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Racial discrimination in the United States
Racism in the criminal justice system 2018 usa outline
Racial discrimination in the us today
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There are many inequalities in the Criminal justice system based on Race, Gender, Special Offense inmates, chronic mental illness, and how programs can help inmates when released. “African-American males are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white males and 2.5 times more likely than Hispanic males. In 2013, almost 3 percent of black males were imprisoned compared to 0.5 percent of white males. America’s prisons and jails cost more than $80 billion annually – about equivalent to the budget of the federal Department of Education” (Eisen, 2015). After hearing McCleskey v. Kemp trial, the court is informed about the defendant’s background and criminal history; mitigating factors affecting culpability brought to the attention of the
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 New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander introduces readers to the phenomenon of mass incarceration in the United States and challenges readers to view the crisis as the “ the most pressing racial justice issue of our time.” In the introduction, Alexander writes “what the book is intended to do and that is to stimulate much needed conversation about the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetuating racial hierarchy in the United States.” We come to understand, How the United States create criminal justice system and maintain racial hierarchy through mass incarceration? How the current system of mass incarceration in the United States mirrors earlier systems of racialized
In the American life there is reasonable doubt to state that all citizens are treated equally. Equality among all is something that has been fought for and should be put into action. However, it is evident that in the legal system of the United States there is no such thing as equality. People get treated differently depending on different factors. It is not fair for people to get different treatment just because let’s say they are a different race or have different beliefs then others. Each person is unique and therefore should not be treated differently just because they are different. So should the US propose legislation to reinforce equality under the law? Yes, the US should propose legislation to reinforce equality under the law as everyone deserves the same opportunity.
According to a report from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), 70 percent of American prisoners are non-white (EJI, 2017). Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than with the treatment of African American defendants. To be sure, the origin of several elements of contemporary policing began as state and local governments’ attempts to find runaway slaves and police slave and ex-slave communities in their jurisdiction (Archbold, 2013). That is, one of the fundamental purposes of the criminal justice system was racial control (EJI, 2017). The results of that legacy are that an African American defendant more than seven times as likely to be convicted as a white American. That rate increases significantly, if the defendant is African American and under the age of
The definition of mass incarceration is a term used by social activists to describe the significant increase in the number of incarcerated people in United States ' prisons over the past forty years, from 1970 to 2005 the number of inmates has risen 700%. Lawrence (2011) has stated that more than 2.3 million people in America are in jail or prison and sixty percent are African American and Latino. In this paper, I will present information on mass incarceration of black males, the development of a racial injustice due to rising of incarceration rates, and the financial standing that the prison system has, due to its massive expansion.
Opponents to mass incarceration like Michelle Alexander have called it the “New Jim Crow”, a social institution aimed at limiting the rights of African Americans. Upon their release criminals are legally denied the right to vote, excluded from juries, and placed in a position of subordination. Others would suggest that, “cultural shifts, political realignments, changes in job prospects for low-skilled men, and perhaps most importantly, legal changes” have led to the severe increase and absolute disparity in the rates of black imprisonment over the late 20th and early 21st centuries. One thing is certain, mass incarceration would be justifiable if crime decreased but that is just not the case. Evidence has shown that the benefits of mass imprisonment in reducing crime have diminished over time and incarceration is now a much less effective method for crime control than it was before the 1990s. Due to factual evidence of high rates racial disparity in imprisonment, mass incarceration can be seen as a significant generator of social inequality. The history and the study of mass incarceration is important because it defines us as a society just like slavery and Jim Crow once
In the last couple of years, many Americans including political leaders have agreed that our criminal justice system is deeply flawed, unsustainable and inefficient and needs to be reformed. Our criminal justice system was “created to keep communities safe, to respect and restore victims and to return offenders who leave prison to be self-sufficient and law-abiding” (DeRoche, 2012). However, it is not only the offenders but the criminal justice system itself. There are five major problems within our criminal justice system. The first and biggest problem is our overpopulated prisons. Each year millions of people are incarcerated in local, state, and federal prisons. According to the National Association for the Advancement of Color People
Racial disparities in sentencing are consistent with a larger pattern of racial disparities that plague the U.S. criminal justice system from arrest through incarceration. Blacks and Latinos are arrested at disproportionate rates and are extremely represented in the nationwide prison and jail population. Black and Latino offenders sentenced in state and federal courts face significantly greater odds of incarceration than similarly situated white offenders and receive longer sentences than their white counterparts in some jurisdictions.
