Thesis Statement For Criminal Justice Reform Research Paper
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
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 New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander published in 2012, is a 261 page book detailing how mass incarceration has become the new form of legalized discrimination. BACKGROUND A large cause for the writing of this book is that there is currently not much research or call for a criminal justice reform. According to Alexander the main goal of the book is to “stimulate a much-needed conversation about the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetuating racial hierarchy in the United States” (2012:16).
Abstract This argumentative essay addresses the research question, "What are the root causes of racial disparities in the criminal justice system, and what policy solutions have been proposed to address them?", it explores the root causes of racial disparities in the criminal justice system in the United States and the policy solutions that have been proposed to address them. The essay argues that systemic racism and implicit bias are the primary causes of racial disparities within the criminal justice system. Systemic racism is evident in racial profiling, discriminatory sentencing, and over-policing of communities of color. Implicit bias influences decision-making by police officers, judges, and juries, leading to more punitive decisions
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.
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.
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