The Law Is Not Equally Distributed amongst Different Economic Classes

I agree with the speaker that the criminal justice system in America treats you better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent. I believe that in not only in American society but also around world, wealth has a major roll in the outcome of a situation. Money does what money does best, it buys. Unfortunately, money can buy you your freedom and a judge. With money people look up to you, but without money people look down on you.

The American Criminal Justice System are sets of agencies and process made by the government to control crime and to penalize those who commit it. The justice system is different based one’s jurisdiction, meaning city, state, federal or tribal government or military installation. The Criminal System is divided into two main parts, the state and the federal. The state portion handles crimes within its state boundaries. The federal portion handles crime committed on Federal property or in two or more states (“Criminal Justice” 1). The American Criminal Justice System needs reform because of its emphasizes on incarceration punishment rather than Rehabilitation. Our justice system especially enforces punishment on blacks and Latinos resulting of overpopulation of prisons like Rikers Island for petty crimes. Also, another reform needed the juvenile cases. For example, juveniles who commit petty crimes shouldn’t be sent to adult prison and shouldn’t be near more dangerous and serious inmates.

Within the criminal justice system, officials abuse their power. The officials of the justice system have a duty to protect and perform their duties with unbiased decision making. The abuse of power jeopardizes people’s lives who are not able to sustain oneself and their families. Some people do not understand that poorer people find themselves in jail more and once a person is released, that person is subjected to return to jail for the amount of money owed to the state. There are many obstacles for the poor, especially those of color. People of color are treated unfairly in the justice system, from the arrest, the sentencing, and the release. The criminal justice system is supposed to be just but that is not the case. The criminal justice system allows for the police, public defenders, and judges to bend the laws and not be punished for their actions or that apologizes can fix the wrong that has been done. This paper will discuss the abuse of power from the justice system and the solutions to rectify the damages.

Before proposing a reform to the American criminal justice system, we must first examine the problems that plague the process of justice on all levels. American society plays an important role in shaping the criminal justice system. Their beliefs and values determine the type of deviants and the consequences of the crimes. Often their beliefs contradict each other.

The overall problem with our criminal justice system, I believe is that at its core it is founded on the idea of redemptive violence, and that is because as a society we believe in this idea and perpetuate it all the time. This is a concept as old a civilization and rottenly plays in most of are media and fiction, even are daily thinking habits. The concept is

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

“Thousands of young black men are serving long prison sentences for selling cocaine — a drug that was virtually unobtainable in black neighborhoods before members of the CIA’s army started bringing it into South-Central in the 1980s at bargain-basement prices.”

Most of us would agree that drug abuse and addiction is no respecter of persons. Regardless of age, race, gender, or economic status drug addiction can rear its ugly head in any situation. Like most Americans, I have personally been affected by the pitfalls of drug addiction from relatives and friends. Therefore, I have witnessed firsthand the devastation that it leaves on family members, friends, and the communities, in which they reside. Since its inception in 1986 the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, as caused more harm than good. At the start of this Act, Congress implemented maximum drug quantities initially targeted at “serious” and “major” drug traffickers. Congress concluded that 500 grams of powder cocaine would trigger a five-year mandatory minimum, and five kilograms would trigger a ten-year mandatory minimum. However, for crack cocaine the triggering quantities were significantly less. Only five grams of crack cocaine would prompt five-years and just fifty grams to prompt a ten-year sentence. This massive gap became known as the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity. Soon after several states began to legislate sentencing disparities between powder cocaine and crack cocaine into their criminal codes. The original targets of

The criminal justice system is made for two groups of people: the poor and the wealthy.

Social issues are dealt with every day, everywhere in our society. Issues like immigration all the way to climate change. As our world evolves the number of social issues only continue to accumulate. Racial disparity is something that is in every aspect of our society. A repetitive social issue is minorities being targeted in the criminal justice system. Minorities, in specific African Americans receive unequal treatment and punishment in the criminal justice system this causes a split in our society, racist outburst, and million of unjustified incarcerations affecting the environment millennials grow in, and the economy as money is being spent where there should be no need for it.

