Juror #10, a garage owner, segregates and divides the world stereotypically into ‘us’ and ‘them.’ ‘Us’ being people living around the rich or middle-class areas, and ‘them’ being people of a different race, or possessing a contrasting skin color, born and raised in the slums (poorer parts of town). It is because of this that he has a bias against the young man on trial, for the young man was born in the slums and was victim to domestic violence since the age of 5. Also, the boy is of a Hispanic descent and is of a different race than this juror, making him fall under the juror’s discriminatory description of a criminal. This is proven on when juror #10 rants: “They don’t need any real big reason to kill someone, either. You know, they get drunk, and bang, someone’s lying in the gutter… most of them, it’s like they have no feelings (59).
The first social issue portrayed through the film is racial inequality. The audience witnesses the inequality in the film when justice is not properly served to the police officer who executed Oscar Grant. As shown through the film, the ind...
It can be thought of as the class or social standing of an individual or a group (American Psychological Association). Class inequalities in incarceration are represented by those who have a very low educational background (Western and Pettit 2010). Many studies show a significant increase in educational inequality in incarceration due to the fact that almost all of the growth in the risk of incarceration between 1983 and 1999 was confined to men without a college education (Western, Kleykamp, and Rosenfeld 2004). Prisoners of the state average a tenth grade education and around seventy percent do not have a high school diploma (Western and Pettit 2010). Offenders overwhelmingly come from the least educated margin of society (Western and Pettit 2010). Most of the incarceration rate growth stems from young men with very low levels of education (Western and Pettit 2010). In 2008, the incarceration rate of young African American men without a high school degree had risen to thirty-seven percent (Western and Pettit 2010). This rate is even more alarming when compared to the average rate of the general population being 0.76 of 1 percent (Western and Pettit 2010). The incarceration rate among young white dropouts has grown significantly as well with around one in eight incarcerated in 2008 (Western and Pettit 2010). This notable growth in
The Zimmerman case allowed me to be aware of something that was right in front of me. At a young age, my mother's significant other was arrested and imprisoned for "trafficking drugs". My mother had always maintained that he was initially arrested due to racial profiling, as there was no sufficient evidence to warrant the police to search his car. Despite this information being told to me as a child, I remained blind to the effects that such a system of injustice could have on your economic status, mental health, etc. However, I believe that the outcome of the Zimmerman trial opened my eyes to this effect. I believe that Trayvon Martin's family most likely received the same financial and emotional stresses due to the racial injustice associated with their experience. However, they had lost their son. Following the shooting of Trayvon Martin, I began to understand the effect that systemic racism could have on the lives of Black people, and how it had already been affecting
Curtis McGhee is 17-year-old Black male who lived in Iowa. In 1977, he was charged for the murder of John Schweer who worked as a security guard at a car dealership. Later on in 1978, he was sentenced to life in prison for a murder that he never committed. Later on in 2011, McGhee was exonerated based on the police file and court’s transcript that was found, and which indicated that McGhee was a innocent man behind bars, and he was serving time for a crime that he never took in part of committing. This case of Curtis McGhee raises a question on our criminal justice system and it leads us to confirm that miscarriages of justice do occur, and there should be various reforms that should be made so these miscarriages can be prevented from occurring in the future.
This, however, is not the case in today’s judicial system. Justice is not blind, as our forefathers had intended it to be. According to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, on the racial and ethnic disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system, African Americans are incarcerated in state prison at 6 times the rate of Caucasian Americans, and were sentenced to death at 5 times the rate. Furthermore, African Americans have an average sentence length of 40 months, compared to Caucasians average sentence length of 37 months. Those figures begin to widen exponentially as socioeconomic class is brought into the
The criminal justice system is defined as the system of law that is used for apprehending, prosecuting, defending, and even sentencing people who are guilty of criminal offenses. In many cases, race, class, gender, and even sexuality can impact due process and fairness within the criminal justice system. Sometimes if people don’t think they have a choice to receive justice, they may want to take law into their own hands. Whereas Others will try to get a lawyer so they can take it to court and follow the judicial systems laws to try convict the criminal. In certain situations as a defendant, your race, class, and gender can make a negative impact on the criminal justice response to the crimes. In the movies “Thelma and Louise,” “The Accused,”
Although the United States system is based on the connotation of innocent until proven guilty and justice being blind to things such as race, ethnicity or social class (Kornblum & Julian), evidence proves otherwise. Racially discriminatory sentencing in non-capital cases demonstrated that young, black and Latino males receive a much harsher sentence, especially if unemployed compared to white offenders. The race of the victim also dictates the sentence. If the victim is white, than the black offender is much more likely to receive a harsher sentence than blacks who commit crimes against blacks. If the murdered victim is white, the offender has higher probabilities of receiving the death penalty (The Sentencing Project). Race is an indisputable factor in the sentencing process and teaches that black lives are not as important as those of
For too long, I too thought like this. I had a hard time identifying with African-Americans and was too easy to judge them for their lack of effort or their lack of collective success. It was not until I started reading books like the Autobiography of Malcolm X and the Autobiography of Angela Davis that I finally began to see the bigger picture and started to get in tune with the very meaning of African-Americanism. It was then that I finally understood what a systematic effort to undermine the very identity of African-Americans could do to black folk in America.
