Racial Disparities in the American Criminal Justice...

Racial Disparities in the American Criminal Justice System: Rates of Incarceration of Blacks vs. Whites No Equal Justice in the American Criminal Justice System Shawn Y. Williams Troy University-Fort Benning CJ 5571 Probation, Pardon, Parole Instructor’s: Dr. Ronald Craig April 28, 2007 Abstract 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†¦show more content†¦Less is known about the extent of discrimination at the arrest stage, in part because underlying rates of criminal activity by race cannot be easily assessed. Some evidence comes from comparing the race distribution of offenders derived from victims’ surveys with the racial composition of individuals arrested for the same crime. Two studies have found that these distributions are roughly comparable for many violent crimes. African Americans constitute 12% of the U.S. population, 13% of the drug using population and fully 74% of the people sent to prison for drug possession. Studies have shown that minorities are subject to disparate treatment at arrest, bail, charging, plea bargaining, trial, sentencing, and every other stage of the criminal process. These disparities accumulate so that African Americans are represented in prison at seven times their rate in the general population; rates of crime in African American communities is often high, but not high enough to justify the disparity. The resentment destabilizes communities and demeans the entire nation. (Justice, 2004) Human Rights Watch research shows that in every state, the proportion of blacks in prison exceeds, sometimes by a considerable amount, their proportion in the general population. In Minnesota and Iowa, blacks constitute a share of the prison population that is twelve times greater than their share of the state population. In elevenShow MoreRelatedThe Racial Disparities of the American Criminal Justice System1989 Words   |  8 Pagestell you that the American Criminal Justice System is corrupt? Or, that when it comes to working within the color of the law, police officers work around the color of your skin. Are there racial disparities within The Criminal Justice System? There can be no other answer than yes. In this paper I will examine and prove that racial disparities do exists within The Criminal Justice System through the systematic targeting of people of color as well as through our Judicial System. 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