African American Criminal Justice Graduates in the Real World

Baro, A. L., & Burlingame, D. (1999). Law enforcement and higher education: is there an impasse?. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 10(1), 57-73.

Many people studying in the field of Criminal Justice should choose their career carefully. There are many interesting careers that are arising as the years pass by. To become a successful employee you need to be able to fulfill many requirements, qualifications, and trainings.

With all the jobs out there in the world, how does anyone decide what they want to do with their lives? Most of the time this is the first question young people ask themselves when they are trying to figure out what they want to major in at college. This question caused me a lot of confusion about my possible future career. The career I finally choose, like many other young adults, was law enforcement, to be a police officer. In the following paragraphs, I will describe the reasons for my choice, along with the effects that my education and training have on my goal of becoming a police officer.

Criminal justice practitioners are necessary for a civilized society. Without those who form boundaries to our freedom, and the ones that reinforce those laws, our community would be chaos. Some of the main social issues our society faces are drug abuse, gang violence, child abuse, and terrorism. The criminal justice practitioners face these types of issues daily. These professionals must act on the morals and laws stated by society rather than their own opinions, sometimes facing hard decisions. The criminal justice field is always active and busy, dealing with countless amount of criminal activity throughout the country.

The criminal justice system in the United States is evident of several deep flaws relating to the treatment of black men and women accused of committing criminal offenses. It is logical to believe that due to the U.S.’s rather dark past surrounding the treatment of black Americans, systematic racism is included under the guise of the criminal justice system. The U.S. is historically infamous for it’s open racial discrimination against black Americans, up until systematic racism became one of the more dominant forms of discrimination in the most recent years. Systematic racism has been shrouded under societal ignorance and regulated particularly by social and political groups in order to keep the human rights of black Americans frigid and

The achievements for which the graduation speaker praises recent graduates from the narrator’s school differ from the narrator’ hopes for herself and her classmates in the aspect of success and achievements. The speaker praises the whites when it comes to being successful in their field of endeavor and always given the priority in many facets of life. He even gave the bragging rights for them. He made them feel the racial discrimination where whites are being favored over the blacks like them. They get all the attentions and assistance unlike the colored people who are not given the good opportunities for their future. The whites make sure that they are superior in every step of the

African American males are overrepresented in the criminal justice and many times are subject to harsher sentences than their Caucasian counterparts. African American males also experience racial profiling and have more negative interactions than any other population in the United States. Ibie, Obie, and Obiyan states, “African Americans have continued to be the repository for American crime and to be treated as amalgamation of presumed group trait rather than as individuals”. This topic is important because African American adolescents are less likely to be referred to rehabilitation or diversion programs and more likely to be sent to juvenile and/or prison. History has not been kind to African Americans and the injustices experienced by African Americans in the criminal justice system is extremely high. According to Weatherspoon, “The Supreme Court condoned and perpetuated many of the present day stereotypical biases concerning African Americans in the landmark decision of Dred Scott v. Sanford”. Over that past few years, with the advent of social media, the world is becoming more aware of the injustices and brutality suffered by African American males in the justice system. Many view this as a new phenomenon, but others know this abuse has always occurred, it is just now there are cameras taping the violence. Many people are waking up to what is occurring, but there are many others who are denial and who refuse to acknowledge the oppression and racism

The past quarter century has seen an enormous growth in the American incarceration rate. Importantly, some scholars have suggested that the rate of prison growth has little to do with the theme of crime itself, but it is the end result of particular U.S. policy choices. Clear (2007) posits that "these policy choices have had well-defined implications for the way prison populations have come to replicate a concentrated occurrence among specified subgroups in the United States population in particular young black men from deprived communities" (p. 49).

Any criminal justice system reflects its society and its times. Currently, in my culture, the African American culture, people commit crimes for the number one reason being to feed their families. What is considered a crime? How does the Criminal Justice System work? How is the amount of time determined? Why do African American get more time than the white man? Why are more black men in prison than any other ethnicities? The Criminal Justice System is a social problem within the African American community. The following are the social problems within the CJS, how they became social problems and why is the Criminal Justice Systems (CJS) bias towards African Americans.

There are many key issues impacting minorities and women in the criminal justice system . Sexism still exists in the United States. Sexism against women is shown in the media and indicates that sexism still pervades in our society. Another key issue is the overrepresentation and disparities among minorities in the criminal justice system. After the act of September 11, racial profiling and other acts of racial hate crimes suggests that racism occurs. Another key issue that indicates that racial disparities occur in the criminal justice system is the overrepresentation of minorities in the Juvenile Justice system.

In recent years’ police departments have been brought into the public eye based on the public belief that police brutality has become a norm within the police system in recent years. Yet this has occurred for decades in police departments, not only that but there are multiple forms of brutality to take account of in the criminal justice system specifically towards African-Americans. The criminal justice system has become accustomed to creating a system of racial control after the ending of the Jim Crow Era. Causing every level of the system to work in a way that limits the freedom of African-Americans the most common being that of police misusing

As reported by the U.S. Justice Department, there has been significant increase in incarcerated African American males, in comparison to Hispanic and White males. It is believed that social interaction, area of residency, and social networks have major influence on the increasing crime and incarceration rates of African American males. A larger portion of White males hold more positions within the U.S. Judicial system than African American males who make up a larger population of prison inmates and less involvement in legislation. This coincides with data suggesting that African American’s have lower percentages of receiving or obtaining higher education, placing them in areas of low-income and less opportunities. Social inequality in the judicial system is questioned as well as demographics and economics will be researched in order to provide in depth analysis of these national percentages of African Americans. Additional research is conducted to investigate circumstances once an African American male enters the criminal judicial system, and a generational cycle of crime. There is more knowledge and potential opportunities within the prison system versus the lack of resources these prisoners would feel they would have upon their release.

A growing number of entry-level criminal justice practitioners have college degrees. This paper will explore whether or not law enforcement agencies should require applicants to have a post secondary degree as a condition of employment and will college-educated police officers will be resistant to organizational change.

In a study done by Mustaine and Tweksbury (1998), over a thousand college students in criminal justice/sociology courses in

Academics can be used in two different ways here; learning to help criminal justice professionals and providing information for students. Just like our textbook, criminal justice research can be done for academic purposes to teach all aspects of Criminal Justice. Criminal Justice classes range from high school to graduate school, that means there needs to be academic resources for all those years’ worth of learning and teaching. But it can also be to learn more about the Criminal Justice system as a whole for those who are working in it. For example, research may be done to learn why adolescences are behaving the way they are. Then social service personnel can read and learn from this research to further help