Racial Disparity In The Criminal Justice System

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Racial Disparity in the U.S. Criminal Justice System Even after slavery was abolished as an act of the end of racism and a dominant race, the criminal justice system has been involved in many cases in which racism has been evident. Rosa Parks, as a vivid example, could not help but make public the abuse of authority she felt when denigrated on the bus destined to Cleveland. She was asked by the bus driver to stand up and give up her seat to the white passengers that were standing. However, she refused to give it up and she was arrested. Parks was intentionally disobeying the Alabama Law that required her to forfeit her spot to a white person. This law in and of itself is racist and exemplifies the inequality permeated in the criminal justice …show more content…

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

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