Racial Inequality

Racial inequality in the American criminal justice system has a strong effect of many realms of society such as the family life, and employment. Education and race seem to be the most decisive factors when deciding who goes to jail and what age cohort has the greatest percentage chance of incarceration. Going to prison no longer affects just the individual who committed the crime. Instead, the family and community left behind gain a new burden by one individual's actions. The United States still has a large disparity between Whites and Blacks and now a growing Hispanic population. This racial disparity in the educational

In this article, Robert, April, and Jorge (2010) acknowledges previous research reports on this topic and reveals that race, and racial patterns have found their way in involvement of crime. However, Robert, April, and Jorge (2010) argue that there is no significant proof that there are meaningful racial disparities in the legal systems. Although some literatures provide research on the existence of racial profiling by police, in imprisonment, and sentencing, other researchers report no significant racial disparities in the legal systems (Black and Reiss, 1970; Pilivian and Briar, 1964). However, other researchers report on ample racial disparities based on race. These researches are controversial because the size of the differences in such reports tends to bring up the question of meaningfulness of the differences observed (Wilbanks, 1987).

Decades of failed public and private remedies for chronic disparities and disadvantages in communities of color invite us to reexamine systems and institutions that provide and restrict opportunity in new ways (Lawrence, K., 2011). The causes seem to be intertwined being poor equals, equals a poor education, equals lack of employment, and ultimately equals an increased rate of crime.

Racial inequality is growing. Our criminal laws, while facially neutral, are enforced in a manner that is massively and pervasively biased. My research will examine the U.S. criminal justice policies and how it has the most adverse effect on minorities. According to the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, out of a total population of 1,976,019 incarcerated in adult facilities, 1,239,946 or 63 percent are

While both sides of this deeply entrenched controversy substantiate meaningful claims, neither of their arguments is exhaustive, although Walker, Spohn, and DeLone’s case is much more convincing. African American arrest statistics are best understood as the convergence of both a somewhat higher incidence of crime as well as racial discrimination in the criminal justice system. Although higher incidence of crime may initially appear to justify higher arrest rates, there is significant evidence demonstrating that not only is African American crime exaggerated by a racially discriminatory criminal justice system (one of the products of which is disparate arrest rates), the greater crime rates in and of themselves are a result of economic inequality.

Since America’s beginning, race based barriers have mired the fulfillment of our shared principles and many of these barriers still persist today. The institutionalized inequalities are detrimental on an individual basis as well a societal basis. Racism does not only affect the individuals that are being oppressed but also how society functions as a whole. Racial inequalities have manifested in American society in ways that underlies a wide range of societal domains such as housing patterns, educational opportunities, healthcare inequality, and incarceration rates. Current events and experiences demonstrate moreover that racial inequality is still adamant in the American culture. Long after slavery, the Jim Crow Era, and the civil rights movement, racial inequality has taken distinctive forms which affect many people within a racially oppressed group. Racial segregation at large is embedded within a structural matrix that not only permeates in the American culture but in our private and public institutions. Disparities in the criminal justice system and housing patterns remain a key barrier to racial equality in America. In order to eradicate racial inequality, there needs to be policy solutions that place fundamental changes to a system with profound historical origins, one that structurally disadvantages minority groups.

Johnson, H. B. (2014). The American dream and the power of wealth: Choosing schools and inheriting inequality in the land of opportunity. Routledge.

The barriers that separate men have existed for centuries. Race, class, status, these are all ideas that have created a divide among humans. This divide creates competition and tension. Throughout the history of the legal system, justice has been used to validate slavery and other forms of racial inequality. Our system now has changed, but the basic concept has remained the same. According to one study, the judicial system was invented by whites to protect whites and keep people of color at bay (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2017, p1). This idea of preserving a one superior racial system resulted in a bias still existent today.

Mauer (2011) reported “in many respects the driving force of mass incarceration is the racial dynamic of criminal justice policy.” He points out that due to extreme incarceration rates among the African American community, the criminal justice system is viewed as a “black problem” (Mauer, 2011). At a national level, 80 percent of the populations incarcerated were of African American decent, which provides evidence that laws can be discriminatory (Mauer, 2011).

