Armstrong V. United States: A Case Study

The case of Kent V. United States is a historical case in the United States. The Kent case helped lead the way in the development of a list of eight criteria and principles. This creation of these criteria and principle has helped protect the offender and public for more than forty-five years. Which as a reason has forever changed the process of waving a juvenile into the adult system (Find Law, 2014).

Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, explained how our treatment of criminals has created a new racial caste system, and the only way to make change is by massive social change and Civil Rights movement. The criminal laws often focus on psychoactive drugs used by the minority populations. Minorities are disproportionately targeted, arrested, and punished for drug offenses. For instance, Black, Latino, Native American, and many Asian were portrayed as violent, traffickers of drugs and a danger to society. Surveillance was focused on communities of color, also immigrants, the unemployed, the undereducated, and the homeless, who continue to be the main targets of law enforcement efforts to fight the war on drugs. Although African Americans comprise only 12.2 percent of the population and 13 percent of drug users, they make up 38 percent of those arrested for drug offenses and 59 percent of those convicted of drug offenses causing critics to call the war on drugs the “New Jim Crow”(drug policy). The drug

In today’s modern world, many people would be surprised to find out that there is still a racial caste system in America. After witnessing the election of a black president, people have started believing that America has entered a post-racial society. This is both a patently false and dangerous mindset. The segregation and stigma of race is still very much alive in our society. Instead of a formalized institution such as slavery or Jim Crow, America has found a new way to continue the marginalization of blacks by using the criminal justice system. In Michelle Alexander’s book “ The New Jim Crow”, she shows how America’s “ War on Drugs “ has become a tool of racial segregation and how the discretionary enforcement of drug laws has

Although some victims of this type of abuse took legal action and attested that the war on drugs is racially unjust, their claims were rejected and disregarded by the court. “The Supreme Court has made it virtually impossible to challenge racial bias in the criminal justice system under the Fourteenth Amendment, and it has barred litigation of such claims under federal civil rights laws as well.” (Alexander 106) For instance in the McCleskey vs. Kemp case, the real matter in question was whether the court would permit racial discrimination in the criminal justice system. The sentence given to McCleskey was the Court’s reply, “racial bias would be tolerated––virtually to any degree––as long as no one admitted it.” (Alexander 107) So in reality, the Supreme Court has sanctioned racial bias in the criminal justice system and policing instead of opting for rules prohibiting it.

It is almost unquestionably true that drug enforcement is racially biased. Despite equal usage rates of marijuana, African-Americans are 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for possession than their white counterparts. There is also a major disparity in sentencing.

Over policing in African American communities started during the drug wars and continue to result in over drug arrests of African Americans. Over policing may also occur when police concentrate their efforts not on illegal activity, but on citizens behavior with the hope that in the process of the investigation some evidence of crime may be uncovered. Some police activities such as undercover drug buys are more common in African American communities than other communities and consequently disproportionate numbers of African Americans are arrested for drug dealing (Nunn, 2002). When it comes to violent or non drug crimes there is a clear victim and suspect, and the police can go to the crime scene and investigate. On the other hand when it comes to drug related offences, there isn’t a clear victim and the police can choose when and where to investigate. Police choose to target African American communities because they are easier to target, which results in over drug arrests (Mauer, 199, p.143). The police focus on substances that blacks buy, sell, and places where they would sell them, which results in high drug arrests rates. For example in 2008, the drug arrests of blacks was 3.5 times higher than whites (Tonry, 2011 p. 54). One would wonder if the government and law

Certain law enforcers with racist ideals will sometimes exploit their position of power unfairly to target black Americans, or “racially profile”. In some cases, especially in conservative states, it’s been known for police departments to advise their officers to suspect race in a key element of determining criminal activity. This detrimental generalization based on race has snowballed out of control, taking to events like the War on Drugs (find an article on the war on drugs and racial discrimination within to support your assertion).

Colorblindness has helped disseminate racism in the United States since the Civil Rights movements of the mid-sixties, by perpetuating anti-blackness and racial discrimination against other minorities. Colorblindness is a new form of racism, the new “Jim Crow” which “Legitimizes the state and society as racially neutral although they are not neutral” and creates the belief that we have become post-racial and we are all equal. While preaching homogeneity, colorblindness uses mechanisms by which white racial domination is structured and as a result, colorblind racism has caused a widespread of anti-blackness and racial discrimination against Latinos, Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians.

Media tends to cover police racial profiling although they have failed to recognize their own practice of media racial profiling. Racial profiles projected are indirectly related to punitive public policies giving the mainstream news media the 'out' of deniability (Eisenstein and Jacob 30). Media tends to over-represent the number of black people in the issue and becomes black stigmatized and is further racialized (Eisenstein and Jacob 30). A study was done by Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy. It showed drug addicts are not primarily members of minority racial and ethnic groups and Caucasians are more likely to be addicted (Graham 62). These findings were never covered by Time, U.S. News and World Report, and Newsweek. News media plays a major role in promoting racial stereotypes.

“Forget the rhetoric: the evidence shows the NYPD's policy is not about stopping violent crime, but racking up arrests for non-violent drug offenses. While New York should immediately put a stop to its illegal practice of stopping and frisking anyone with a complexion a shade darker than Celine Dion, don't kid yourself: only when the U.S. ends its insane devotion to the war on drugs will we ever be able to effectively address the racist impacts of the criminal justice system.” (Davis, 2010)

One of the most thought-provoking issues raised in The New Jim Crow is the concept of colorblindness, and how Martin Luther King’s call to create a society where people are not "judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" has been badly distorted by

The argument that racial disparities in drug arrests is more likely to reflect racially biased policing than racial differences in the use or distribution of drugs is not persuasive at all. Studies show that arrest rates for blacks have been substantially higher than the rates of whites for decades. However, there is no scientific proof that blacks possess, use, and sell drugs more than or at higher rates than whites. From 1980 through 2006 the arrest rates for blacks increased by 271% and 135 percent for whites (Spohn & Belenko, 2015).

Although African Americans may make up 13% of the U.S. population and 14% of monthly drug users, they are 37% of the people arrested for drug offenses. The chances of a policeman stopping blacks are higher than the chances of them stopping whites. It is proven that the police force will ignore the situation of a white person committing a major crime. Compare any case of a black person involved with drugs to the case of Dylann Roof, a white twenty-one year old that opened fire and killed nine black people, and nothing makes sense. Witnesses say he proclaimed his hate for black people right before he began shooting. When he was arrested, the police were very polite to him and never treated him

In this day in age, you can not turn on the television without seeing something about the racial divide in this country. I would even go as far as to say we have taken steps backward in regards to racial stigma. It especially has an effect on our law enforcement officers, and they especially have to be careful. Law enforcement creates their drug courier profiles, these are profiles that agencies have come up with themselves (Levinthal, 2012). There is most definitely a fine line between this and racial profiling. In 1999 Chief Carl Williams of NJ State Police made a statement that said “ as far as racial profiling is concerned it is not right” but also stated that the illicit drug trade is balkanized “if you're looking at the methamphetamine

1. How, if at all, can you distinguish Greber from other instances of payment for professional services? Suppose the percentage Dr. Greber paid to the physicians had not exceeded Medicare’s guideline? Would that payment still amount to prohibited remuneration in this court’s eyes?