice System?
This essay will explore whether there is equality in the criminal justice system. It aims to look at statistics, legislation and studies from the past 30-40 years to get a thorough analysis of the processes and experiences different races in particular black and ethnic minority youths have been through within the criminal justice system.
There have been various alterations to the definition of “Black”. In the USA Frederickson (1987) Illustrated in 1705, the state of Virginia boldly declared any child, grandmother, grandfather, grandchild of a Negro, would be deemed as a Negro. Consequently, in 1866, Virginia stated any individual with one fourth of Negro heritage should be deemed as a “coloured person”. This percentage was altered again in 1910; Individuals with one sixteenth of Negro blood would be classified as black. The last amendment was made in 1924 with the implementation of the Racial Black Purity Act; however the previous percentages were eradicated and a penultimate decision was made: a black person is any one person with black Ancestry. This definition was often referred to as the “One drop” rule. However, the act was seen as problematic, as it became apparent not all individuals` knew or had the resources to access or trace their Ancestry roots.
The term Black and Minority ethnic (BME), is now widely used. BME was mainly used to prescribe people with colour (dominantly black), usually of Caribbean, African, or Asian descent (Somerville & Steele, 2002) .(BME) communities are comprised of people from different “national backgrounds and ethnicities “ living within the UK (Casey & B...
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In the essay “The One-Drop Rule Defined,” an excerpt from the book Who is Black? One Nation’s Answer, F. James Davis asserts that the one-drop rule classifies anyone with a single drop of “black blood” as black. It was introduced in the American South, in an attempt to keep the power and money in the hands of the whites. The rule, however, has outgrown the South and is now used by the nation in order to determine who is black. It
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The majority of our prison population is made up of African Americans of low social and economic classes, who come from low income houses and have low levels of education. The chapter also discusses the amount of money the United States loses yearly due to white collar crime as compared to the cost of violent crime. Another main point was the factors that make it more likely for a poor person to be incarcerated, such as the difficulty they would have in accessing adequate legal counsel and their inability to pay bail. This chapter addresses the inequality of sentencing in regards to race, it supplies us with NCVS data that shows less than one-fourth of assailants are perceived as black even though they are arrested at a much higher rate. In addition to African Americans being more likely to be charged with a crime, they are also more likely to receive harsher punishments for the same crimes- which can be seen in the crack/cocaine disparities. These harsher punishments are also shown in the higher rates of African Americans sentenced to
In the wake of President Obama’s election, the United States seems to be progressing towards a post-racial society. However, the rates of mass incarceration of black males in America deem this to be otherwise. Understanding mass incarceration as a modern racial caste system will reveal the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetuating racial hierarchy America. The history of social control in the United States dates back to the first racial caste systems: slavery and the Jim Crow Laws. Although these caste systems were outlawed by the 13th amendment and Civil Rights Act respectively, they are given new life and tailored to the needs of the time.In other words, racial caste in America has not ended but has merely been redesigned in the shape of mass incarceration. Once again, the fact that more than half of the young black men in many large American cities are under the control of the criminal justice system show evidence of a new racial caste system at work. The structure of the criminal justice system brings a disproportionate number of young black males into prisons, relegating them to a permanent second-class status, and ensuring there chances of freedom are slim. Even when minorities are released from prisons, they are discriminated against and most usually end up back in prisons . The role of race in criminal justice system is set up to discriminate, arrest, and imprison a mass number of minority men. From stopping, searching, and arresting, to plea bargaining and sentencing it is apparent that in every phases of the criminal justice system race plays a huge factor. Race and structure of Criminal Justice System, also, inhibit the integration of ex offenders into society and instead of freedom, relea...
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Even though racism has always been a problem since the beginning of time, recently in the United States, there has been a rise in discrimination and violence has been directed towards the African American minority primarily from those in the white majority who believe they are more superior, especially in our criminal justice system. There are many different reasons for the ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system between the majority and the minority, but some key reasons are differential involvement, individual racism, and institutional racism to why racial disparities exist in
These authors’ arguments are both well-articulated and comprehensive, addressing virtually every pertinent concept in the issue of explaining racially disparate arrest rates. In The Myth of a Racist Criminal Justice System, Wilbanks insists that racial discrimination in the criminal justice system is a fabrication, explaining the over-representation of African Americans in arrest numbers simply through higher incidence of crime. Walker, Spohn and DeLone’s The Color of Justice dissents that not only are African Americans not anywhere near the disproportionate level of crime that police statistics would indicate, they are also arrested more because they are policed discriminately. Walker, Spohn and DeLone addi...
Many inequalities exist within the justice system that need to be brought to light and addressed. Statistics show that African American men are arrested more often than females and people of other races. There are some measures that can and need to be taken to reduce the racial disparity in the justice system. Racial disparity in the criminal justice system exists when the proportion of a racial or ethnic group within the control system is higher than the proportion of the group in the general population. The cause of this disparity varies and can include differences in the levels of criminal activity, law enforcements emphasis on particular communities, legislative policies, and/or decision making by one or more persons at some level in the criminal justice system.
Northup, Solomon, Sue L. Eakin, and Joseph Logsdon. Twelve years a slave. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968. Print.
2010, “Racial Disparities in Sentencing: Implications for the Criminal Justice System and the African American Community”, African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies 4(1): 1-31, in this Albonetti’s study is discussed in which it was found that minority status alone accounted for an additional sentence length of “one to seven months.” African American defendants were “likely to receive pretrial release but were more likely to be convicted, and be given harsher sentences after conviction than white defendants charged with the same crimes.” One of the reasons behind this are the sentencing laws, it is seen that these laws are designed in a way that they tend to be harsher towards a certain group of people, generally towards the people of color than others thus leading to inequality with the sentencing
For most American’s especially African Americans, the abolition of slavery in 1865 was a significant point in history, but for African Americans, although slavery was abolished it gave root for a new form of slavery that showed to be equally as terrorizing for blacks. In the novel Slavery by Another Name, by Douglas Blackmon he examines the reconstruction era, which provided a form of coerced labor in a convict leasing system, where many African Americans were convicted on triumphed up charges for decades.
Racism within the Justice System. Living in the twenty first century, Americans would like to believe that they are living in the land of the free, where anyone and everyone can live an ordinary life without worrying that they will be arrested on the spot for doing absolutely nothing. The sad truth, with the evidence to prove it, is that this American Dream is not all that it appears to be. It has been corrupted and continues to be, everyday, by the racism that is in the criminal justice system of America. Racism has perpetuated the corruption of the criminal justice system from the initial stop, the sentencing in court, all the way to the life of an inmate in the prison.
An individual’s decision to commit crimes is not something that is passed on from their parents. In our urban communities, more often, among most populations that are nonwhite, the children of these households are exposed to the criminal justice system more frequently than their white counterparts. This happens because of the extreme disparities present in the prosecution of brown people in general. Children of our nonwhite families grow up with parents, uncles, siblings, and friends who are in and out of the jails and prisons in our country. This creates a normalizing undertone to criminal behavior and exposure to the criminal justice system. 75 percent of nonwhite youths between 15 to 18 years of age, would admit they expect to go to prison at some time in their lives. This acceptance of incarceration is a very undesirable aspect to our inner-city communities. The decision to commit crime is no longer weighed against incarceration or consequence because there is no shame or fear to the incarceration