Stereotyping: Its Impact on Society and Justice

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Stereotyping is something we go through in our daily lives. It happens every day and everywhere. I for one, am also guilty for this even though I don’t like to admit it. Stereotyping groups people; those groups are usually called by a name that doesn’t truly fit that particular gathering. Stereotypes influence people’s lives, feelings, and how individuals cooperate with each other in society. Surprisingly, this also happens in our criminal justice system. Society usually stereotypes a criminal by their race and class and this is shown in the examples like the movie, The Central Park 5, the article “Teaching Literature at the County Jail” and Brock Turner’s case. Race can be sternly characterized as the distinction in individuals based on physical features like the …show more content…

Generally, class means where a person is ranked in society. If Brock Turner was poor and was a minority, his sentence would have been more severe and wouldn’t have been able to get off so easily. Same goes with the Central Park Five case where if the kids were in a higher class, the accused wouldn’t have been treated so harshly and trialed unfairly especially since they didn’t even the do the crime. Looking at the articles, “Teaching Literature at the County Jail” by Christina Boufis shows individuals who things because they had no control over situations and this might be due to their class. The women in jail in the “Teaching Literature at the County Jail” were in jail because of their backgrounds and their particular circumstances like class. In the article Christina Boufis says “Many were homeless before incarceration; few had support from parents, friends or partners. For Tanya and some of the others, Sula has become a talisman of security, something they can rely on in a constantly shifting world.” The girls here came from poor families making them from a lower class. Class is a huge a factor that show stereotyping in a criminal justice

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