Essay On Criminal Justice

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Recommended: Racial Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System

“I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished.”
Howard Zinn, Author
You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

Introduction
On August 12, 2013, the United States Attorney General Eric Holder attended an annual meeting of the American Bar Association's House of Delegates to which he was a keynote speaker. During the speech Mr. Holder ran off a litany of issues ranging voter’s rights to poverty, but the one issue he had a lot say on was the incarceration of so many US citizens. Attorney General Holder (2013) explains;
Today, a vicious cycle of poverty, criminality, and incarceration traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities. And many aspects of our criminal justice system may actually exacerbate these problems, rather than alleviate them.
It’s clear – as we come together today – that too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no truly good law enforcement reason. It’s clear, at a basic level, that 20th-century criminal justice solutions are not adequate to overcome our 21st-century challenges. And it is well past time to implement common sense changes that will foster safer communities from coast to coast (The US Department of Justice, para. 8-9, 2013).

The speech seemed to represent a changing of direction. Previous admini...

... middle of paper ...

... I could get the children interested in something other than cartoons and video games. We cannot be this ignorant about everything.
Finally, economic status. The system is so broken that I do not see a solution on how to fix it. Defendants do not stand a chance in a today’s criminal justice system. Jobs must be the priority of the country. No jobs means more crimes committed by minorities. Whenever avenues are not available, the group with less will seek out the people with more. If they cannot get to the people with more, then they will attack the closet to them. Usually it is their own kind. But, with all that has been said, people need to stop committing crimes, then nobody can claim that it was the other group.
In the end the question, is the criminal justice system racist? That answer is still debatable. Strong cases can be made on both sides.

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