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Racial discrimination within the U.S. criminal justice system
Racial inequality in the Criminal Justice system
Racial discrimination within the U.S. criminal justice system
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Openly meaningful reforms to the criminal justice system cannot be accomplished without acknowledgement of racial and ethnic disparities in the system. Focused attention on reduction of disparities is needed. The unequal treatment of minorities in the criminal justice system is one of the most critical issues in America. Diversity and multiculturalism issues in the judicial, policing, and correctional system has been an ongoing problem. We are often witnesses of the tensions between minority groups and law enforcement, unequal treatment in prisons, courts, and representations. Cultural competence is important in the criminal justice field, because it can decrease these tensions and unequal treatment we often witness. According to the Prison …show more content…
Being involved and trying to solve difficult situations, especially with minority groups can become a very difficult task. Developing knowledge and applying techniques to understand different minority groups background can be extremely helpful. In our everyday growing multicultural society, cultural competence can be very helpful, especially within law enforcement agencies. Cultural competence offers those techniques through programs and regulations in different agencies within the criminal justice system. This is offered through training, assessment, evaluation of cultural competence appearance, and practices within these agencies. Many of us are aware that individual officers can often damage a departments effort to become cultural competent by ignoring agency policy and by integrating their own negative racial bias belief. This is really bad because it can distinct individuals and cause negative interactions. One example is the recent deathly shooting that killed Jordan Woods, a 15-year old African American. Officer Roy Oliver from Texas, shot a vehicle that was driving away, which killed individual who was on the passenger side. The chief of the police department believed that there was no need for the shooting, since it was not considered an endangerment to the officer, and did not believed it met the agencies core values. It is important for agencies norms and officer’s perception to be at the same level so that the response can be positive, affective, and without any deadly confrontations. Individual officer’s biases can lead to negative outcomes. Not having these norms and policies upheld by officers can undercut the agencies intention to better relationships among law enforcement and minority
There have been different outcomes for different racial and gender groups in sentencing and convicting criminals in the United States criminal justice system. Experts have debated the relative importance of different factors that have led to many of these inequalities. Minority defendants are charged with ...
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...
According to Dr. Carl S. Taylor, the relationship between minority groups and police in the United States has historically been strained. Some cities have a deep and bitter history of bias and prejudice interwoven in their past relationships. The feeling in many communities today is that the system pits law enforcement as an occupying army versus the neighborhood. Dr. Taylor wrote about easing tensions between police and minorities, but stated “If there is any good news in the current situation, it is that the history of this strain has found the 1990’s ripe for change.
In the line of police force it is imperative to think outside of the box. Many people confuse a police officer’s curiosity as racial profiling and racism. However, this is how a police officer often finds the majority of their evidence. In many neighborhoods, there a dominant races that live within the community. For example, if a wealthy white man was driving around a predominantly minority-based community, it would be acceptable for a police officer to grow skeptical at this situation. It is obvious that man is out of place, and it is the police officer 's duty to further investigate the
The criminal justice system is full of inequality and disparities among race, gender, and class. From policing neighborhoods, and the ongoing war on drugs, to sentencing, there are underlying biases and discriminatory practices in the criminal justice system that impacts minority communities and groups. Fueled by stereotypes and generalizations, it is important to identify and discuss what crimes take place and who actually makes it up.
Sampson, Robert J. and Janet L. Lauritsen. 1997. "Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Crime and Criminal Justice in the United States." Crime and Justice 21:311-74. doi: 10.2307/1147634.
For much of the twentieth century, punishment and crime have portrayed some of the most powerful signs of the racial divide in the United States. Marginalized and the poor remains the most biased against the criminal justice scheme (Barak, 2010). Throughout the Americas. racial minorities were tried in white courtrooms by white juries. Class and race are challenging.
