Many inequalities exist within the justice system that need to be brought to light and addressed. Statistics show that African American men are arrested more often than females and people of other races. There are some measures that can and need to be taken to reduce the racial disparity in the justice system.
Racial disparity in the correctional population refers to the difference in the number of minorities versus whites represented inside institutions. “The American Correctional Association acknowledges that racial disparity exists within adult and juvenile detention and correctional systems. This contributes to the perception of unfairness and injustice in the justice system ("ACA Policies and," 2004).” “Blacks comprise 13% of the national population, but 30% of people arrested, 41% of people in jail, and 49% of those in prison. 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.
Discrimination is all over the world and it's is a very serious problem in society. We judge each other daily because of their gender, ethnicity, religion, age, and the way a person behaves. Discrimination is the “unequal treatment provided to one or more parties based on a mutual accord or some other logical or illogical reason” (merriam-webster). In the modern world of the United State of America the topic of discrimination in the Justice system is debatable because there is considerable evidence confirming both individual and systemic biases. The United States has an extended history of discrimination in several aspects of life, including employment, public accommodations and education. Nowadays there are extremely biased individuals and
It is normal to believe that the United States has, first and foremost, the idea of the essential dignity of individual human beings, the equality of all men, and certain inalienable rights to freedom. What keeps a majority of people skeptical is the oppression and biased conclusions that have been observed in the criminal justice system the last few years. The Sentencing Project, a non-profit organization that is criminal justice oriented, published a report named “Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System: A Manual for Practitioners and Policymakers” which contains enough statistics to consider the decisions taken by the criminal justice system as suspicious or questionable. “Minorities charged with felonies were more likely to be detained than whites,” the report stated, creating an evident discrepancy between the unbalanced equations of equal justice (para #5). To support this idea, the report mentions, “A black male born in 2001 has a 32% chance of spending time in prison at some point in his life, a Hispanic male has a 17% chance, and a white male has a 6% chance.” The entanglement between the judicial decision and the ethnicity or skin color is becoming not an assumption but a reality. Last but not least, it states that DNA testing indicates that a 63% of African American people are exonerated, meaning that
...se them to geographic targeting, police brutality, disproportionate incarceration and sentencing rates. Get tough on crime ideologies as well as mass incarceration practices encouraged by mainstream American citizens and policy makers alike, result in further oppression and complicate individual’s abilities to achieve social and economic success. In order for the United States to attain a “post-racial status,” biases in society should be eliminated therefore encouraging police bias’ to be removed, additional concern should be had for individuals in low-income, urban areas, and sentencing and arrest practices should be equalized across all races. Many sociological issues have a role in how the criminal justice system operates and until further notice, it remains unequal and supportive of racist policies that keep this country from attaining a “post racial status”.
The statistics of today show its still racism in the United States with hate crimes of 47 percent including police brutality, salary wage between men and women, mass incarceration with young men in prison who in this economy have little advantages if they have a family to support can’t. Justice has not been served for individuals who experience racism encounters either with the police or being murder for the color of your skin. Racial Discrimination applies to specific economic and social opportunities that influence others to think or behave negatively.
Discrimination against the minority population is a major problem in the United States society’s justice system. There are many examples where African American and low-income minorities are treated differently and not given the chance to prove their innocence. The law enforcement promises to treat all men or women equal opportunity, but the same system has put 120,000 innocent African Americans in prison. While most of them still remain in prisons, injustice by law enforcements is still a burden to the minorities in America. Moreover, wrongful conviction is a horrible injustice when a person spends years in jail. This is getting recognized by the U.S. system but often late. In many cases by the time a person is proven innocent, he or she might
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
In the wake of President Obama’s election, the United States seems to be progressing towards a post-racial society. However, the rates of mass incarceration of black males in America deem this to be otherwise. Understanding mass incarceration as a modern racial caste system will reveal the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetuating racial hierarchy America. The history of social control in the United States dates back to the first racial caste systems: slavery and the Jim Crow Laws. Although these caste systems were outlawed by the 13th amendment and Civil Rights Act respectively, they are given new life and tailored to the needs of the time.In other words, racial caste in America has not ended but has merely been redesigned in the shape of mass incarceration. Once again, the fact that more than half of the young black men in many large American cities are under the control of the criminal justice system show evidence of a new racial caste system at work. The structure of the criminal justice system brings a disproportionate number of young black males into prisons, relegating them to a permanent second-class status, and ensuring there chances of freedom are slim. Even when minorities are released from prisons, they are discriminated against and most usually end up back in prisons . The role of race in criminal justice system is set up to discriminate, arrest, and imprison a mass number of minority men. From stopping, searching, and arresting, to plea bargaining and sentencing it is apparent that in every phases of the criminal justice system race plays a huge factor. Race and structure of Criminal Justice System, also, inhibit the integration of ex offenders into society and instead of freedom, relea...
In the United States, the rate of incarceration has increased shockingly over the past few years. In 2008, it was said that one in 100 U.S. adults were behind bars, meaning more than 2.3 million people. Even more surprising than this high rate is the fact that African Americans have been disproportionately incarcerated, especially low-income and lowly educated blacks. This is racialized mass incarceration. There are a few reasons why racialized mass incarceration occurs and how it negatively affects poor black communities.
This research essay discusses racial disparities in the sentencing policies and process, which is one of the major factors contributing to the current overrepresentation of minorities in the judicial system, further threatening the African American and Latino communities. This is also evident from the fact that Blacks are almost 7 times more likely to be incarcerated than are Whites (Kartz, 2000). The argument presented in the essay is that how the laws that have been established for sentencing tend to target the people of color more and therefore their chances of ending up on prison are higher than the whites. The essay further goes on to talk about the judges and the prosecutors who due to different factors, tend to make their decisions
Even though racism has always been a problem since the beginning of time, recently in the United States, there has been a rise in discrimination and violence has been directed towards the African American minority primarily from those in the white majority who believe they are more superior, especially in our criminal justice system. There are many different reasons for the ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system between the majority and the minority, but some key reasons are differential involvement, individual racism, and institutional racism to why racial disparities exist in
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,
In modern-day America the issue of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system is controversial because there is substantial evidence confirming both individual and systemic biases. While there is reason to believe that there are discriminatory elements at every step of the judicial process, this treatment will investigate and attempt to elucidate such elements in two of the most critical judicial junctures, criminal apprehension and prosecution.
Ward, G., Farrell, A., & Rousseau, D. (2009). Does racial balance in workforce representation yield equal justice? Race relations of sentencing in federal court organizations. Law & Society Review, 43(4), 757-806. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5893.2009.00388.x