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racial discrimination in the united states criminal justice system
examples of racial disparity in sentencing
disparity and discrimination in the criminal justice system
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Due to the unfair sentencing disparity between crack and cocaine, despite the fact that the two are the same drug, just in different forms, the government endorsed a law to reduce the sentencing of those who were convicted of crack related offenses. Repealing past wrong doings seemed to be a hurdle initially for lawmakers, but ultimately inmates finally received some of the justice that they deserved. The disparity in sentencing was seen by many as to be a racial war, considering the fact that blacks typically used crack, and whites used powder cocaine. Even though they are in essence the same drug, just broken down into different forms.
The amount of jail time someone convicted for cocaine related charge was drastically shorter than the amount given to someone who dealt with crack. On August 3rd, 2010 President Barack Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act into law. This is not the first law signed, but it is more extensive, and meets different criteria than the others. Unfortunately, there were several Acts produced before Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, but some failed to be introduced, and some only pacified the problem
With everything in life, we can work to fix injustices and a problem in society, but trying to fix what was wrong not only takes time, but also may be imperfect. As mentioned previously race played and still does play a large role in how crime is treated in the United States. This article explains how the racial disparity is not a coincidence and the article provides facts of the disparity, and what the Fair Sentencing Act does. The author begins the article by chronologically exploring the details of how the disparity began. The Anti- Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which was introduced in the Reagan-era, was responsible for the disparity. The Act stated that 1 gram of cocaine was equal to 100 grams of crack (Davis 2011). An extremely large difference. She ends the article explaining that despite the fact that there is a decrease in the ratio, it is still unfair. The Fair Sentencing Act only works to reduce the disparity and does not eliminate it completely (Davis 2011). While the ratio was once 100-1(crack to cocaine), the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 brought it down to 18-1.
Despite the fact that the Fair Sentencing Act is not 100% fair, it did work to provide many changes in the sentencing guidelines.
A 1997 RAND Corporation study found that treatment of heavy drug users was almost ten times more cost effective in reducing drug use, sales, and drug-related crime than longer mandatory sentences (Echols, 2014). Other studies have shown that mandatory penalties have no demonstrable marginal or short-term effects on overall crime reduction either. Congress established mandatory sentences in order to incarcerate high-level drug criminals, but according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, only 11 percent of drug charged prisoners fit that description (Echols, 2014). Most of those incarcerated are low-level offenders, whose spots in drug trafficking are easily filled by other people. Mandatory minimum sentencing is essentially a waste of scarce criminal justice resources and federal funds that could be used elsewhere, and The Smarter Sentencing Act’s reduction of mandatory minimums can be the first step in eliminating minimum sentencing altogether. Ideally, given the opportunity for discretion, judges would be more inclined to issue more effective alternatives to incarceration, such as rehabilitation programs and/or
The criminal justice system has been in place the United States for centuries. The system has endured many changes throughout the ages. The need for a checks and balances system has been a priority for just as long. Federal sentencing guidelines were created to help create equal punishments among offenders. Judges are given the power of sentencing and they are not immune to opinions, bias, and feelings. These guidelines are set in place to allow the judge to keep their power but keep them within a control group of equality. Although there are a lot of pros to sentencing guidelines there are also a lot of cons. Research has shown that sentencing guidelines have allowed the power to shift from judges to prosecutors and led to sentencing disparity based on sex, race, and social class.
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
The policies addressed in song hovers around the failure of War on Drugs, which increased the number of law enforcement abusing powers to harass African Americans. The harsh drug policies implemented under the Nixon administration targeted specific ethnic groups of the American population. Crack was the drug of choice of the African Americans, while powder cocaine was the drug predominately used by Caucasians. The disparity of the two mandatory drug sentencing of crack was 100 times harsher than cocaine. The passing of The Fair Sentencing Act under the Obama administration brought the ratio down to 18 to 1 in 2010 (ACLU).
The past quarter century of American history has been profoundly impacted by the “war on drugs.” Ever since the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 was passed by President Richard Nixon, the number of yearly incarcerations for drug violations has grown exponentially. America’s drug policies have cost billions of dollars and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Americans, yet rates of drug, property, and violent crime have failed to decrease. Yassaman Saadatmand summates the consequences of Nixon’s policies: “Not only has the drug war failed to reduce violent and property crime, but it has also shifted criminal justice resources (the police, courts, prisons, probation officers, etc.) away from directly fighting violent and property crime.” The issue is further complicated by racial inequalities in the rates of drug use and crime. Whereas Whites consist the majority of the population of any state, they are outnumbered by African-Americans in both state and federal prisons (E. Ann Carson 2013). This incongruity is paralleled with many other races, such as an overrepresentation of Native Americans and an underrepresentation of Asians in rates of drug use. What causes this imbalance? What purpose do the higher rates of incarceration for certain minorities serve? As this topic is explored, it becomes evident that the racial disparity in drug crime is perpetuated by America’s legacy of bigotry and racism, capitalism, and a cycle of poverty.
Racial disparity in drug related convictions has been a wide spread problem in the United States since the War on Drugs in the early 1980s. It was prevalent before that time, but minorities became the target of drug related crimes in startling numbers at this time. There are several hypotheses for this alarming situation, but the bottom line remains that racism is the leading cause of racial disparity in drug related convictions. Minorities from inner cities, with low-incomes and socioeconomic statuses who get caught in a downward spiral, are the easiest targets for the government to point the finger at for drug problems in the United States. The statistics will show that while more White people use illicit drugs in the United States, more African Americans and other minorities will be convicted, and more harshly than their White counterparts, for the same crimes.