In America, police brutality affects and victimizes people of color mentally and socially. Social injustice has become a major issue, which involves the principle of white supremacy vs minorities. The current police brutality that has been occurring is culturally disconnecting ethnicities from one another. According to Cincinnati Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell, “.the cultural disconnect is very real; you have the weight of generations of abuse on African Americans,” (Flatow, 2016). For example, over the past four years, there have been countless acts of police brutality.
In modern-day America the issue of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system is controversial because there is substantial evidence confirming both individual and systemic biases. While there is reason to believe that there are discriminatory elements at every step of the judicial process, this treatment will investigate and attempt to elucidate such elements in two of the most critical judicial junctures, criminal apprehension and prosecution.
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.
The negative views of everyday people often make work hard for officers, adding more stress to their careers. The general public regularly criticizes officers for using excessive force and brutality, especially when a police officer ends up killing a suspect or criminal. Oftentimes, especially when a white police officer shoots a citizen of a minority race, the general public is quick to find faults in the officer, blaming the officer for being racist. However, cold, hard statistics show that the majority of police officers are, in fact, white, and the neighborhoods in which these officers are placed in tend to be high-crime areas with many minority citizens living there (Miller “When Cops Kill”). In addition, people might say that a citizen who was shot was not armed; however, almost anything close to the shot individual could have been turned into a deadly weapon that he or she could have used to wound or kill the officer involved. Whenever officers are in this position, the natural reaction is to defend themselves. Everyday, police officers confront the most aggressive, immoral, and sick-minded individuals of society. Officers jeopardize their own lives every time they report for work. Officers witness things that no person should ever have to encounter. They see the most horrific and gruesome scenes that the general public turns away from and
The criminal justice system is united under one basic law body, in which no racism is present. Personal beliefs and anecdotes prove nothing, the criminal justice system isn’t racist. Although it may seem African Americans are highly discriminated upon in the justice system, there is ample amounts of data to prove otherwise. The criminal justice system is united under one basic law body, in which no racism is present. The system is not to blame for the racial differences found in the United States criminal justice system. The racial issues found in the system are due to inner city isolation and common crime patterns involving drugs even if it may seem as if the system is racist.
Many Americans pretend that the days of racism are far behind; however it is clear that institutional racism still exists in this country. One way of viewing this institutional racism is looking at our nation’s prison system and how the incarceration rates are skewed towards African American men. The reasons for the incarceration rate disparity are argued and different between races, but history points out and starts to show the reason of why the disparity began. Families and children of the incarcerated are adversely affected due to the discrimination as well as the discrimination against African American students and their likelihood of going to prison compared to the white student. African American women are also affected by the discrimination in the incarceration rate. Many white Americans don’t see how racism affects incarceration rates, and that African Americans are more likely to face discrimination from the police as well as being falsely arrested.
The police officer may not have explicitly racist beliefs, nevertheless, may enact racist attitudes in an unconscious evaluation and responses. The police officer perceives the male black as a threat because of the implicit bias subconscious. Police officers have the cognitive to use negative stereotypes and unconsciously act on them, even when conflicts explicitly avow. Racial profiling by police officers is one of the primary concern and commonly used, implicit and explicit. Racial profiling has recently become decorous among law enforcement officers. “Some Americans believed that police engaged in racial profiling, and 69 percent disagreed with the practice” (Dempsey & Forst, 2015, p.243). Police officers have a lot of discretion in their jobs, and this particularly evident in traffic stops. If people don’t feel they can trust police officers, the relationship will deteriorate. All people, no matter what race have biases that lead to automatic behavior responses, we are more or less aware
This research essay discusses racial disparities in the sentencing policies and process, which is one of the major factors contributing to the current overrepresentation of minorities in the judicial system, further threatening the African American and Latino communities. This is also evident from the fact that Blacks are almost 7 times more likely to be incarcerated than are Whites (Kartz, 2000). The argument presented in the essay is that how the laws that have been established for sentencing tend to target the people of color more and therefore their chances of ending up on prison are higher than the whites. The essay further goes on to talk about the judges and the prosecutors who due to different factors, tend to make their decisions