Today, minorities can be seen as victims and offenders when they are in the criminal justice system. Minorities in low income communities do commit crimes more than their white counterparts but this is not because of race but because of their socioeconomic backgrounds. What is interesting is that everyone has implicit bias about people in general and they do not even know it. These biases can have negative or positive outcomes when it comes to dealing with suspects and criminals law enforcement deal with every day. An implicit bias is when a person has a certain attitude about a person or group that can change how decisions are made about them without them even knowing it.
These biases happen without the person consciously knowing they have
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This article was about two young men, Cory Batey and Brock Turner, who committed the same crime but at different times, different victim and different place but charged differently. One of the young men received a mandatory sentence of 15-25 years in prison and the other young man only received a six month sentence and instead of going to prison, he served maybe half of his sentence in the local jail. Both of these men had evidence that confirmed they raped a woman and they were found guilty of multiple felony rape charges. Yet, Brock Turner, gets a slap on the wrist, will eventually be able to go back to school and live his young life. The other man, who is African-American, Cory Batey, will be almost 50 years old when he gets out of prison and he committed the same crime.
My personal thoughts on this video is that defendants who commit the same crime, no matter where, should be sentenced the same, based on the law. These defendants should not get light sentence because of their socioeconomic standing or their financial influence in the community. The racial disparity that minorities are going through within the judicial system are not ethically moral and should not be happening, their sentences should be based on facts and the
After reading See No Bias by Shankar Vedantam I have learned that many people are unaware their biases. Mahzarin Banaji took a bias test, now known as the Implicit Association Test and her results stated she had a biased for whites over blacks. She didn’t understand her results because she is a minority too. She did an experiment where she had people picking from a list of unknown names. “The experiment showed how subtle cues can cause errors without people 's awareness.” Millions of people have taking the bias test and large majorities of people showed biases, even if they said they had no biases. The results also showed that minorities had the same biases as the majority groups. For example, “Some 48 percent of blacks showed a pro-white or anti-black bias; 36 percent of Arab
After watching the full documentary on the crime that Alonza Thomas committed, I believe that he received a much harsher sentence than he deserved. I agree that what he did was wrong and he should have been convicted of a crime, but the extent to which he was punished was far more severe than the crime itself.Personally, I feel that 1) he should have not been tried as an adult and 2) he should have not been sent to a maximum security prison with adult criminals. For example, if a rapists commits a crime, they receive somewhere between three to four months jail time in some cases. In Alonza’s case, he never had past criminal record and never committed a crime but I feel due to him being an underprivileged minority, he was given maximum sentencing.
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 ...
Gender and Race play the most prominent role in the criminal justice system. As seen in the movie Central Park 5, five African American boys were charged with the rape of the a white women. In class decision we’ve discussed how the media explodes when it reports cross-racial crimes. The Central Park 5 were known everywhere and even terms were being made up during the process such as wilding. Also, during one of the class discussions it was brought up that victims of crime are of the same race of the perpetrator. However, the media likes to sensationalize crime of the victim being of a different race, because it makes for a good story. By doing this, the media does create more of a division of race. As seen in the video Donald Trump was trying
Furthermore, the authors aim to unfold the scientific logic of their analysis of the effects of hidden biases so people will be “better able to achieve the alignment,” between their behavior and intentions (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013) preface
Nationwide, blacks are incarcerated at 8.2 times the rate of whites (Human Rights Watch, 2000).” This difference in proportionality does not necessarily involve direct discrimination; it can be explained by a number of combined factors. Correctional agencies do not control the number of minorities who enter their facilities. Therefore, the disparity must come from decisions made earlier in the criminal justice process. Law enforcement, court pre-sentencing policies and procedures, and sentencing all have a direct effect on the overrepresentation of minorities in the correctional population.
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.
Aside from individuals who were actually convicted of a felony, the tens of millions of Americans who were arrested without ever being convicted for a crime are no exception to this form of legalized discrimination as the same constraints applied to convicted felons are unfairly applied to them as well (Alexander 145). When it comes to felon discrimination, the severity of the felony does not matter. Public housing policies deny eligibility to people who have even the most minor criminal backgrounds. Due to the fact that people of color such as African Americans and Hispanics are primary targets of police in the War on Drugs, they are much more likely to be arrested for minor, nonviolent crimes as opposed to people who are white (Alexander 145). Instead of racial discrimination being nonexistent in present society, Michelle Alexander argues that racial discrimination has merely been extended to occur through subliminally discriminative colorblind practices (Alexander 11). The criminal justice system still targets racial minorities and deprives them of basic human rights by permitting legalized discrimination, such as the discrimination existent in public housing seen by the usage of racially restrictive covenants in the past, and by the
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.
“These identities are constructed through various social institutions and structures-e.g, family, media, education, law, economics, religious institutions, the state, housing, transportation, architecture-that position us not just differently but inequitable as well. Thus, identity categories affect our sense of self as well as our life chances profoundly”(Braithwaite and Orr). Americas criminal justice system basis itself on double standards, hypocrisy, and institutionalized racism. It is unbelievable to me that Patreese served the longest in prison, a whopping seven years for a misdemeanor charge. The other women only spent two to three years in prison. I feel so terrible for all the women but especially Patreese who lost two brothers and Renata, who lost her mother and lost custody of her son. I feel extreme anger for the judge and prosecutors involved in this case. “Race is a social, economic, and political system of division and inequality. We know that racial categories are artificial because each year that the United States has taken a census (every ten years since 1790), there has never been a census that has used the same racial terms from a previous census. Each census a different set of terms are used, showing that the United States government cannot even agree on what the racial terms should be”(DeMello). We are living in a dysfunctional
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
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.
Growing up in a very accepting and forward home, I always found myself to be free of most bias. Having been the target of some racial prejudice in the past, I always told myself that I would make sure nobody else had to feel the same way. While this may be a great way to think, it really only covers the fact that you will not have any explicit bias. What I have realized during the course of this class is that implicit bias often has a much stronger effect on us than we might think, and even the most conscious people can be affected.
Throughout the past decades, Māori has been heavily over-represented in the New Zealand criminal justice system. Māori is significantly more likely to be disadvantaged by various risk factors which are linked to criminal offending behaviours. This is not a new phenomenon towards indigenous people as it is a long-standing, wicked problem, with origins in the discriminatory colonial practices. Based on Statistic New Zealand, Maori are 15 percentage of the New Zealand population and yet Maori accounted for 42 percent of apprehensions, 34.5 percent of convictions and 50.8 percent of all inmates in 2009. This essay will discuss the events and factors that have led to New Zealand having an overrepresentation of Maori within the criminal justice system.
Though only 14.6 per cent of the New Zealand population is Maori, Maori constitute 50 per cent of all persons imprisoned (Department of Corrections, 2007). Thus, it is apparent that New Zealand’s Indigenous population is overrepresented in its criminal justice system. The causes of this disproportionately high rate of Maori incarceration stem from colonialism. To address this social injustice, New Zealand courts have attempted to recognise indigeneity in the sentencing of Maori offenders. However, the acceptance of indigeneity by courts has been superficial by incorporating elements of tikanga Maori into the Western legal system, rather than creating an autonomous system of justice for Maori.