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Racial Discrimination and Disparity in the United States Justice System
Key strengths of social disorganization theory
Conclusion of how poverty is connected to crime rates
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Racial Disparity in the American Criminal Justice System Years after the United States civil rights movement, the removal of formal segregation laws, and implementation of anti-racist policies, the American criminal justice system still fails to display the same reform. As one of the largest superpowers and industrialized nations in the world, the United States has not attained a “post-racial status,” defined as being a society in which race, although it remains a concept, does not influence individuals. The failure of the United States to attain “post-racial status” is exemplified in the criminal justice system by overwhelming evidence of disproportionate levels of crime, arrests, and incarceration that primarily affect minority populations. Past and present patterns of American society dealing with crime and the people involved committing crime show extreme racial disparity in terms of individuals’ predisposed environments that increase ones likelihood of being involved in the criminal justice system, the system itself that processes individuals, the encouragement of mass incarceration by mainstream society, and the effects these processes have on society. Many people in the world today criticize and objectify specific people, merely by their outward appearance, as more likely to commit crime or other violent acts. A theory well known to criminologists is one devised by criminologists of the Chicago school, scholars whose main area of focus were urban, impoverished areas, and called their findings the Social Disorganization Theory in which it offers an idea as to why crime occurs in urban settings. The theory explains how American society is centered on the economy and individual achievement, otherwise known as “The American Dr... ... middle of paper ... ...se them to geographic targeting, police brutality, disproportionate incarceration and sentencing rates. Get tough on crime ideologies as well as mass incarceration practices encouraged by mainstream American citizens and policy makers alike, result in further oppression and complicate individual’s abilities to achieve social and economic success. In order for the United States to attain a “post-racial status,” biases in society should be eliminated therefore encouraging police bias’ to be removed, additional concern should be had for individuals in low-income, urban areas, and sentencing and arrest practices should be equalized across all races. Many sociological issues have a role in how the criminal justice system operates and until further notice, it remains unequal and supportive of racist policies that keep this country from attaining a “post racial status”.
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
This theory suggests that individuals who commit crime is based on their surrounding community. Shaw and McKay, who are two leading contributors to social disorganization feel that community disorganization is the main source of delinquency and believe that the solution to crime is to organize communities (Cullen, Agnew, & Wilcox, pg. 107). According to the reading, the strengths of social disorganization can be categorized into three. One, it explains the high crime rate in certain areas. Two, it accounts for the transmission of deviant values from one generation to the next and three, it predicts crime rates from neighborhood characteristics. Given the circumstances, these strengths can often lead to its weaknesses. The social disorganization theory uses too much of a macro-sociological approach by focusing on broad areas instead looking at the situation through an individual approach. Also, the classification of an area of being “disorganized” may actually be organized based on different
Economic inequality describes the gap between the wealthy and the poor. Individuals are given a socio- economic status based on their social class. Jacob and O’Brien (1998) concluded that police killings are more associated with the economic gaps between whites and blacks. As a result, cities with more African Americans are often targeted by police violence because of the poor urban condition and the economic inequality (Jacob and O’Brien 1998). These urban conditions include poor living lifestyle, low income, low employment, unsanitary environment, and dangerous crime related habits. Therefore, underprivileged minority communities are perceived as extremely unsafe and dangerous because people who live in these communities often associate with gangs (Jacob and O’Brien 1998). These gangs and juvenile delinquents commit illegal activities based on a variety of different reasons. Lack of money and support from family members is the leading causes of crimes. It is common for poor families to lack essential resources for survival due to the concept of the poor economic inequality among the minorities (Jacob and O’Brien 1998). In addition, unlike the upper social class, the poor communities have a lot of unsolved issues such as gangs, prostitutions, and thefts that need to be fixed in order to guarantee more safety in the community (Harris 1999). The unsolved issues that reside along the minority community cause police officers to act differently based on assumption and natural instinct (Smith and Holmes 2003).
