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Aspects Of Punishment: Problems With The Criminal Justice System

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Aspects of punishment, including problems with the criminal justice system are explored throughout this source. Analyzing the criminal justice system, she concludes that laws and acts unfairly punish specific individuals such as people of colour, women and the lower class. In terms of African Americans and Hispanics, Ezorsky claims that the system creates a new racial caste system in America, producing a racial hierarchy and ensuring restrictions of rights on people of colour. Conclusions are made that the system does target and label coloured people “criminal” as the new means of a justification to discriminate against them. Afterwards the author discusses women in prison, noting that incarceration negatively impacts families. Focusing on mothers imprisoned being at risk of losing their children in foster care, she states that this is due to minimum sentences exceeding the set time before their children are put up for adoption and their limited access to legal representation to help in this matter. …show more content…

Also, the crimes commonly committed by the poor are more harmfully punished than crimes committed by the rich, such as street crime versus white collar crime. This source, specifically the lower class component applies to my paper by how these claims supported by the author show the bias in the criminal system by how the system focuses more on crimes committed by the poor and their associated punishments to be harsher than those of the rich. Even when the upper classes crimes may cause more harm to society or are the same as the lower class, the poor are the ones more likely to be convicted, charged and sentenced. The only reason this occurs is discrimination towards socioeconomic status in the criminal justice system which is the main idea of my

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