Crime Is A Post Racial Nation

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

The U.S prison population rose by 700% from 1970 to 2005. A rate far outpacing that of general population growth and crime rates.

With criminality already tied closely to race, the War on Drugs legislation expanded the definition of crime to drug usages. As demonstrated in The New Jim Crow, a 1995 survey found that 95% of participants pictured an African American person when asked to picture a drug user, but in reality, only 15% of the drug users were African Americans. This survey showed us the extent to which media’s overrepresentation of black

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

Crime has always been a hot topic in sociology. There are many different reasons for people to commit criminal acts. There is no way to pinpoint the source of crime. I am going to show the relationship between race and crime. More specifically, I will be discussing the higher chances of minorities being involved in the criminal justice system than the majority population, discrimination, racial profiling and the environment criminals live in.

Statistics show that African Americans commit only fifteen percent of drug offenses, yet they comprise up to 90% of incarcerations for drug offenses in communities throughout the country. Besides that, although the

The United States features a prison population that is more than quadruple the highest prison population in Western Europe (Pettit, 2004). In the 1980s, U.S. legislation issued a number of new drug laws with stiffer penalties that ranged from drug possession to drug trafficking. Many of those charged with drug crimes saw longer prison sentences and less judicial leniency when facing trial. The War on Drugs has furthered the boom in prison population even though violent crime has continued to decrease steadily. Many urban areas in the U.S. have a majority black population. With crime tendencies high in these areas, drugs are also prevalent. This means that a greater percentage of those in prison are going to be black because law

The idea of slavery has shifted into mass incarceration, as we see extremely large numbers of individuals of color in the penal system. Unjust laws, such as the Stop and Frisk policy and the Three Strikes Law, serve as mechanisms used to target and oppress many individuals of color. There are numerous studies that show that police are more likely to pull over and frisk blacks or Latinos than whites. In addition, African-Americans comprise only 13% of the U.S. population and 14% of the monthly drug users, but are 37% of the people arrested for drug-related offenses in America. As the systematic racism remains extremely powerful and effectively, as a collective, we must inform and educate others about these issues in order to progress and seek equity for all, not just white, Christian

The criminal justice system in the United States promotes the mass incarceration of blacks can be seen through the high number of African-Americans going to jail for drugs compared to any other race. According to www.naacp.org “about 14 million Whites and 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug”; if someone was to calculate this that means five times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans.

With so many news stories and incidents surrounding the topic of race and the police these days, it is not surprising for people to come to the conclusion that racism may exist within the criminal justice system. We will be taking a deeper look into the problem to find out what other possible determinants may play a role in deciding how an officer makes an arrest or stop and continue to analyze what is happening in those contexts. The issues surrounding the topic of race is like the two faces of the same coin as there are usually two sides that we have to consider: reality and media portrayals. The reality side of situations is always there at the time, but it is so subtly hidden from society that nobody understands it unless they witness it firsthand and with the media spreading filtered information, it becomes even harder for us to identify the key issue; this is especially the case when dealing with the police and racial profiling. If you turn on the news and flip to a channel where it is reporting on the police and their arrests, you will most likely see more arrests pertaining to minorities than other ethnicities. In the news, we can often see a misrepresentation of ethnic minorities, usually African-Americans, being arrested when compared to others and this has caused problems around societies countless times. For this essay topic, I will be discussing the different issues surrounding race within the parameters of criminal justice and inequality; furthermore I will be

The “War on Drugs” established that the impact of incarceration would be used as a weapon to combat the illegal drug problem in this country. Unfortunately, this war against drugs has fallen disproportionately on black Americans. “Blacks constitute 62.6% of all drug offenders admitted to state prisons in 1996, whereas whites constituted 36.7%. The drug offender admissions rate for black men ranges from 60 to an astonishing 1,146 per 100,000 black men. In contrast, the white rate begins at 6 and rises no higher than 139 per 100,000 white men. Drug offenses accounted for nearly two out of five of all black admissions to state prisons (Human Rights Watch, 2000).” The disproportionate rates at which black drug offenders are sent to prison originate in racially disproportionate rates of arrest.

In the journal by Nunn Kenneth called “Race, Crime and the Pool of Surplus Criminality: Or Why the War on Drugs Was a War on Blacks.” The article explain how the war on drugs was actually a war on black communities and how police only target black communities for drugs trafficking. African American men have the higher incarcerated in American than white men. Why? Because the USA criminal justice system make it seen that only African American communities dose drugs. In the article is say that more African Americans go to prison than go to college, the gap between African American males in prison and education is scary. The author uses statistic. In the journal a show how the number of black men in prison or jail have increase over time, from

Based on the chapters read in “Race & Crime” I believe that the disproportionality of minorities stems from racism. The book gives a detailed account of early history. I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t know much of the history as it relates to the Caucasians coming over here (pre Christopher Columbus). If I were a racist or raised to be one, I’d have a lot of hate in my heart! Crime started with the Caucasians as they stole the land, enslaved people, lied, cheated, murdered individuals, and passed judgement on individuals (humans) who weren’t like them.

“The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. In Washington, D.C., our nation’s capitol, it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison” (Alexander, 2012). The numbers tell the story better than words can: black people are more likely to go to prison than any other race in the United States, shown by the fact that more than 60% of the prison population is composed of people of color (The Sentencing Project, 2016). These statistics can be traced back to several different cause, including the Era of Jim Crow and the War on Drugs, both of which led to higher policing in minority areas.

Of the many citizens of America, too many of them are in jails and prisons. According to the United States Census Bureau, there is a 323.1 million American population, and according to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, there is a 2,220,300 prison population, with 4,751,400 people on probation or on parole. With these statistics, 1 in 35 adults are withstanding a federal, state, or county punishment. Overall, this is too many people. Charlie Savage states, “The American population has grown by about a third since 1980, but it's prison rate has increased nearly 800 percent.” This shows inconsistency in the system, and that a higher percent of people are in jail as of now. The American population isn’t as large as other countries’, and despite having “5 percent of the world's population,” America also has “25 percent of the world's