America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, in which most inmates are Black and Hispanic. Blacks are perceived as socially deviant, so society easily deems them as being criminals. Assata Shakur was convicted and prosecuted for numerous charges, including resisting lawful arrest, possession of an illegal weapon, intention to kill, physical assault, robbery at several locations, and other charges (13). Although Shakur was not at the scene of these alleged crimes, law enforcement decisively arrested and charged her. If Shakur was White, rather than a Black woman, the legal system would have perceived her as innocent and treat her leniently. Nevertheless, Law Enforcement carries a bias prejudice towards Blacks, and benefits from their oppression. Similarly to the New Jim Crow, in which incarceration is utilized as a means to exploit Blacks and empower Whites. Shakur believes, “Prisons are a profitable business. They are a way of legally perpetuating slavery… They certainly aren’t planning to put white people in them. Prisons are part of this government’s genocidal war against Black and Third World People” (Shakur, 65). The privatization of prisons has increased and pursues to capitalize on minority inmates through the production of goods, while lawfully abiding by the 13th Amendment. Likewise, One who is convicted of an alleged crime is faced with a trial that is skewed to oppress Blacks from
The United States has an enormous prison problem. The impact of incarceration on crime is inconsistent. The increase in incarceration does not help reduce the crime rate. Incarceration may account for a third of the decrease in crime rates but is not significant to be a contributing factor. Modern incarceration levels do little to deter crime while they do much to rip up families, increase racial disparities and destroy lives. District attorneys
The number of incarcerated citizens has risen from around 330,000 in 1980 to nearly 2,000,000 today (Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, Prisoners of 1990s). The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population, yet the U.S. has around 25% of the population of incarcerated persons (NAACP 1). This has led to an unnecessary overcrowding of our nation’s state and federal prisons. The Vera Institute of Justice has released a study that found the aggregate cost of prisons in 2010 in the 40 states that had participated in the study was around $39 billion dollars; each incarcerated citizen costs each taxpayers nearly $31,286 per inmate (Vera Institute of Justice
Evidence overwhelmingly shows that glaring racial disparities do exist in patterns of incarceration throughout the country. The racial group that has been consistently the most disproportionately affected is the African American community: while they make up only about thirteen percent of the United States population, they make up approximately half of the nation’s incarcerated population (Yates 1001). This indicates that external factors are likely at play. Previous research suggests three common theories for why this disparity may exist. The first is that African Americans break the law more often and commit more serious crimes than their white counterparts (Yates 1002). The second theory is that racial discrimination against African Americans on the part of criminal justice actors causes the disparity (Yates 1002). The third main theory is an economic one, that states that African Americans are more likely to become incarcerated since they are more likely to live in low-income communities that face high levels of poverty and unemployment (Yates 1002). Racial disparities in incarceration rates are complex phenomena, however, and cannot be attributed to any single factor (Yates
According to John Kuroski, assistant editor of All That is Interesting, only thirteen percent of the U.S. population is Black, although our prisons have about triple that amount of Black men at thirty-seven percent (Kuroski). The racial disparity in prison is a troubling issue. When minorities are highly over-represented in prison populations it is necessary to look at the regulations, laws and practices that perpetuate this problem. When a minority population is jailed at triple the amount than should be expected, things need to be delved into more deeply to find underlying causes. Kuroski’s data shows that Black men are five times more likely than white men to be put behind bars (Kuroski). This system, that the U.S. has perpetuated, of continually exploiting the Black population is horrifying, while also easy to ignore if one is not constantly aware of the issue. This may be in part to the continuing racial discrimination laws such as stop-and-frisk, which often targets young Black men. According to Kuroski, African-Americans are imprisoned at ten times the rate for drug offences, even though whites are five time more likely to be using drugs (Kuroski). This data shows the racial biases held by law enforcement and the U.S. judicial system. The War on Drugs was a devastating, calculated governmental attack on minorities. This notion
The selected topic for this research is inequality and criminal justice. Inequality is widespread in the western society because of the history of slavery and white domination. Criminal justice, on the other hand, aims to resolve equality. However, criminal justice has different several flaws that require analysis and evaluation. Numerous studies show the challenges faced by the minorities during trial. Most of the minorities are convicted of crimes, especially if their opponents are white. This problem is a common scenario in the American society since the time of slavery—and unfortunately, until today. This topic is selected because the issue of inequality can be found anywhere—and inequality is connected
Many across this country are blaming race on why young, unemployed African-Americans and Hispanics seem to pay a higher punishment than other groups of offenders. Jacobs and Kkleban (2003) even say that minorities are treated differently worldwide in the criminal justice system. It’s not that simple to blame it solely on racial discrimination. In her lecture, Williams (2015) says “A predominately White Congress has mandated that prison sentences for the possession and distribution of crack cocaine are 100 times more severe than the penalties for possession of the same amounts of powder cocaine.” McNamara and Burns (2009) take it even further and say that states simply turn the cases over to the federal government to get the higher