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Why Is Discrimination Within The United States Criminal Justice System

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Why is discrimination present in the United States criminal justice system? How is the system setup for people of color to fail? This social problem is interesting for many reasons. Many people believe that racism is still a key factor in today’s society. The justice system, which should stand for equality and peace, in reality does spread the public’s beliefs of racism and an unfair justice system. 74.0% of blacks do not agree that the justice system treats people fairly and equally(Hurwitz and Peffley,769) More than three quarters of a million Black men are now behind bars, and 2 million are under some form of correctional supervision(Brewer and Heitzeg,628). Many activists and civil leaders would find this problem very interesting.…show more content…
They examine how the beliefs affect citizen’s views of real world events within the criminal justice system. Lastly, they determine if there was a difference of interpretation between blacks and whites. Their method of research was a random-digit telephone survey that interviewed 603 Whites and 579 African Americans lasting 35 minutes. Interviews were conducted on a computer system which allowed the interviewers to randomize subjects into experimental treatment groups in an almost infinite number of combinations. The survey began by briefly examining citizens’ beliefs about the fairness of the U.S. justice system. They are asked two questions, asking how much they agreed with the following statements: “The justice system in this country treats people fairly and equally,” and “The courts in your area can be trusted to give everyone a fair trial.” From then, subjects hear about recent incidents involving police and civilians in which the race of the civilian is randomly manipulated. Subjects are then asked questions designed to examine who they align with. The results reflected their prediction that blacks would be negative towards the criminal justice system. 74.0% of blacks did not agree that the justice system treats people equally,while 44.3% of whites express similar sentiments. The second question shows results of 61% and 26% of blacks and whites who do not trust
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