Discrimination In The Criminal Justice System

Discrimination and racial disparities are a part of every stage within the U.S. criminal justice system, from policing to trial to sentencing. The United States is the world’s leading jailer with 2.2 million people behind bars. Perhaps no single reason has contributed more to racial disparities in the criminal justice system than the so-called “War on Drugs” which many people believe was a thinly disguise veil for racism on African-American. Even though racial and other ethnic groups use and sell drugs at roughly the same rate, Blacks and Hispanics are punished more and harshly by the system forming 62 percent of those in state prisons for first drug offenses, and 72.1 percent of all persons sentenced for federal drug trafficking offenses

Racism in the criminal justice system apparent and never will be addressed properly I say this because when you take a look at the case of Clarence Brandley in 1990. He was released after spending nearly a decade on Texas’ death row for a crime he did not commit. The misconduct in that case involved every level of government, from the police who threatened witnesses to prevent them from testifying for Brandley, to the trial judge and the prosecutor who held secret meetings to rehearse objections and rulings, to the state attorney general who lied about the results of a lie detector test. Racism enabled Texas’ officials to pursue Mr. Brandley with such a single-minded disregard for facts, fairness human decency and basic justice was that the victim in the case was a white school girl who had been raped and murdered (Curtis et al., 1987). These officials refused to do their obligated job and find the murderer of this girl, but instead chose to pin and railroad an innocent man solely because the color of his skin. This is a prime example of no matter how many decades past by racism in the United States will not

Unequal treatment of minorities characterizes every stage of the process. This the price that is paid in order to keep this false fallacy of justice while African and Hispanic Americans, and other minority groups, are victimized by disproportionate targeting and unfair treatment by police and other law enforcement officials; by racially skewed charging and plea bargaining decisions of prosecutors; by discriminatory sentencing practices; and by the failure of judges, elected officials and other criminal justice policy makers to redress the inequities that become more glaring every