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Racial Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System
The relationship between gender and crime
The relationship between gender and crime
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Gender bias throughout the court system is shown often when the process comes to sentences and the consequences of the crimes in which individuals partake in. Gender bias comes about when dealing with whether or not a female is charged less than males. Females are usually given smaller sentences rather than males, even if they committed the same crime. On March 22, 2006, for instance, Mary Winkler murdered her husband at their home in Selmer, Tennessee. A year later, she was sentenced to only seven months in custody. The gender bias that goes on in the court system; as revealed in this case, is something many people overlook because they are so concerned with the aspect of racial bias. In the court system, women are constantly discriminated and treated different, gender bias is shown when dealing with sentencing, family law issues, juvenile arrests, and treatment of female lawyers.
When deciding the sentences and consequences of the person, the judge tends to be harder on male defendants in criminal matters. “I found that blacks, males, and offenders with low levels of education and income receive substantially longer sentences” (Mustard 5). Gender bias is considered stereotypical attitudes about the roles of men and women and misconceptions about the social and economic realities faced by both sexes. Respect is enhanced for the court and the law and increases the civility when the courtroom has no gender bias present. A judge is not supposed to make his or her decisions based on sex. In order to examine the gender bias that took place in the court system, a task force was created. The first gender bias task force was formed by the New Jersey Supreme Court. The New Jersey Supreme Court is the highest court in the state of New Je...
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...therefore less responsible for their crimes.
Eliminating gender bias in the court system is something that needs to be taken care of quickly. With gender bias being an issue in the court system, equality and fairness is being questioned. People are not being treated the same way because of the attitudes the judges put on and give to the defendants and lawyers. Judges should not be able to pass with these approaches towards women in the court system. Eliminating this issue is important because every individual is entitled to their equal rights. Sentencing should not be determined by race, gender, sexuality but by the crime that has been committed. Researchers are still working on trying to eliminate all these issues of gender bias in the court system that still occur today. The problems will soon come to an end and individuals will all be treated equally.
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
In 1981 women only made up around 4 percent of inmates in prison. The criminal justice world is very set on race. For example in the book Criminal Justice a brief introduction by Frank Schmalleger, it says that race is so marginalized that even though in the united states population there are only about 13 percent of African Americans, African Americans that are incarcerated account for somewhere around 50 percent. This shows that African American women are more likely to encounter incarceration has opposed to white women. This is also why women’s prisons are study less than men’s prisons. Because there are less violent crimes committed in a women’s prison and there are significantly less women inmates than men. .However, this could soon change in the years coming if the crime rate in women keeps rising like it
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 ...
Correctional agencies do not control the number of minorities who enter their facilities. Therefore, the disparity must come from decisions made earlier in the criminal justice process. Law enforcement, court pre-sentencing policies and procedures, and sentencing all have a direct affect on the overrepresentation of minorities in the correctional population. The prospect of a racially discriminatory process violates the ideals of equal treatment under law under which the system is premised (Kansal, 2005).
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.
Capital punishment and whether or not the death sentence should be used in the American legal system remains a highly controversial topic, still widely debated as to whether or not it is an ethical means of penance for convicted criminals. While 1,369 individuals have been executed under this law since the reinstating of the death penalty in 1976, only 14 women are included among these figures. The disproportionate statistic of women executed in the United States compared to their men executed brings to light whether or not the U.S. legal system imposes gender discrimination in making their decision on convicting criminals to the death sentence, favoring and giving more mercy to women over men.
Embry, R., & Lyons, P. M. (2012). Sex-based sentencing: Sentencing discrepancies between male and female sex offenders. Feminist Criminology, 7(2), 146-162.
