Diversity within the Criminal Justice System

2181 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Racial Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System

The US Justice Department statistics 2003 and onwards demonstrates significant disproportion in the incarceration rate of minority African American and Hispanic men between the ages of 25 and 29 years as compared to the rate associated with White men of the same age. Bell (2007), proposes that as minority groups grow in numbers within the dominant group they will experience greater equality. However, rate of incarceration among minority males remains alarmingly high and as compared to their White counterparts. As with health care there are racial disparities that will influence outcomes when an individual is brought before the criminal courts. Additionally, there is significant correlation between a person’s level of education and the likelihood of his involvement in criminal activities. Studies and statistics have shown that among male high school dropouts there is high incidence of unemployment, low income and rate of illicit drug use as compared to men with degrees from four year colleges. Further to this, although the rate of school dropout and even arrest is not significantly different across the race lines, literature alludes that African American men have a higher rate of conviction for the same crime committed. This paper proposes that three major factors play a role in the high rate of convictions of black men versus whites and Hispanics. These factors are the lack of diversity among legal professionals in positions of power for decision-making, specifically those in the criminal justice system; secondly, the racial disparities that exist in arrest conviction and sentencing and thirdly, the incidence of discriminatory actions within the justice system. The paper seeks to examine litera... ... middle of paper ... ....sentencingproject.org Prison Activist Resource Center, (No date). Racism Fact Sheets: African-Americans and the criminal injustice system, Retrieved fromhttp://www.prisonactivist.org/factsheets/racism.pdf Scott, R. (n.d). Rep. Robert C. Scott holds a hearing on unfairness in federal cocaine sentencing: Is it time to crack the 100 to 1 disparity? FDCH Political Transcripts, Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Schanzenbach, Max; Yaeger, Michael L., (2006). Prison time, fines, and federal white-collar criminals: The anatomy of a racial disparity. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 96(2), p757-793. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. 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

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of When A Heart Turns Solid Rock By Timothy Black

    1057 Words  | 3 Pages

    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 ...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Rich Get Richer And The Poor Get Prison

    1347 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Crime Survey for England and Wales

    1420 Words  | 3 Pages

    Skellinton, R. (2009) The whiter the collar and the higher your status, the more the crime will pay [Online]. Available at: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/society/the-law/criminology/the-whiter-the-collar-and-the-higher-your-status-the-more-the-crime-will-pay

    Read More

  • Sentencing Guidelines in the Criminal Justice System

    3268 Words  | 7 Pages

    Richman, D. (2013). Federal White Collar Sentencing in the United States: A Work In Progress.

    Read More

  • Racial Disparity in the Correctional Population

    2356 Words  | 5 Pages

    Kansal, T. (2005). In M. Mauer (Ed.), Racial disparity in sentencing: A review of the literature. Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project. Retrieved April 12, 2005, from The Sentenceing Project Web site: http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/disparity.pdf

    Read More

  • Disparities In Criminal Justice Essay

    1127 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Disparities in Sentencing: The Role of Race and Gender

    1274 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Most modem sentencing systems in the United States express an explicit commitment to ensuring that a defendant 's sentence is not affected by the defendant 's race or gender (Hessick, 2010).” Even though individuals are protected through the Bill of Rights and Sentencing Reform Acts, there are still disparities in sentencing within the criminal justice systems. Often, race and gender bias negatively affects sentencing.

    Read More

  • How an Offender's Race, Ethnicity and Race May Influence the Likelyhood of Pretrial Detention

    1034 Words  | 3 Pages

    Numerous studies have been done to see how race and crime correlate with each other. Although the results are somewhat changeable, some studies mostly demonstrate that certain categories of racial minorities—males, the young, and the unemployed—are singled out for harsher treatment. Other studies find that each of these offender characteristics had a direct effect on sentence outcomes, but that the combination of race or ethnicity and one or more of the other characteristics were more powerful predictors of sentence severity than any characteristics individually. Although the offender’s race, ethnicity, and sex are not included in this list of factors explicitly, many of the factors that judges are required to take into account—such as family ties, employment, financial resources, community ties, and criminal history—are linked to race, ethnicity, and sex. Thus, the offender’s race, ethnicity, and sex may influence the likelihood of pretrial detention indirectly.

    Read More

  • Black and Minority Ethic Groups and the Justice System

    2189 Words  | 5 Pages

    This essay will explore whether there is equality in the criminal justice system. It aims to look at statistics, legislation and studies from the past 30-40 years to get a thorough analysis of the processes and experiences different races in particular black and ethnic minority youths have been through within the criminal justice system.

    Read More

  • Racial Inequalities in the Justice System

    1738 Words  | 4 Pages

    Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System: A Manual for Practitioners and Policymakers. Retrieved from http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_reducingracialdisparity.pdf New Century Foundation. (2005). The Color of Crime: Race, Crime and Justice in America. Retrieved from http://www.colorofcrime.com/colorofcrime2005.pdf Pearson Education. (2008).

    Read More

  • Racialized Mass Incarceration in America

    622 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Racism: Incarceration of a Household Member and Hispanic Health Disparities

    1353 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many Americans pretend that the days of racism are far behind; however it is clear that institutional racism still exists in this country. One way of viewing this institutional racism is looking at our nation’s prison system and how the incarceration rates are skewed towards African American men. The reasons for the incarceration rate disparity are argued and different between races, but history points out and starts to show the reason of why the disparity began. Families and children of the incarcerated are adversely affected due to the discrimination as well as the discrimination against African American students and their likelihood of going to prison compared to the white student. African American women are also affected by the discrimination in the incarceration rate. Many white Americans don’t see how racism affects incarceration rates, and that African Americans are more likely to face discrimination from the police as well as being falsely arrested.

    Read More

  • Causes Of Racial Disparity In Drug Discrimination

    1239 Words  | 3 Pages

    African American and Hispanics were also more likely to be detained prior to arraignment, convicted, and sentenced to jail than whites. While this journal shed some light on the racial disparity in the actual conviction process, the method used to gather the information for this journal only used three data sources. It gave factual statistics, but I would agree with the authors hypothesis that race/ethnicity could not be fully explained by controlling for an offender’s prior record, age, or gender.

    Read More

  • Racial Disparities In Sentencing

    1536 Words  | 4 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Role Of Minorities In The Criminal Justice System

    422 Words  | 1 Pages

    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

    Read More

More about Diversity within the Criminal Justice System

Open Document