Criminal Justice System Summary

There are many flaws that exist in the current criminal justice system. Many that need to be altered in order to insure that justice is issued indiscriminately. This paper will draw information from four sources, and compare the information drawn to Reiman’s beliefs. Then the paper will come to a final conclusion on how Reiman believes the criminal justice system should be fixed. Reiman’s discussion of crime in America begins with looking at the high crime rates and reviewing the excuses people make for this high rate. One of the main excuses that Reiman argues against is that “We’re too soft”. The US currently has the highest number of incarcerated individuals in the world, a lot of whom are minorities (not very soft). In a New York Times article written by David Brooks, he discusses how

Through the process of how legislators have defined crime, who police have arrested, and how media has reported crime, the typical criminal has been identified as young, urban, poor, minorities. President Barack Obama feels the same way. In a interview with Vice, Obama described how he believes the system is biased in a way that African American youth are more likely to be suspended for school, arrested, charged, and prosecuted more aggressively, than white American youth. Reiman would agree, and would add that a reason for this is that African Americans are disproportionately poor, and the poor tend to be arrested by the criminal justice system more frequently than their contribution to the crime problem would warrant. Then the question arises on why African Americans remain in poverty. Elizabeth Warren argues that it is because African Americans “face diminished economic prospects and discrimination in housing, education and employment”. Reiman would agree and state that if minorities continue to be economically disadvantaged, they will proceed to be the targets of the current criminal justice