Our criminal justice system is biased. We see an almost direct correlation amongst mass incarceration and earlier forms of racial and social authority. Our new generation of youth is raised to believe that they will go to jail at least once in their lifespan. The kids that adopt this kind of ideology are raised in communities that are segregated, ghettoized. The youth in these communities are shuttled from decrepit and underfunded schools and transferred to “brand new high tech prisons.” People in these communities are targeted at young ages, stop, frisked, searched, as well as being subjected to interrogation, despite what actions they are partly taking in. They are then arrested for minor, nonviolent offense. The crimes that occur in the underprivileged communities occur with equal frequency in privileged white communities. However, the offenses occurring in white privileged communities are often ignored whereas their underprivileged counterparts are swept into the system, branded as criminals and felons, and alienated from the remainder of humanity. They are then “ushered into a second class into a second-class status” a status that they will the inability to
Although people of color commit most crimes at the same rate as Whites, the unequal targeting and treatment of people of color throughout the criminal justice system from arrest to sentencing results in the disproportionate imprisonment of people of color. The criminal justice system has driven a wedge between black men and society. African American men are involved in the criminal justice system, whether though incarceration, probation, or parole, at near epidemic levels. At the same time, the criminal justice system has encouraged and persisted in racial and discriminatory actions continuing the emancipation of blacks from society. Consequently, African American families are harmed in countless ways, form psychological to material suffering experienced by the entire family.
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
Unequal treatment of minorities characterizes every stage of the process. This the price that is paid in order to keep this false fallacy of justice while African and Hispanic Americans, and other minority groups, are victimized by disproportionate targeting and unfair treatment by police and other law enforcement officials; by racially skewed charging and plea bargaining decisions of prosecutors; by discriminatory sentencing practices; and by the failure of judges, elected officials and other criminal justice policy makers to redress the inequities that become more glaring every
The Social Disorganization theory originated from the University of Chicago also known as the “Chicago school” in 1972. The Chicago School was originally known for its sociology department and later recognized for its’ achievements in criminology. Combining ecological studies with field work in the Chicago area is what developed this school into a balanced, urban research facility. Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay, two criminology researchers, developed the Social Disorganization theory off of a previous researchers’ findings. In 1942, Edwin Sutherland began to explain the ecological differences in crime rates. Shaw and McKay modernized and continued this framework by researching and concluding their findings on the relationship between delinquency
Racial bias as well as the improper funding have contributed to the mass incarceration issue our country currently faces; leaving prisoners with no help of rehabilitation and our generation with a dysfunctional criminal justice system. Our Criminal Justice system is far from perfect, with a long list of problems our system has these topics are at the top of the list and with hopes of changes so our country can have a turn to the undermined criminal system we have.
The race in American life will continue to play an important role in the criminal justice system. For several years, the criminal system has failed to maintain its “justice” and will conclude with an answer depending on the victim’s profile. Many cases are taken to court, but surprisingly, they aren’t winning. Lots of them don’t achieve justice for the reason that everything concludes in the same category, which is depending on the victim’s profile. Statistics have shown that the number of African Americans in prison is higher than Whites, meaning that eventually race can determine who goes to jail.
In order to explain the phenomena that lower-class society creates the crime problems that exists in the United States society, criminologists formulated “social structure theories,” which suggest, “that social and economic forces operating in deteriorated lower-class areas are the key for determinant of criminal behavior patterns” (Siegel, 192).
Many citizens of the United State of America believe we need new leadership that will put forward solutions that will streamline the criminal justice system. The criminal justice system was created to protect the people. However, for many years, our “justice system has reinforced our country’s cruel history of racism and economic inequality remaining disconnected from our founding ideals of life, liberty, and equal treatment under the law” (Rugge, Bonta, & Wallace-Capretta, 2005). The American justice system needs to assure that justice equally serves for all Americans, regardless of status, race, and sexual-preferences.
A major foundation of the School of Chicago is Social Disorganization theory. The underlying assumption of this theory is that crime is a result of structural causes within a region rather than the individual. The key factors when measuring social disorganization are Poverty, Residential mobility and population heterogeneity. These three indicators of social disorganization
I come from a household that watches the news often. It was a pattern that was embedded in our lifestyle when my family first fled famine and civil war in Somalia to come to America. Constantly being exposed to the news trained me to notice trends. One of the trends that I noticed was the unfair and dominant role race played in the criminal justice system. Although slavery was abolished with the thirteenth amendment. Many in America still believe that race does not play a prominent role in government, evident in the election of Barack Obama as president. However, the government still uses race as a justification for discrimination, which causes social animosity towards criminals. America’s current justice system allows for legal discrimination
Based upon significant transformation that occurred throughout the United States during the twentieth century, theorist began to question early ideas that linked the causes of crime to individual conditions. As a response to rapid population growth, greater diversity, and deteriorating urban cities in Chicago, the Chicago school of thought emerged during the 1930’s, viewing crime as a social condition (Lilly, Cullen & Bell, 2015). Deprived circumstances in overpopulated urban cities sparked interest among scholars in understanding how growing up in such locations influenced an individual’s tendency to engage in crime (Lilly et al., 2015). Essentially, theorists within the Chicago school provided that the social organization within a society