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Racial disparity in the criminal justice
Racial and Ethnic Inequities Within the Justice System
Racial and Ethnic Inequities Within the Justice System
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Over the last thirty years, the prison population in the United States has increased more than seven-fold to over two million people, including vastly disproportionate numbers of minorities and people with little education. For some racial and educational groups, incarceration has become a depressingly regular experience, and prison culture and influence pervade their communities. Almost 60 percent of black male high school drop-outs in their early thirties have spent time in prison. In Punishment and Inequality in America, sociologist Bruce Western explores the recent era of mass incarceration and the serious social and economic consequences it has wrought.
The Jail and The New Jim Crow both describe how our justice system is generally based on people’s conceptions of things, and how our own justice system is creating a new way of discriminating people by labeling, incarcerating the same disreputables and lower class that have come to be labeled as the rabble class. In chapter two, of The New Jim Crow, supporting the claim that our justice system has created a new way of segregating people; Michelle Alexander describes how the process of mass incarceration actually works and how at the end the people that we usually find being arrested, sent to jail, and later on sent to prison, are the same low class persons’ with no knowledge and resources. These people commit petty crimes that cost them their
Yes, the Criminal Justice System is used for individuals of All races and cultural backgrounds. However, prisons within the United States are filled with mostly African Americans. Alexander believes that there is no coincidence between the amount of African Americans within the system and the racial issues that are constantly taking place in the U.S. The Author supports her beliefs by providing the reader with background information on when the increase in African American incarceration rates took place. In Addition, she uses real life examples to support the facts that she mentions throughout the
Ultimately, the disparities of dehumanization among African Americans has allowed for inmates to experience increased violence. In the article Women, Girls, and Mass Incarceration, Michele
By analyzing Martin Luther King’s essay and Davis’s excerpt, it becomes evident that the current status quo of mass incarceration, racial inequality, and injustice in the U.S. prison system demonstrates the severity of its institutional corruption. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” provides many assertions of racial inequality which can be applicable to the current U.S. prison system. An example of his assertions is, “My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without legal and nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily” (“Letter”). This text supports the fact that the racial inequality aspect in King’s argument is apparent in the current U.S. prison systems by focusing on the imprisonment of minorities with harsher punishments compared to whites that have committed the same crime.
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.
The Johnson v. California 2004 Supreme Court case, questioning a prison’s policy to segregate inmates by race, remonstrated by prison officials stating: “that the practice reduces racially motivated violence” (Racial Segregation in Prison). This exposes a biased stereotype of African-American men, making the assumption that they are easily subject to gang violence; therefore, they are unjustly separated from others based on their race and the presumption they are inherently violent. Within this prison, “When cell assignments are made, the inmates are divided into four general categories: black, white Asian, and other” (Racial Segregation in Prison).
In her book, The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander who was a civil rights lawyer and legal scholar, reveals many of America’s harsh truths regarding race within the criminal justice system. Though the Jim Crow laws have long been abolished, a new form has surfaced, a contemporary system of racial control through mass incarceration. In this book, mass incarceration not only refers to the criminal justice system, but also a bigger picture, which controls criminals both in and out of prison through laws, rules, policies and customs. The New Jim Crow that Alexander speaks of has redesigned the racial caste system, by putting millions of mainly blacks, as well as Hispanics and some whites, behind bars
Michelle Alexander, similarly, points out the same truth that African American men are targeted substantially by the criminal justice system due to the long history leading to racial bias and mass incarceration within her text “The New Jim Crow”. Both Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Michelle Alexander’s text exhibit the brutality and social injustice that the African American community experiences, which ultimately expedites the mass incarceration of African American men, reflecting the current flawed prison system in the U.S. The American prison system is flawed in numerous ways as both King and Alexander points out. A significant flaw that was identified is the injustice of specifically targeting African American men for crimes due to the racial stereotypes formed as a result of racial formation. Racial formation is the accumulation of racial identities and categories that are formed, reconstructed, and abrogated throughout history.
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world with about 2.3 million people in prison. According to Vitanna.org’s statistics, an estimated one million of these prisoners are African American. 12.3 percent of the population is black, yet over 43 percent of America’s prisoners are black. This disparity is certainly unnatural, seeing as how African Americans are no more likely to be criminals than whites. Black men are overrepresented in prisons because of the unfortunately common stereotype that they are all remorseless criminals.
The prison system in Texas is its own and unique beast. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice or TDCJ has many different units that house many different types of inmates. These units across Texas all sever different purposes to the state and the local communities in which the prisons are close to. There are however three things that make each prison unique from the other prisons, the inmates that they house, and the different industries ran by the each prison and the programs offered to offenders. I work at the H.H. Coffield Unit and I will take you on a tour of that prison and explain what it is that make Coffield unique.
Although some may say that the justice system in America treats the white and black communities equally, it is clear that the justice system creates inequality in incarceration rates because of the unequal opportunities for the black community to achieve the American Dream. The American justice system creates a separation between whites and blacks due to the increased levels of incarceration. The justice system has done little to no work to bring fairness and equity to the black community. In Source A, Brent Staples describes that the black community is often judged based on their physical physique rather than treating them as equals to the white community.
Over the decades, mass incarceration has become an important topic that people want to discuss due to the increasing number of mass incarceration. However, most of the people who are incarceration are people of color. This eventually leads to scholars concluding that there is a relationship between mass incarceration and the legacy of slavery. The reason is that people of color are the individuals who are overrepresented in prison compared to whites. If you think about it, slavery is over and African Americans are no longer mistreated; however, that is not the case as African Americans continue to face oppression from the government and police force.
The racial disparity can be accounted for through the mass incarceration of black offenders in terms of sentencing with mention of a racial caste in place, not allowing those of color to move from their position. As such, mass incarceration has led to prisons being filled with an overpopulation of those who are black than any other race. Interesting enough, it has been proven through surveys that those who are white are more likely to engage in drug crime rather than those who are black. I found this to be an interesting point to discuss as it raises the question as to just why are more people of color incarcerated at a growing rate than
People of all different races and ethnicities are locked behind bars because they have been convicted of committing a crime and they are paying for the consequences. When looking at the racial composition of a prison in the United States, it does not mimic the population. This is because some races and ethnicities are over represented in the correctional system in the U.S. (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2018). According Walker et al. (2018), African-Americans/Blacks make up less than fifteen percent of the U.S. population, while this race has around thirty-seven percent of the population in the correctional system today.