DuVernay examines this cycle in each of its evolving iterations; when one method of just simple pure evil is abolished, another takes its place. DuVernay also talks about Nixon’s presidential campaign, Reagan’s War on Drugs, Bill Clinton’s Three Strikes and mandatory sentencing laws. Once Jim Crow Laws were banned as you would guess the cycle continued, African Americans started being portrayed as criminals and sent to jail for no reason but being black. The government started coming up with laws that targeted the poor and mostly African Americans because they were usually poor. These laws included selling and having possession of crack far worst then having/selling cocaine even though they were the same drug. They did this because crack was much cheaper than cocaine and therefore more accessible to African Americans. They also treated drug addictions as a crime rather than a health issue. Another law was the three strikes and you are out law which meant that no matter what the crime if you are convicted for three felonies the you are put into jail for life. Two other laws they came up with were the stand your ground law which meant anyone who looked suspicious you could shoot and also the law and crime bill which greatly increased funding for police. Many African Americans were convicted for crimes they did not commit and if they went to trial there jail term would be greatly increased so there only choice was to stay in jail for many years for a crime they did not even commit or admit the are guilty for something they did not do. ⅓ African American men go to jail in there life time when only 1/17 white males go. A measly 6.5% of African American men make up the US population and 42% of prison population which is just unbelievable. Jails also started finding anyone they thought were an immigrant and unfairly putting African Americans into jails because if the jails were not full they would be closed. With all of
...ystem and are seen as a credible sentencing option because of the restorative and rehabilitative effect it has on offenders by allowing them the opportunity to give something back to the community and providing them with education and work experience. There is a lack of evidence to suggest that rehabilitation is neither an effective or non-effective sanction. The use of probation as a stand-alone sanction has decreased over the years with probation now being combined with more severe sentences. When combined with rehabilitative programs probation reduced crime outcomes by 16.7%. The common perception of the general public is that increasing the severity of sentencing will reduce crime, however empirical evidence suggest that this is not the appropriate response. Public dissatisfaction with sentencing in Tasmania is often due to a lack of knowledge and understanding.
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
Separate studies conducted between 1993 through 2014 reveal that there are racial bias undertones that result in black defendants being sentenced to the death penalty more often when the victim is white, than vice versa. Given the racial stereotypes surrounding African-Americans in regards to drugs, and the now known ungrounded “War on Drugs” subjecting those who traffic in large quantities of drugs to the death penalty would be an egregious misuse of the judicial system with its variety of
The penalties for sentencing federal cocaine offenses were enacted in 1986 and 1988 where it established mandatory minimum penalties for both powder and crack cocaine. The 1986 act was in accordance to an offender convicted of trafficking controlled substance. The 1888 act created a mandatory minimum penalty for possession of a controlled substance. Crack cocaine received harsher punishment under both laws known as the 100-to-1 cocaine to crack cocaine ratio. Under the 1988 law, 5 grams or more of crack cocaine or 500 grams or more of powder cocaine triggers a minimum sentence of five years (1995 U.S.S.C. Report; 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)). After the 1991 U.S.S.C Report until the Violent Crime Control Act of 1994, critics argued the current cocaine sentencing policies were unfair due to harsher punishment for lower drug mule compare to drug dealers and ineffective in deterring drug use or reducing trafficking (1995 U.S.S.C.
When sentencing someone the Criminal Justice Act 2003 sets out the aims of sentencing for adult offenders. It focus’ on the punishment of the offenders, the reduction of crime (which includes reduction by deterrence), the reform and rehabilitation of offenders, protection of the public and the making of reparation by offenders to persons affected by their offences.
Jarecki, teases out racism as the center piece of the drug war, new sentencing guidelines and the resulting prison enterprise. He dared to broach the subject of an era when state and local government do not have the cash to provide basic services to their citizens there was the foresight to continue making numerous arrests for nonviolent drug offenses and create prison enterprise to house them. In my opinion, the enterprise at the time was only known to politicians, correctional institutions and private contractors. Then, with almost laser-guided precision a disproportionate burden of the sentences fell on African Americans. Mr. Jarecki is direct his statements that American drug laws are laden in racism. Time and again, politicians have criminalized the habits of certain groups of people to fulfill an agenda unbeknownst to the intended target. With this theory in mind, the latest strategy was seemingly designed for African Americans, but other ethnic groups have been targeted in the past. There was opium as an illicit drug connected Chinese immigrants at the turn of the century. We completely ignored, during the same time Americans used opium in elixirs and tinctures for medicinal purposes (Dial, 2013). Later there was hemp linked to Mexicans immigrants, the marijuana of the day. There was not much to hide about the fact that both Mexicans and Chinese had incredible work ethic, and the willingness to take low wages. This notion ultimately meant
... the outcomes of these goals the crime rate has substantially decreased. Revenge has made a way for some victims to at ease. I think revenge can be a good and bad thing. A negative view of revenge is if an offender kills or rapes someone's child and that person tries to find ways to get that offender killed. They all have some significant way of getting justice. According to the Sentencing Project prison cost has gone up and it is very expensive to find room in the prison for these offenders. Based on the overcrowded prison, they have to build new prisons which will take of money for the government.
When discussing the disparities surrounding cocaine in America we first need to understand what cocaine means. It is a drug derived from the leaves of a coca plant which gives it half of its name and the ine is an alkaloid suffix which is added on to explain what it’s made of. There are two type of cocaine they are crack cocaine and powder cocaine. We as a society know that if any individual caught with cocaine will be caught and tried, but what we do not realize is the sentencing severity concerning the possession of each type of cocaine. The possession of crack vs. powder is at a ratio of 100 to 1 which seem unreal to me especially after learning of the ideology of the last 20 years concerning people of color. If an individual is found with 10 grams of crack then their treated like they had 1 kilogram of powder cocaine. This leads to a harsher sentence for being found with crack even though crack is a more diluted form of cocaine (Scott p. 53).