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Racial and ethnic inequalities continue to exist in the United States. A great difference of African Americans racial groups is more obvious than that seen in criminal justice outcomes. The racial group I am focusing my research on is African Americans. The topic I will be discussing is how African Americans are treated in the criminal justice system and cases of racism in criminal justice system . It seems like African Americans can never get a break from society. Men of color are being racially profiled because of the color of their skin, how they are dressed, and where they live.
African Americans are also getting punished in the criminal justice system for crimes they have not commit. If they have committed a crime, they get more time than the White person that committed the same crime. African Americans are being continuously mistreated and racially prejudiced and experience police brutality. They have been discriminated against and it is still happening every day.
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The types of discrimination against African Americans is unimaginable and unjustifiable. Their past experiences when African Americans did not have any rights and were enslaved, when they were being treated like cargo, when they were separated from the other races because of their ethnicity, when they were being lynched, when they were being mocked “Black Face”, etc. I can go on and talk about their past experiences throughout this paper, but it will be a never-ending story. “Despite great improvements in racial equality over the past 40 years, in many ways, blacks and whites still experience life in the United States very differently.
Blacks are disadvantaged across several dimensions relative to whites” (Burch, 2015, p. 395-420).
In the past years people are being unfavorable and outspoken towards how African Americans are being treated in society. There has been many different cases and studies in the criminal justice system of discrimination and prejudice against this certain population. For example, statistical studies express that more than half of all black males in large cities can expect to be arrested at least once during their lifetime, while only fourteen percent of white males are ever arrested. African Americans make up twelve percent of the United States population, but they are forty-five percent of all prison inmates and forty percent of those sentenced to death (Costly, 2019, par. 4). This race and ethnicity have been judged for many reasons and it is discouraging to hear that we are all equal when statistics prove that we are not. It is sad to see that even our own president shows strong racism towards certain races. He is what is representing America and it just shows that America is made of racist individuals.
A major problem that African Americans are experiencing in the present is police brutality, police biases, police discrimination, police prejudices, etc. There have been many stories in the news of incidents of African Americans and police officers. For example, the story of Philando Castile, a 32-year-old African American male who was shot seven times in front of his girlfriend and his 4-year-old daughter. Another story of what began as a minor traffic stop for a malfunctioning taillight ended with a homicide. This is becoming repetitive and police officers are getting away with it. Another black man, another cop, and another video of a police officer killing an unarmed person. “We're tired of black men getting shot down and killed in cold blood,” said DeAndre Muhammad, the Charleston representative of the Nation of Islam. The killings of many African Americans such as Oscar Grant, Walter Scott, Trayvon Martin, Tanisha Anderson, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, Sandra Bland, Botham Jean, Atatiana Jefferson and many other. Both African American men and women are being shot down by police. We must recognize we are not in a post racial America, said Student Minister Muhammad. “This is an outright war and attack on black people in general and black males in particular” (Muhammad, 2015).
I want to believe and hope for change for the better good of this society. We should all be treated with respect and with the same consequence of any other individual. I believe that discrimination will never end but it can improve. In the article Race, Crime, and General Strain Theory it states, why these race and ethnic discrepancies exist, it has been a constant source of debate. Some suggest this may be due to ‘‘differential enforcement,’’ the idea that minority communities receive more attention by criminal justice authorities and are more likely to ‘‘swoop up’’ minorities into the formal system (Leeper, Sealock, & Leiber, 2010). Society is changing and more people that are not African Americans are fighting and representing this population. African Americans that have been convicted are being exonerated. The story of the Central Park Five were five youths who were tried in two trials for the rape of the female jogger. They were convicted in 1990 of rape, assault and other charges; one of these was convicted of attempted murder; one was convicted on lesser charges but as an adult. The other five defendants pleaded guilty to assault before trial and received lesser sentences. The true story came out and a documentary on Netflix called “When They See Us”, demonstrated what the police did to these young innocent youths and how they were convicted for a crime they did not commit. “Early conceptions and practices of justice, crime, and punishment were formed under conditions of colonialism and slavery. From its inception, American law permitted nonwhites to be brutalized, dehumanized, and killed” (Anderson, 2019). It seems that discrimination has changed but also it has not because history has been repeating itself but in different ways.
According to the data collected and researched by the Georgia Department of Corrections known as (GDC), the bar graphs and pie chart explain how among the first‐time offenders, both the race models and race and skin color models estimate that, on average, African Americans (Blacks) receive sentences that are higher than those of Whites. The skin color model also shows that this figure hides important intraracial differences in sentence length: while medium‐ and dark‐skinned blacks receive sentences that are higher than those of whites, lighter‐skinned blacks receive sentences that are not statistically significantly different from those of whites (Burch, 2015, p. 395-420). In conclusion, the criminal Justice need to change on how African Americans are being portrays or being a stereotype. Police brutality needs to completely stop, police officers need more training. There must be an end to discrimination and African Americans need to be respected and treated as a human being, treated with the same rights as a White individual.
References
African Americans and Racism In Criminal Justice System. (2024, Feb 05). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/african-americans-and-racism-in-criminal-justice-system-essay
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