The US Justice Department statistics 2003 and onwards demonstrates significant disproportion in the incarceration rate of minority African American and Hispanic men between the ages of 25 and 29 years as compared to the rate associated with White men of the same age. Bell (2007), proposes that as minority groups grow in numbers within the dominant group they will experience greater equality. However, rate of incarceration among minority males remains alarmingly high and as compared to their White counterparts. As with health care there are racial disparities that will influence outcomes when an individual is brought before the criminal courts. Additionally, there is significant correlation between a person’s level of

After similar crimes are committed, in terms of severity, more serious life-long sentences are given to blacks than to privileged whites. “A July 2009 report by the Sentencing Project found that 2/3rds of people in the United States with life sentences are non-white” (Huffington). In some areas, such as New York and other major cities nationwide, the percentage is even higher. If the same crimes are being committed in similar circumstances, yet the only difference between the two is the physical appearance or the criminal, the punishments should be of equal intensity. Striking racial disparities exist at nearly every level of the Criminal Justice System-from arrest rates, to bail amounts, to sentence lengths, to probation hearing outcomes. Black Americans are also three times more likely to have their cars searched as well as more likely to be pulled over for no reason. It is no secret that African Americans and other racial minorities are often times deprived of basic human liberties or even constitutional rights solely due to the color or their

Within the US justice system, there is a substantial disparity between the aggregate number of African American men living within the society, and living inside prison walls. African Americans men are frequently confronted with difficult environmental, financial and sociological disparities growing up, and also have the absence of opportunity weighing them down as well. Many of these factors have lead to outrageous numbers of African American males being incarcerated. Furthermore, the prejudicial behaviors by the judicial community can also be included as a factor in these incarceration statistics. Digging deeper, it is clear that crime and punishment are multidimensional issues that stem from racial prejudice that originate from racial partiality legitimized by age-old observations and convictions about African Americans. The United States has an affective double justice system that has kept up the monetary and social chain of command in America, in light of the oppression of blacks, inside the United States. Public policy, criminal justice, society and the media, and criminal conduct have every single assumed part in making and keeping this stigma alive. According to National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, African Americans contain about 1 million of the 2.3 million imprisoned populace. (NAACP, Criminal Justice Fact Sheet) Furthermore, the history of prejudice, which is additionally connected to the historical backdrop of view of race and crime, has

The Mass Incarceration in the United States is a major topic of discussion in our society and has raised many questions about our criminal justice system. There are few topics disputed as much in criminal justice as the relationship between race, ethnicity, and criminal outcomes. Specifically, the large disparities that minorities face regarding incarceration in our country. Minorities such as Hispanics and African Americans are sentenced at far higher rates than their white counterparts. There are multiple factors that influence this such as the judicial system, racial profiling by law enforcement, and historical biases (Kamula, Clark-Coulson, Kamula, 2010). Additionally, the defendants race was found to be highly associated with either a jail or prison sentence; with the “odds increasing 29 percent for black defendants, and 44 percent for Hispanic defendants” (King, Johnson, McGeever, 2010).

Most Americans would like to think that our criminal justice system is working the way it was intended, but they’re not aware that our criminal justice system shows strong evidence that it is biased and discriminatory in regards to minorities, the majority are African Americans. Studies show that African Americans are more aggressively targeted and punished throughout the system, not just during sentencing. Data collected nationally shows how race is correlated to drug use, police stops, arrests, likelihood to be released on bail, jury selection, trial, sentencing, prison as well as the option of capital punishment.

on the universal stage in a broad-spectrum (Phillips & Bowling, 2002). Statistics indicate that racial/ethnic minorities, particularly black males, face a disproportionately high risk of incarceration in the United States. This determination is made by assessing the negative impact that incarceration can have on individuals, their communities, and the integration of minorities into the nation’s larger social, economic, and political landscape (Yates, 1997). Discrimination in the incarceration of blacks clearly stands out as today’s (Greenfield, 2011) most critical issue in the study of race, crime, and justice. The