In 1982 the crack epidemic started, which shortly after Ronald Reagan expanded the war on drugs that Nixon started, one of his top aides admitted that the war on drugs was used to “target African Americans and hippies”. The number of incarcerations before the war on drugs was expanded in 1980 was four thousand seven hundred forty-nine for drug related crimes, in 1990 that number increased to twenty-four thousand two hundred ninety-seven, sixty percent of those incarcerations were African Americans (sentencingproject.org). If you were caught with one gram of crack you got the same sentencing as someone found with eighteen grams of cocaine, it was policies like these that targeted lower income black communities because crack was much cheaper than cocaine and was more likely for a white person to have cocaine.

Since the inception of mandatory minimum cocaine laws in 1986 to the advent of the Armstrong case, not a single white offender had been convicted of a crack cocaine offense in federal courts serving Los Angeles and its six surrounding counties. Rather, virtually all white offenders were prosecuted in state court, where they were not subject to that drug’s lengthy mandatory minimum sentences. The impact of the decision to prosecute the black defendants in federal court was significant. In federal court they faced a mandatory minimum sentence of at least 10 years and a maximum of life without parole if convicted of selling more than 50 grams of crack. By contrast, if prosecuted in California state court, the defendants would have received a minimum sentence of three years and a maximum of five years (United States v. Armstrong, 1996).

The book "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison" by Jeffrey H. Reiman provides a very interesting account of how the rich are being treated by the criminal justice system in a more favorable than the poorer and nonviolent criminals who are generally mistreated. Reiman started his book by stating that the recently noted decline in crime rate is skewed. This is clear in the 12th page of his book when he stated that After more than 20 years of telling us that crime was growing out of control and proposing more cops and tougher laws and more prisons, crime rates are now coming down and politicians are jumping to claim credit for the reductions" (Reiman ,p. 12).The book is a well written text that effectively examines the various harmful acts that are committed by the rich in our society. These harmful acts include bribery, medical crimes, and embezzlement of public funds, crime against consumers as well as environmental crimes such as unsafe workplaces as well as pollution among many others. Reiman's book, in its thorough analysis of the various harmful acts noted that there is a particular bias against the poor people within the American criminal justice system.He demonstrated that acts like murder, assault and theft that are committed by the poor people are treated by the criminal justice system as very serious crimes while on the other hand, other harmful acts like bribery, medical crimes, embezzlement of public funds, crime against consumers as well as

The criminal justice administration today faces various issues and problems thus needing serious reforms. In most cases, many nonviolent offenders go to jail because many prosecutors and district attorneys succumb to political pressure hence become tough on crime. The prisons are always populated and there are minimal resources to ensure there are significant improvements in the system. Some of the key issues facing Criminal justice department today include; wrongful convictions, gangs, racial injustices in the administration, excessive criminalization, socio economic considerations, and problems with

The Federal laws states that crack cocaine, or rock cocaine, weighing the same as a nickel carries a five-year minimum sentence, but to get a five year minimum sentence with powder you have to have 500 grams on your person (Locy 3A). This law is known as the 100-to-1 law and primarily affects minorities due to the fact that crack is usually found and sold in inner cities. National survey statistics showed that Caucasians and African Americans are equal when it comes to the distribution and sale of drugs, yet 63 percent of drug offenders in jails and prisons are black (Browne 5). Institutions, such as prisons, are supposed to be used to rehabilitate and remobilize people. Once a person has committed a crime he or she is seen as a deviant, someone who goes against the norms and laws of society. Deviants go through degradation ceremonies to strip them of their identity in hopes of reshaping the person into someone new who is accepted by society. When people are arrested they go through humiliation; they are stripped of their names and given a number, have their personal clothes taken away and are given a standardized uniform, and they’re removed from society. All of this is used to try and change the person. They are put into prison with other inmates who have committed crimes and they must socialize with them. If a person goes to jail for 25 years, their main contact is with criminals. Then when their time has been served, they are going to have that mindset and