Economic Inequality And The American Justice System Essay

Inequality exists around us. One of the inequalities is the income received by a person or member of a family. This income includes wages, salaries, pensions, and interest derived from assets. Income inequality refers to the various income within a given population. This inequality is especially high in the United States.

The Justice system seeks to prevent crimes and to capture those who have committed crimes. But what are the causes of crime, maybe poverty, or greed, or is sometimes caused by the system. Is the risk worth the reward and is reward the worth risking the punishment? Power and influence is threaded deeply into the Criminal Justice System. Are all offenders caught and processed with the same demeanor and given the same punishment? The system needs to be impartial to all offenders regardless of the offender’s social position, job or yearly income. The general punishment for most crimes is incarceration in most states with a difference in duration to adjust per each crime. This is the deterrent against crime. This is what should be keeping

The criminal justice system used today is to follow principles that protect and establish equality for all and while the United States criminal justice system may strive to follow these right of the people, but unfortunately, this is where the system falls short of fundamental American principles. Repeatedly the criminal justice system does the adverse of what it’s supposed to do. It does not protect the many liberties the people should have. Some may argue that the criminal justice system is indeed fair for

The criminal justice system in America is a system designed to work in three distinct steps. The first being to fairly identify those breaking the law, second, create a process through which to both punish and rehabilitate criminals, and lastly integrate them back into society. The current system typically goes unquestioned, as those in the system seem to be deserving of what ever happens while they are in it, even once they have served their prison sentence. It is only upon deeper inspection that we begin to realize the discrimination and unfair tactics used to introduce certain groups of society into the criminal justice system and proceed to trap them there. This is the issue addressed in Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, and it is through arrests, sentencing and further upon release from jail that this oppressive system is created and maintained.

For my analysis, I decided to read the 2006 book Punishment and Inequality in America by author Bruce Western. The book takes a look into the relationship among crime, incarceration, and inequality and what really connects them together. Western shows that although there was a decrease in crime rates about 20 years ago, the reason behind this decrease is not what it may seem and that the decrease may of even come at a significant cost to those effected by the prison boom. Through my analysis, I hope to explore and convey what Western has claimed and examine if his arguments hold truth or not in dealing with our prison systems. On top of this, I will attempt to connect a few theories we as a class have learned about throughout the semester to what Western has has claimed in his book.

A Critical Analysis of The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap

Many laws that made up America are broken just for the way people treat each other. The Depression was a time when many laws were broken. The 14th amendment was violated when blacks were treated unequally. Black people were the main target during the depression because most people thought that people who were black could not have a better job than they had or even a job at all. In today's world there is definitely feelings of unequalness but it has gotten worse. There is no doubt that people are treating other people unfairly but it is all kinds of different people. For example there are unfair treatments people of different race, religion, and many other things. The treatment that people give to others is based only upon opinions that are

An inherent marker of this case’s problematic nature can be demonstrated within the representation of the defendants by prosecution. The defendants had their socioeconomic status and previous interactions with the ‘justice’ system flagrantly used against them. They were characterized as those people, the others, the ones who commit crimes – preying on implicit jury biases*1. Their background and the neighborhood they grew up in was used as an excuse to typecast them for a role in prison. It seems obvious that in any case, the class roles of any participants should be irrelevant unless their crime explicitly involves the matter. Instead, theirs were touted as evidence. Additionally, the defendants’ previous transgressions were brought up in an attempt to further incriminate them. Though recidivism rates are essentially astronomical in the United States, this argument is beyond irrelevant and at its heart a fallacy that should make this information irrelevant. (If the defendants had interacted with the justice system before and they were convicted of anything, then the system has failed them. It’s clearly ineffective given that in the eyes of the state the defendants were far from rehabilitated).

In many cases we are forced to believe that the prison system is fair and equal to all, although that may not be the case. The prison system at first glance seems fair and equal but after looking closer you will find many times it’s not fair at all. For example, “an African American male could spend more time in jail for possession of crack than a white man with the same amount of powder cocaine” (Harmon 372). This is just one example of how society has been taken advantage of in the prison system. Some people are subject to years in prison although they should not be while others enjoy life even though they should be in prison. The injustice in the sentencing of prisoners is an ongoing problem in society, as some criminals get of easy for horrible crimes others criminals suffer unfairly all because of color of their skin.

In considering the effectiveness of prisons as total institutions, it is critical to examine the degree to which they successfully rehabilitate those who spend time within their walls. While prisons most certainly protect citizens from the most dangerous members of society, notably murderers, rapists and other individuals who present a threat to the public, they tend to fail abysmally in terms of reforming criminals who are imprisoned for lesser offenses. With the success of prisons measured in terms of the rates of recidivism versus rehabilitation that they succeed in bringing about, America’s prisons currently create a context in which approximately 50% of those who are sentenced to prison will commit another crime, and re-enter the prison, upon their release. Moreover, the current prison system is tinted by racial and economic bias, especially since the advent of the “War on Drugs,” because of the fact that poor minority group members are disproportionately represented in the context of this high recidivism. Finally, a significant degree of moral hazard is present in the contemporary prison system inasmuch as ongoing dynamics of prison privatization are encouraging the incarceration of larger numbers of

The relationship between social class and criminal victimization is one that has been studied by criminal justice theorists and sociologists since the creation of our modern criminal justice system. The parameters of social class has been debated by famous sociologist over the centuries, causing the relation to criminal victimization to be somewhat skewed. The criminal justice policies of America are modeled after the common believe that those who are positioned at the bottom of the social class experience an increase in criminal victimization. This theory has had both a negative and positive effect on the members of the lower levels of the social

Most Americans harbor the assumption that their criminal equity framework is reasonable and blind. Inside that from the earlier daydream, a presumption is made that no individual should ever be sentenced for a wrongdoing that he or she didn 't confer (Huff, 2002; Marquis, 2005). The thought that a free citizen could be unreasonably sentenced to jail or executed by the State is oppositely contradicted to the idea of sensible treatment expected in the United States. In fact, crowds sympathize with characters, for example, John Coffey (Michael Clarke

It has been said and explained many times that the United States prison system is ran in a Capitalist manner. Critical penology “sheds light on the linkage between criminal justice apparatus and the structural components of capitalism, which together reinforce inequality and the repressive mechanisms of social control” (Welch 20). Critical penology also offers insights to the bias against the poor people and those of color through

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones,” writes Nelson Mandala, one of South Africa’s most esteemed presidents. Correspondingly proposing, a rather introspective question, in what justice means and the details it entails. Does prison wholly define justice or does prison represent a potential path to enlightenment for an individual who has done wrong? Since the derived purpose is to systematically exile those who have behaved against the social code- who benefits from the act of imprisonment when a law has been broken? Let us consider who better deserves the compensation. Let us, instead, practice logic and human decency in a system created to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. The quandary at hand, however, requires many to detach themselves from any former associations with the justice system. By doing so, society can consider the bigger picture and allow room for change.

Freed criminals are deprived educationally, economically, and socially (Morenoff & Harding, 2014). The constant flood of people going in and out of jails has increased inequality, mostly by decreasing chances for employment and reducing pay among previous convicts (Morenoff & Harding, 2014). “Collateral consequences” of imprisonment has put prisoners in a position where they are no longer eligible for receiving benefits such as holding certain jobs, and financial penalties and feeds are charged on delinquents (collateral consequences” of imprisonment). The experience of ex-convicts is that they are not able to make ends meet, because of imprisonment, which only widens the gap of people stuck in poverty.