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 United States criminal justice system is diminishing millions of lives every day. Ironically, the amount of inequalities that the criminal justice system portrays goes against the term ‘justice’. There is a 33% chance that a black male will end up in jail in his lifetime, while white males have a 6% chance. There are 4,749 black males incarcerated while there are only 703 white males. Prisons receive revenue of 1.65 billion dollars per year which makes them willing to incarcerate anyone that they can (“Enduring Myth of Black Criminality”).
In America, criminal justice has been an issue for generations. People are convicted of crimes and their convictions are oftentimes based on their race and/or social status. Unfortunately, it is a reality that the criminal justice system privileges those who are “rich and guilty rather than if they are poor and innocent. Many African American men and women have suffered due to this. In the book Just Mercy and the movie 13th, both sources give great examples of how the criminal justice system continues to overlook the truth to keep black Americans incarcerated.
The second challenge would be mitigating the harm from colorblind policies and reform efforts. Alexander highlights that these colorblind policies are surface level and intentionally ignore systematic issues in the criminal justice system, but they are widely used because they are easier to get legislative support in comparison to policies that call for more radical systematic changes. A solution I propose, as I did in previous discussions based on the analysis of The New Jim Crow and other CRT theorists, is abolition and a new system that’s rid of systematic racism to be instituted. In conclusion, Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow provides a deeper understanding of racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
It has been over a decade since Michelle Alexander published “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” Her book delves into the complex nuances of mass incarceration in the United States, more specifically pertaining to the criminal justice system’s deeply-ingrained racial biases. She argues, as in reference to the title of her work, that mass incarceration effectively serves as a new form of Jim Crow discrimination and calls for large-scale reform. But in the time since the book’s original release, there have been many significant developments in terms of policy, public opinion, and social movements which warrant elaboration on the themes originally discussed by Alexander. In chapter 3 of “The New Jim Crow,” the
Although, the justice system impacts many lives, especially within the African American community many individuals are unaware of the effects that the Criminal Justice system can have on offender while incarcerated and even after incarceration. The reading is intended for anyone willing to learn about how are society uses Mass Incarceration as a method to hinder individuals of the African American community from being successful in our society. The author’s writing style is very informative. Michelle Alexander uses clarity and factual information to explain to the reader the many issues that are within our Criminal Justice system. Further, Michelle Alexander is very detailed with the information that she shares within the text.
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
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
The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for several reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.
A study conducted by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services undertaking claims of sentencing disparities studies the felony sentencing outcomes particularly in New York courts between the years 1990 and 1992. Astonishingly, the study concluded that approximately one-third of minorities sentenced to prison would have received a shorter sentence with the possibility of a non-incarcerative penalty if they had been treated similarly to their white counterparts. Consequently, other sentencing data is consistent with the results of this study’s findings. On a national scale, black males specifically, who were convicted of drug felonies in state courts 52 percent of the time, while white males typically receive prison sentencing approximately 34 percent of the time. In addition, these figures are not constrained to gender given the similar ratio among black and white women as well.
Soon after slavery was abolished in the south, as a form of retaliation, southern states utilized “criminal justice for racial control”(Eji). All in all, by using criminal justice for racial control, the south effectively executed the mass incarceration of African Americans, which had become so deeply ingrained in American society that it is still present in today’s world. Not only are black people in disadvantaged communities, but they are constantly criminalized, and because of this, represent a high percentage of the prison population. The effects of slavery are still present in the current criminal justice system and it is important to acknowledge that even though efforts are being made to reduce its presence, it will likely take decades to fully eradicate the racial bias that African Americans face in the criminal justice system. Furthermore, slavery contributed to the racial bias in the criminal justice system by forming a gap
Disparities in the Criminal Justice System (3) The criminal justice system in the U.S. targets and punishes African-Americans much more aggressively than white people. African-Americans constitute a smaller percentage of the population than whites but have a higher rate of arrested especially for drugs. African‐Americans make up around 12.5 % of the population in the US but account for about 40% of arrests, 50% of the prison population, and 50% of death row inmates. “African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites.”
Introduction Over the past century the United States has made some effort in ensuring equal treatment under the law. However there is one major area that has gotten very little change when it comes to fair justice for all. Racial inequality in the criminal justice often gets ignored because it does not affect most people. Racial disparities affect both innocent and guilty minorities. Although African Americans have fought against racial inequality during the civil rights era, yet decades later a broken criminal-justice system has proven that we still have a long way to go in achieving racial equality.
Our government needs to focus on one of the issues most in need of attention in America today, which is the racial discrimination within the entire criminal justice system. Racial discrimination is seen in many police departments and in the court systems, these are the most visible sign of racial bias in America. The racially bias American judicial system has made it to where African American men, constitute up the majority of prisons and jail population. African American men are also more likely to be imprisoned than white men for the same crimes. Racial inequality is a serious problem that is growing every day.
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.
