San francisco is a major city of California and the United States as a whole. A city with this much power generally sets the score for other counties to follow. When San francisco undermines justice with institutional biases, they set a dangerous example for others to follow. While San Francisco has shown great strides to improve itself internally and externally, there are still major issues that need to be addressed, specifically in their incarceration system. San Francisco has created a system where minorities are more susceptible to being imprisoned due to the city’s precarious handling of funds.
The San Francisco prison system hosted 1,556 citizens in the year 2013.[1] During that exact year, 56% of those citizens incarcerated were of African American descent, in a city where African Americans make up a mere 6% of the total population.[1,2] Compare that to the city’s majority race, caucasians, who make up 41.6% of the city as a whole and accounted for only 22% percent of all prisoners.[1,2] Looking at these statistics it could be assumed that racism is playing a role in this, however there is one key factor that is so often lost when issues of race flare up. This factor is of course, money.
San francisco has been the host of recent major technological booms which have brought increased revenue into the city, but who’s pockets is this money falling into? People often claim that police and government officials target minorities, and while there is truth to this, would
The documentary San Francisco 2.0 examines how San Francisco city officials have given tax breaks to the Silicon Valley tech industry to move to San Francisco. These new techs companies have brought in a lot of wealth to the city, but at a cost. The majority of the low-income natives are being evicted or having their rents raised so high that they can't afford them. The gentrification of the city has impacted low-income districts (for example, the mission district known for its Latin immigrants) that the residents and the culture are being displaced. I believe the documentary is important for the study of the issue of gentrification because San Fransisco was known for being-counter culture, caring for the arts and for civil progress. The housing
Baltimore city had a strong economy, and it was among the top prosperous cities in the United States (U.S)leadingin wages, jobs, and industries up until the 1950s. Since the 1960s, however, the city has seen a decline in its economy as a result of systematic governance failures. Recently, Baltimore has been experiencing an increase in homicide unlike prior years, and in fact, by the end of 2015, various law enforcement organizations predict the city will break its homicide record. As a citizen, Baltimore’s murder rate is a crucial issue to tackle than police brutality because it is symptom indicative of larger issues that need to be addressed and solved in the black community. Three major issues often talked about in Baltimore
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
Although we would like to believe the world is not as racially charged in 2013 as it was in the 1960s, a look in our penal system would show that minorities are still arrested and incarcerated at a higher rate than whites. The United States has experienced a rise in its prison population over the last 40 years and our incarceration rate is nearly 5 times higher than any other country. Even though 13% of the US population are African American males, they make up 38% of the prison population. Contributing factors to these numbers are mandatory minimum sentences, high crime and poverty areas, and lack of rehabilitative resources within our system (p.77-78).
Numbers suggest that, for instance, while Blacks compose six percent of population in St. Clayton city, they represent 57% of overall police arrests. Similarly, the probability of Black arrest in Berkeley (CA) and Madison (Wis) cities is nine times higher than other racial groups compared to their corresponding population. In addition to this, Bureau of Justice statistics report that at the national level, Blacks are two times more likely to be arrested compared to Whites. Concurring with media reports and national statistics institutes’ estimates, empirical studies also report high proportion of minority arrests compared to their representation in the population (Golub, Johnson, & Dunlap, 2007).
Mass Incarceration in the United States has been a large topic of choice because rapid growth in the prison and jail populations, the long sentences the inmates face, and the inability for some inmates to incorporate themselves back into society. Since the 1970’s the U.S. prison population quadrupled from 158 to 635 people per 100,000, causing the U.S. to gain the title of country with the highest incarceration rate. (Massoglia, Firebaugh, & Warner, 2013, p. 142; Muller, 2012) As the growth of the U.S prison and jail population rapidly increased, so did the growth of the three major contributors to that population – African Americans, Hispanics, and whites – with African American and
Recent sociological studies have focused on pressing social issues such as urban crime and mass incarceration, and examining the invisible link between urban crime, poverty and race. Research indicates that mass incarceration has always worked to the detriment of African Americans, especially the low-income earners (Western, 2006). The aftermath of this trend is that the employment prospects of former felons are significantly diminished (Pager, 2007). Felon disfranchisement in turn distorts the local and national politics of the county (Uggen, 2006). This paper focuses on addressing the contemporary trends and ramifications of mass incarceration of African Americans, and elucidating on the criminal justice policy and the factors contributing to the intangible but real racial divide.
The U.S. prison system is one of many great controversies when compared to other correctional systems. America’s prison population has increased by 700% (2.4 million current inmates) since the start of the war on drugs in 1971. As a result of this “war”, people that fall into the racial minority have suffered as a direct consequence of unjust legislation. Our prison system is known for its overrepresentation of minorities such as Blacks and Hispanics. This unfortunately gives these groups of people a perennial negative stigma as a result. I argue that the U.S. prison industrial-complex emphatically displays signs of prejudice and racism and disproportionately incarcerates people of color at a rate higher than whites. Yes, there are skeptics who think “the left’s prison-complex” is wrong about their theory of mass incarceration but the statistical data and concrete facts in support of my argument are very compelling.
America has been built on inequality and evolving forms of racism for generations. Our criminal justice system is a reflection of the structural racism that has and is permeating our country. The criminal justice system of the United States is not explicitly racist, however there are many internal and unspoken policies that enact a structural racism through policing and the courts, however, our criminal justice system shows more racial disparities than racism. The lenses of two individuals who have in some way experienced the criminal justice system show the internal issues revolving around race, In Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleeve’s work Crook County and Wilbert Rideau’s In the Place of Justice, we see how the structural racism and more so the racial disparities play huge roles in shaping the life outcomes for people of color.
In the prison system today, there has been an explosion of minorities being incarcerated for offenses that may not have gotten jail time if they had not been of a certain race. Although the overall numbers of incarcerations may have dropped just slightly for the first time in over 35 years, the amount of inmates
“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.
Incarceration rates are a definite proof that racial discrimination occurs. “Incarceration rates in the United States have risen sharply since 1980”, stated Filip Spagnoli, “the racial distribution of inmates in the U.S. is highly negative for black Americans. Whereas they only make up 12% of the total U.S. population, they represent more than 40% of inmates”
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).
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.
There are so many more African-Americans than whites in our prisons that the difference cannot be explained by higher crime among African- Americans - racial discrimination is also at work, and it penalizes African- Americans at almost every juncture in the criminal justice system.1