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Overrepresentation In The Juvenile Justice System

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There is a belief that Socrates was the first philosopher to predominantly recognize the issue of ethics and moral behavior. Socrates essentially invented a new mechanism of a practical and political focus on ethics. While society evolves into another generation, the questioning of ethics and behavior have grown more complex and difficult to manage. As a result, leadership personnels, such as law enforcement officials, have a fundamental duty to ensure public safety to mankind. With recent controversies with cases of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, etc., hostility has targeted towards all police officers and the criminal justice system for racial profiling and police brutality. Despite the claims of the U.S entering “post-racial …show more content…

Disproportionate minority contact involves the divergent racial representation of racial and ethnical groups of the criminal justice system. A federal mandate addressed states to resolve the issue. “This mandate led to an increase in the information on racial disparities in the juvenile system and efforts to reduce these numbers” (Hartney and Vuong). The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 2002 was created. However, there were no such efforts in the adult justice system. Overrepresentation is frequently used when researching DMC. It refers to a large proportion of a particular group is found at various stages of the justice system then is represented in the general population. An example that is well alive today is judging blacks for most of the crime rate and ignoring the white felony rate. The DMC not only represents the racial and ethnic groups arrested, but also pretrial detention and court processing, prosecution, sentencing, incarceration, capital punishment, probation, and …show more content…

Higher arrest and incarceration rates for African Americans and Latinos are not reflective of increased prevalence of drug use or sales in these communities, but rather of a law enforcement focus on urban areas, on lower-income communities and on communities of color as well as inequitable treatment by the criminal justice system. We [Drug Policy Alliance] believe that the mass criminalization of people of color, particularly young African American men, is as profound a system of racial control as the Jim Crow laws were in this country until the mid-1960s”

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According to the article, The Drug War, Mass Incarceration, and Race “ Black people comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population,10 and are consistently documented by the U.S. government to use drugs at similar rates to people of other races.11 But black people comprise 31 percent of those arrested for drug law violations,12 and nearly 40 percent of those incarcerated”. Despite the fact that colored people are minorities in the country still, make up 1/3 of the people arrested because of the drug policy. The policy effective created to target the minorities by making the cocaine the main focus of the drug. “America of the poor, where, amid hopelessness and lack of education, people will suffer the worst consequences of cocaine”(Kerr, 1) which in many poor communities lived the colored minorities, this made it easier for the police officer to target and arrest the

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Throughout chapters four, five and six of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, I gained a better understanding of the legacy of the war on drugs era policy and the function of the forms of oppression in the criminal justice system. In chapter four, Alexander focuses on the roles and legacy of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system. She conveys the fact that although newly freed incarcerated people may have more rights overall, they still arguably have less respect than newly freed enslaved people who were living ‘freely’ in Mississippi at the peak of the Jim Crow Era (Alexander 2010). She goes on to say that although Jim Crow may have been outlawed, new signs have gone up targeting society’s new legal form of second class citizens

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The article explores the historical context of drug laws and policies in the U.S. and their disproportionate impact on black communities. It emphasizes the negative effects of the war on drugs on black families, communities, and overall socio-economic mobility, perpetuating the enduring inequalities faced by Americans of color. The article relates to course concepts such as the effects of residential segregation, which has contributed to the development of underclass communities in the United States, and how these communities are disproportionately affected by the criminal justice system. Additionally, the article highlights the systemic racism and discrimination that has existed in the United States, perpetuating the inequalities faced by people of color. It discusses how drug laws have been used as a tool to target and criminalize people of color, while white drug users and sellers have largely been ignored or given lesser punishments.

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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.

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Bringing attention to the unfair disparage-ridden system, it is known that racial minorities like African Americans or Latinos are condemned more than Caucasians hence the dispoportionate number of the innocent outweighing the number of those guilty of the crime. The correction of the oppressive imbalanced system leaves room for a new unbiased

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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.

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According to Michelle Alexander, the war on drugs, which originated from Reaganomics, was created with the specific intention to incarcerate Black men. Though Black people are less likely to engage in drug use, they make up the majority of Americans convicted under drug charges. It has been statistically proven that white Americans, specifically white youth, are more likely to engage in illegal drug dealings than people of color, and yet, “1 in every 14 black men was behind bars in 2006, compared with 1 in 106 white men” (98). This presents a clear example of hypocrisy and preferential treatment of White people over Black people. Additionally, according to the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education, a survey stated that 95% of people picture a drug dealer as being Black.

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Through the years, the world has made substantial progress towards ensuring equal treatment under law for all citizens. However, the cycle continues, as disparities within the justice decision making process is growing at each level of the criminal justice system. Although the drug policies and sentencing guidelines that are put into place by our legislators are said to be “race neutral,” they have actually shown to be pervasively biased, affecting both innocent as well as guilty minority citizens. There is no question that the most important stage of the criminal justice system is the sentencing phase. It is at this stage where prosecutors, along with law enforcement personnel, attempt to determine who will or will not be granted leniency

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Racial profiling in the criminal justice system in America has been a critical issue that continues to thwart the efforts of the people seeking justice. Many Americans of the minority ethnic groups continue to believe that the justice they seek and the incarceration of the criminals is affected by the color of the people and that the criminal justice system is not fair in the administration of justice. Police arrests are believed to be based on the ethnicity of the. Police relations in areas where minorities live are strained.

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Cox (2009) explain the logic in the numbers by asserting that “African Americans are convicted more frequently than Caucasians and other races (making up fifty-nine percent of persons convicted of drug offenses), African Americans are subjected to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines more frequently. "(Cox, 2009, p.23) Wooldredge (2007) correlates social and economic disadvantages as being a driving factor minorities being an easy target for felony convictions. Wooldredge (2007) believes that Sentences are more severe for minority defendants from more social And economically disadvantaged areas within jurisdictions.(Wooldredge, 2007, p.239) Disenfranchisement of felons, especially African-Americans have brought with it a large growing concern

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Disproportionate minority contact is also refered to the disposition rate number of minority youths that came in contact with the juvenile justice system. However, currently it is used, "to refer to the representation of minorities from arrest through disposition" (Muraskin & Roberts, 2009 P.162). The disproportionate minority contact was amended by congress in 2002, when they wanted to incorporate all the stages of the juvenile justice process. Now, before this the juvenile justice and deliquency prevention Act, would use the term disproportionate minority confinement also known as DMC, "to assess the confinement of minority groups relative to their representation in the population" (Muraskin & Roberts, 2009 P.162). It has been illustrated

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Crime and Punishment have been the main symbols of the existing racial disparities in the United States for a long time now. In the earlier days, the criminal justice systems mostly entailed executions, prosecutorial and judicial prejudice, and chain-gang style penal practices. The judicial systems saw the minority groups being tried in all white court rooms by all-white juries. The highest number of offenders consisted of individuals from the black communities who were subjected to harsh punishments. Blacks who victimized the whites faced harsh and racially discriminative sentences.

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There is a lot of room for concern when reflecting on the imbalances in the American Criminal Justice System. We can begin with the number of African American and Hispanic males in the justice system referring to arrest, pretrial release, convictions, sentencing and recidivism, the numbers just do not reflect the population. The American Bar Association reported that ten point one percent of minority judges make up the state supreme courts, intermediate appellate courts and trial courts of general jurisdiction. When reducing those numbers to reference specific minorities, five point nine percent are African American which represents the most significant portion of the minorities, Latino/as accounted for two point eight percent. When separated by gender females were significantly

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