The criminal justice system can easily be biased to reflect and support their own self interest. The criminal justice system is the only organization that is able to remove criminals from the streets. Even though it takes many officers to make a difference in a community, there is no assurance that each officer
He claims the prejudices of the judicial system handed out mandatory sentencing for those who used their constitutional right to have a trial by jury. The author builds a relationship with the audience by using Pathos in order to compel them to recognize the urgency to change the current law. Girault explains the failing logic of the law on page 225, he states that communities were to be made safer and instead of targeting petty crimes the focus would be to bring down kingpins, however after three decades of the SRA it still was a failure. Girault defines the sentencing reform act as discriminatory and states that minorities are hugely effected by this law and states ”Black people are overwhelming charged, convicted and sentenced at a higher rate to federal crimes since the passage of the Sentencing Reform Act.” (Girault 228).
One of the theories it speaks of is the Pyrrhic defeat theory. This theory states that the criminal justice system is created to function in a particular fashion in order to create an image of crime where crime is actually seen as the “threat from the poor”.(Reiman, 2010, p.5) “Reimans’s theory suggests that those who have power to change the system benefit from the way it operates: they can go on committing harms and accumulating wealth without punishment, while the country remains focused on street crime and poor minority criminals. ”(Leighton 2010) In order to accomplish this “The system must actually fight crime-or at least some crime-but only enough to keep it from getting out of hand and to keep the struggle to substantially reduce or eliminate crime.
In examining the book's theses, it is important to consider the historical context in which the criminal justice system has been shaped. For example, the War on Drugs was initiated at a time when the country was struggling with issues related to urbanization, job loss, and increased poverty. This provided an opportunity for politicians to create a scapegoat out of people of color, who were disproportionately affected by these
Offenders don’t realize the reality when reentering society because they aren’t giving the necessaries resources. The reality is how the criminal justice system have label them. When an offender is release from prison their life is over due to the way the criminal justice have develop. Many would concur that there is a problem with strength based. As clearly demonstrated there will always be pros and cons towards an issue.
The author’s studies indicate that the criminal justice system choose majority of their targets and suspects predominantly by race. According to studies conducted by the U. S Department of Justice, the imprisonment rate by race per 100,000 residents over 3,000 black males were imprisoned in the year 2000 compared to white males imprisonment rate of less than 500. This shows that conviction of crime, robbery, murder, and other violence and drug related crimes has a clear discrepancy across racial groups.
Coker gives great evidence that supports racial injustice in the criminal justice system. She discusses on the Supreme Court’s rulings and accusations of racial preference in the system. This article is helpful because it supports my thesis on race playing a role on the system of criminal justice. Hurwitz, J., & Peffley, M. (1997). Public perceptions of race and crime: The role of racial stereotypes.
Discrimination and racial disparities exist at every phase of the U.S. criminal justice system, especially when it comes to sentencing. The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world, as there are over 2 million people imprisoned today. The drawing is a visual representation of my annotated bibliography. In it, I stated that the criminal justice system is broken, as it discriminates against people of color. The left side of the illustration depicts the scene of the courtroom during the trial of a white defendant.
Walter Dean Walters uses literary elements such as flashback, sensory details and characterization to demonstrate the theme of of bad the justice system can be. Walter Dean Myers uses flashbacks to show the theme. Steve goes back to when he got arrested. On page 124 the police said,”Some clown said that you were involved in the drug store stick up.”
Even before our nation’s founding, people of color have been discriminated. Decades pass and the criminal justice system is still “racist” labeling people of color as criminal, meaning black equal criminals therefore is fine to discriminate people of color just because they’re criminals. In “The New Jim Crow” the system targets black men because they are associated with crime, meaning crime stands in for race. In the other hand, As Heather Mac Donald writes in her book “The War on Cops”, “The criminal-justice system does treat individual suspects and criminals equally, they concede. But the problem is how society defines crime and criminals” (154).
Many evidence support the view that there are biases in the criminal justice system against members of minority groups. One of the issues with discriminatory practices is that legal apparatus for antidiscrimination law is based on intentional discrimination. Many issues of overrepresentation of minority group individuals at all levels of the justice system have profound effects not only for those who are accused and convicted but also for the victims of crime. Victims from racialized communities, knowing that members of their community are unfairly treated under the law, may feel both personal pressure and community pressure to not report crimes committed against them or testify in court. Slavery, and the concomitant violence committed against
It sad to see that more than half of the young men in our American cities are under the control of the criminal justice system. Where’s the justice when our system automatically demotes them to a permanent second-class status, and challenges their chances of happiness and freedom. When minorities from the justice system are released, they are harshly discriminated against. This discrimination does nothing but regenerates a cycle of imprisonment. With the world at their backs, the result usually ends up with repeated behaviors that places them back into the system.
The intention of my research is to expose the racist tactics in the criminal justice system that have been camouflaged. I am prepared to explain how racism contributes to the vast number of incarcerated African Americans, and other minorities. The criminal justice system has created and perpetuated racial hierarchy in the United States, and has done so throughout history. I propose the question: Are minorities being targeted within the Criminal Justice System? African Americans are criminalized and targeted because of their skin color, and it is not fair.
Why the Criminal Justice System Is Not Fair The Criminal Justice System is not fair. If you are a man, you are more expected to commit a crime rather than a female. There is a high range of incarceration rates depending on race. Depending on your age, you are worth more money. Should you die as an adult rather than a child, your family would easily receive money in compensation.
There are three components that make up the criminal justice system – the police, courts, and correctional facilities – they all work together in order to protect individuals and their rights as a citizen of society to live without the fear of becoming the victim of a crime. Crime, simply put is when a person violates criminal law; the criminal justice system is society’s way of implementing social control. When all three components of the criminal justice work together, it functions almost perfectly. For a person to enter the criminal justice system, the process must begin with the law enforcement.