Although some say the high disparity of minority to white prison sentences is due to repeat offenses by second and third time offenders, the disparity in the population between black and white Americans in the U.S. doesn't support the fact there are more minorities than whites in American prisons. The make-up of judges, juries and law enforcement officials in the judicial system is a factor. The high disparity amongst minorities in prison is due to the societal issues such as racial discrimination, racial inequality of lawmakers in the court system, and presumptive sentencing guidelines. Racism in American society plays a part in the manner in which the judicial system operates. The American prison population is larger than at any time in the history of the penal system in the world.”
Many have argued that there is obvious disparate treatment among particular demographic groups of criminal defendants by the courts. While the federal sentencing guidelines were created in order to maintain uniform treatment of defendants based on legally relevant factors, we still see extralegal factors causing disparity. A significant amount of attention, however, has been focused on racial disparities in sentencing. While racial disparity is an important concern, there is another disparity with which attention is needed: sex-based disparity. Sex-based disparity, or, gender disparity, while it does receive significantly less media attention, is just as great if not greater than racial disparity. Similar to race, gender is considered an extralegal
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 criminal justice system exists when the proportion of a racial or ethnic group within the control system is higher than the proportion of the group in the general population. The cause of this disparity varies and can include differences in the levels of criminal activity, law enforcements emphasis on particular communities, legislative policies, and/or decision making by one or more persons at some level in the criminal justice system.
American Bar Association. National Bar Association (2001). Justice by gender: The lack of appropriate prevention, diversion and treatment alternatives for girls in the justice system: a report. Retrieved from The Associations website: http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/criminal_justice_section_newsletter/crimjust_juvjus_justicebygenderweb.authcheckdam.pdf
Historically, criminology was significantly ‘gender-blind’ with men constituting the majority of criminal offenders, criminal justice practitioners and criminologists to understand ‘male crimes’ (Carraine, Cox, South, Fussey, Turton, Theil & Hobbs, 2012). Consequently, women’s criminality was a greatly neglected area and women were typically seen as non-criminal. Although when women did commit crimes they were medicalised and pathologised, and sent to mental institutions not prisons (Carraine et al., 2012). Although women today are treated differently to how they were in the past, women still do get treated differently in the criminal justice system. Drawing upon social control theory, this essay argues that nature and extent of discrimination
Women’s equality has made huge advancements in the United States in the past decade. One of the most influential persons to the movement has been a woman named Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ruth faced gender discrimination many times throughout her career and worked hard to ensure that discrimination based on a person’s gender would be eliminated for future generations. Ginsburg not only worked to fight for women’s equality but fought for the rights of men, as well, in order to show that equality was a human right’s issue and not just a problem that women faced. Though she faced hardships and discrimination, Ruth never stopped working and thanks to her equality is a much closer reality than it was fifty years ago. When Ruth first started her journey in law, women were practically unheard of as lawyers; now three women sit on the bench of the highest court in the nation.
From an equal justice perspective, “all people should be treated equally before the law and equality may best be achieved through individual discretion in the justice process” (Siegel and Worrall, 2013, page 20). Through this perspective, all criminals who commit the same crime would be equally subjected to the same form of punishment. Thus extralegal factors, which include the person’s gender, age, race or previous criminal activity, would not be considered by the judge, when they sentence the severity of the punishment. This limits the injustice within the system and any unfair treatment an offender a may receive while in the system. It also sets clear and rigid guidelines for judges to uphold during sentencing.
Before the jury stands the defendant. There is overwhelming evidence in the favor of the prosecution. The verdict comes back from the jury, not guilty. Why? The defendant is a woman. In our era of equal rights and civil liberties women have made great strides in their advancement and role in society, yet it seems that gender segregates when it comes to crime. There have been countless cases where women and men have been tried for the same crime, yet when it comes to verdict and sentencing, the results don’t necessarily match. If one commits a crime one should be punished accordingly regardless of gender. In our society we seem to have two separate rules for our criminals, one for men and one for women. The key issue is are men and women treated equally by the criminal justice system. Another issue in gender biased sentencing is in its is its severity. Are women sentenced heavier for certain crimes then men.