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Slavery And Racism In The Criminal Justice System

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Justice is defined as “the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness”. I always hear about the Criminal Justice System, but is it really justice that we are serving? Racism in the justice system goes back many generations. Slavery is not synonymous with racism. A lot of people say slavery is over and we should move on, but in reality slavery and racism are two totally different things. From the book Crime and Punishment in American History Olsen stated, “slaves were defined in law was chattels-items of property” (Olsen, 2000, p.84). Racism will forever be alive, no matter how much the world changes. We are no longer physically owned but we are in a society mainly run by our white mainstream society. The African …show more content…

It is sickening how the police continue to terrorize young African Americans, especially males and the youth are still made out to be the bad guys. The author of Crime and Punishment states: “American History is rich in forms of lawlessness…take place “inside” the legal system itself, or are aspects of that system- police brutality for example” (Olsen, 2000, p.172). You would think that if people know about all the police brutality that people would start to try to do something to change it. But the very people who are supposed help bring justice, are the ones committing the injustices. Rodney King at the time 26 years old is a prime example of police brutality he was beaten by four police officers who were acquitted of all charges. Another example of the police brutality is a more recent case Eric Garner, who was choked to death by a police office. They accused him of selling cigarettes on the street. In the video all he did was ask them to leave him alone because they always harassed him. The police refused to leave him alone and used unnecessary force by putting him in a choke hold. In the video, I can hear Eric panting for his life “I CAN’T BREATHE”. He repeated, this several times until he finally died. Of course the officer was not charged with anything. It is so sad to me that there can be all this evidence of the defendant being guilty. People are so colorblind they cannot even make a proper …show more content…

He was mistreated for 27 years before he was reluctantly released. During his stay in prison, he was verbally abused, mentally abused and physically abused. Like the man in that video we watched based in Tulia, Texas, said: “That those people falsely accused would probably end up in prison anyway”. “Those people”, he referred to them as if they had a disease. It is very frustrating seeing African American’s referred to as “those people”; it’s degrading and very

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