Racial Bias Toward The Black Community

As a legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, blatant racism is no longer viewed as acceptable social behavior. However, the absence of blatant individual racism cannot be equated to the absence of structural racial discrimination. With the Thirteenth Amendment preserving slavery as punishment in the prison system, criminality is being manipulated by the media to be associated with race. We see the full effects of the overrepresentation with War on Drugs legislation, which are policies that categorized drug use as a crime instead of health issue pushed forward by the Reagan administration. The master narrative of the criminality painted the legislation as colorblind, or nondiscriminatory, policies that will benefit all citizens and created

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

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 purpose of this study is to expose the process of mass incarceration of poor black males, and females increasingly, within the context of a fabricated war on drugs which really is serving to keep the prison population booming by exploiting traditionally disadvantaged minorities in society. Alexander rightfully calls this a ?redesign? of the old racial caste system in America which was supposed to have been destroyed by the civil rights movement. The war on drugs in the 80s merely became the newest vehicle by which to exploit the black community in this country. The War on Drugs is really the rationale for racial control, which targets black men and women and relegates millions of citizens to what Alexander calls a ?second class status (Alexander, 2012).?

In 1950, 70 percent of whites were imprisoned and in 1990 it flipped to 70 percent of African Americans and Latinos imprisoned. In 2008 a study showed that 68 percent of those in prison were African Americans and among drug offenders who were released, 92 percent were black (Vogel, 2016). Nearly 14 million whites and approximately 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug (Criminal, 2016). In 1980 whites were more likely to sell drugs than blacks by 45 percent. In 2012, 6.6 percent of whites sold drugs compared to just 5 percent of blacks. However, blacks are 3.6 times more likely than whites to be arrested for selling drugs and 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for possession of drugs. (Rothwell, 2014). Blacks make up 12 percent of the total population of drug users, but 38 percent are arrested for drug offenses. African Americans essentially serve as much time for drug offenses as whites do for violent offenses. Yet blacks are incarcerated at six times the rate of whites (Criminal, 2016). “Jerome Miller analyzed arrest statistics from several American cities to determine the impact of the War on Drugs on policing. He found striking racial disparities in how drug arrests were made. In many jurisdictions, African American men account for over eighty percent of total drug arrests. In

Addressing Racial Disparities in Incarceration by Marc Mauer describes the current trends and impact of mass incarceration on colored communities. He precisely focuses on how the criminal justice system contributes to racial disparity within these communities and what changes need to be made to terminate the problem. Mauer explains that communities have very skewed ideas of how their criminal justice system works and that continues to divide the country based on race (2011, p. 88S). Mauer provides examples of racial bias in the three main pit stops of the criminal justice system starting with the officer who makes the arrest, followed by prosecution and finally the sentencing. Law enforcement officers frequently include implicit bias in regards to arrests and public policy decision, especially drug arrests, systematically

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.

In 2009, a survey showed that blacks were arrested for drug possession more than three times as often as whites, and a survey made in 2011 showed that whites have abused drugs more than blacks (The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data Archive). Yet, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one out of every 3 black males can expect to go to prison in their lifetime, and 225,000 of the people who were serving time in state prisons for drug offenses in 2011, blacks made up 45 percent while whites comprised of just 30 percent. One must question, why is there a disproportionate number of African Americans in the criminal justice system? Well, the majority of Americans are unaware of this mass incarceration and outright racism in the criminal justice system. When we think of racism, we think of the 1930’s-60’s, slavery, and Jim Crow which come to mind, but what

African Americans constitute 12% of the U.S. population, 13% of the drug using population and fully 74% of the people sent to prison for drug possession. Studies have shown that minorities are subject to disparate treatment at arrest, bail, charging, plea bargaining, trial, sentencing, and every other stage of the criminal process. These disparities accumulate so that African Americans are represented in prison at seven times their rate in the general population; rates of crime in African American communities is often high, but not high enough to justify the disparity. The resentment destabilizes communities and demeans the entire nation. (Justice, 2004)

Although saying the criminal justice system is racist is a controversial statement, there is evidence and statistics that prove it to be true. Research and evidence validate the issue of racism to be undeniable. Equality and justice are out of reach with the racism that takes place in our criminal justice system and our country. Racial discrimination is prevalent amongst the African American culture in issues regarding drug use, and incarceration which creates unfair inequality for this race. I will use peer reviewed articles to verify the racial disparity in the criminal justice system.

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 1994 there was 15,000,000 incarcerations, in 2002 there were 13,500,000, and by 2012 there were only 12,000,000 incarcerations. The notion of a historic boom in incarceration after the 1994 crime bill was passed is completely false. This fact takes away the movies narrative of social injustice and the massive incarceration that is taking over our modern society today. This section of the movie then goes on to claim that black people are targeted for the consumption and dealing of drugs in the 90’s. However, the Bureau of Justice Statistics states that 50% of drug incarcerations were white people and 49% was black and the 1% was other races. If black people were targeted in this time era so heavily, why were there more white people in jail for drugs compared to African-Americans? At this same time SAMHSA did a survey in prison asking inmates whether they are in prison for selling drugs or consumption. 82% of the people were white and 16% was black. The percent of African-American drug users was 13% and the incarceration rate was 13%, at this time 60% of blacks lived in intercity metropolitan areas were the majority of arrests were made. This shows that it isn’t the polices fault for making these arrest, but the people in the intercity who involved themselves in using drugs knowing well that there was a higher chance of being arrested due to higher police force in areas that require it.

Is the Criminal Justice system racist? This question has been asked many times by people of many colors. According to Mac Donald (2008), the criminal justice system is not at all racist. The article depicts arrest rates of both whites and blacks and compares statistics on these arrests. It looks at the number of whites and the number of blacks in jails and prisons. In this critique, we will be looking into this article to see these points in which Mac Donald states proves that the criminal justice system is, in fact, not a racist one.

“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.

Racism has a huge impact on society to this day. The greatest wrong doing in the U.S criminal justice system is that it is a race based organization where African Americans are specifically focused on and rebuffed in a considerably more forceful route than white individuals. Saying the Us criminal justice system is racist might be politically disputable in different ways. In any case, the actualities are debatable. Underneath I explain many cases of these issues. Information on race is available for each step of the criminal justice system – from the use of drugs, police stops, arrests, getting off on bail, legal representation, jury selection, trial, sentencing, prison, parole, and freedom.