The portrayal of the justice system in this movie is unmistakably accurate; however, the downfall of the system comes when a victim wrongly identifies Mr. Balestrero as the robber. This human error sends the detectives down a slippery slope, where they forcibly find evidence against Mr. Balestrero and ultimately detain him on shallow grounds. Thankfully, the real culprit was found before Mr. Balestrero’s trial came to an end, but nevertheless, the impact a situation like this has on a person, is devastating, and most notably seen with Mrs. Balestrero. The fault, however, is not that of the justice system itself, a Time magazine article depicting the events of that case states, “He does not blame the police (“ they couldn’t help it”)” (Brean 107), but that of human error, Mr. Balestrero states, “ If they have a conscience, they’ll realize they where wrong”(Brean 107) which is an unavoidable aspect of the justice
Humanity instructs us that we must behave with tolerance and respect towards all. Just Mercy exemplifies how that is not the case for many Americans. Critical Race Theory is a theory which focuses on the experiences of people who are minorities. It argues that people who are minorities in the United States are oppressed and, because of the state of being oppressed, creates fundamental disadvantages (Lecture 4.7). A study conducted for the case McCleskey v. Kemp revealed that when a black defendant killed a white victim, it increased the likelihood the black defendant would receive the death penalty (Stevenson, 2014). Looking at this fact through the lens of a critical race theorist, it illustrates how unconscious racism is ignored by our legal system. The actuality that, statistically, people of color have a higher chance of getting sentenced to death than white people is a blatant example of inequality. In Chapter 8, Stevenson discusses the case of multiple juveniles who were incarcerated and sentenced to death in prison. These juveniles who were sent to adult prisons, where juveniles are five times more likely to be the victims of sexual assault, show an innate inequality towards minors (Stevenson, 2014). Ian Manuel, George Stinney, and Antonio Nunez were all only fourteen-years-old when they were condemned to die in prison. Although they did commit crimes, the purpose of the juvenile justice system is to rehabilitate young offenders. Trying juveniles in adult court represents a prejudice against age, which Stevenson sought to fight by working on appeals for Manuel and Nunez (Stevenson, 2014). His humanity shines through once again, as he combats the justice system to give the adolescents another chance at life, rather than having them die in prison. The way prisoners with mental and/or physical disabilities are treated while incarcerated is also extremely
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
To look closely at many of the mechanisms in American society is to observe the contradiction between constitutional equality and equality in practice. Several of these contradictions exist in the realm of racial equality. For example, Black s often get dealt an unfair hand in the criminal justice system. In The Real War on Crime, Steven Donziger explains,
One of the strengths the movie has been the filming itself. There were barely any cuts in the movie and it was mostly shot in one scene so it made you feel that you were part of the scene. Another strength in the movie was the anonymity that was given to the jurors. This help me realise that these were just the “general public” and that there are many jury’s that are exactly or similar to this. Another strength that the movie showed was that it helped me realise the potential flaw in our justice system. While the accused is still given a right to a fair trial, when you are in a society where prejudice against minorities is considered a norm, it becomes hard looking at things fairly not because you don’t want to but because most of the society is already doing it. For example, in the movie most of the jurors were quick to accuse the boy guilty without deliberation. Another strength is how this movie showed how influential we are to each other. For example, the group dynamic of economic status was big because while the people on the higher economic status looked at the boy with more prejudice, one of the jurors who was
“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