Criminal Justice Case Study

1. Here’s my question: Will increasing funding of indigent defense really help scale back mass incarceration and tackle some of the racial imbalances that permeate the criminal justice system?

This question matters because: Taken everything that I’ve learned in LW109D, I cannot help but to be skeptical of this idea actually coming to fruition. Of course, it sounds great on paper but one cannot help but to think about what increasing funding for public defenders actually would entail and if it would actually achieve its purpose. First of all, the purpose of increasing funding is to insure that poor people have the same opportunities as their rich counterparts, but the current legislature remains the same because it seems to be in the best interest

The author of the image is saying that all live matter but that cannot be the case until everyone believes that black lives matter too. #BlackLivesMatter is a movement because despite all lives mattering, the judicial system, more specifically the police force, seem to not be on board with the idea that black lives matter as well because it is undeniable that blacks are treated differently in the eyes of the law. The author exclaims that those who do not see why #BlackLivesMatter are important, are “part of the problem” because they obviously are not checking their privilege or are ignorant of justice awareness issues. There are many aspects of the criminal justice system that do not support black lives because bias, discriminatory views created the foundation of such system. Even after the emancipation of African Americans in 1865, white Americans continued to engage in discriminatory behavior such as the creation of the old and new Jim Crow laws. #BlackLivesMatter because no one, should be feared and/ or judged based off of the physical attributes that they have no control over. America seems to feel this way in terms of white America, but unfortunately this is not the case when it comes to minorities. All lives cannot matter until we start caring and paying attention to those who constantly get the short-end of the stick in a society that is supposed to hold equal opportunities for all