The intention of my research is to expose the racist tactics in the criminal justice system that have been camouflaged. I am prepared to explain how racism contributes to the vast number of incarcerated African Americans, and other minorities. The criminal justice system has created and perpetuated racial hierarchy in the United States, and has done so throughout history. I propose the question: Are minorities being targeted within the Criminal Justice System? African Americans are criminalized and targeted because of their skin color, and it is not fair. This argument connects to the theory of Law in the Book vs. Law in Action, and relates to how this type of discrimination from the law affects society. In particular, the way the Law is written in codes, statutes, judicial opinions that supposedly support the righteousness of justice, is a far cry from the way the Law actually operates. Despite substantial progress in recent years, racial discrimination remains a significant problem in the United States. I will prove this argument with the help of various peer-reviewed articles, and non-scholarly article that examine this unequal behavior.
Police were, and still are, pressured to make a lot of arrests to meet their quota set by their supervisors. These quotas are illegal, so the police departments refer to them as “expectations”, but that is just where it all begins! I argue that ‘Stop and Frisk’ is an uneven policing practice that carries racial bias. Also, a United States District Court judge has ruled the New York Police Department’s use of ‘stop and frisks’ as unconstitutional. It violates the Fourth Amendment rights of African American and Latino individuals who are subjected to these searches. “Blacks and Hispanics contend that police officers stop and frisk them even when no reasonable basis for doing so exists. It seems that “reasonableness” highly correlates to melanin” (Brando, 2012, p.135). Over the years, the Police have adopted a strategy that encourages cops to stop and question primarily minority citizens first, and then coming up with reasons for having done so later. In approximately 83 percent of cases the person stopped was African American or Hispanic, even though the two groups accounted for just over half of the population. Evidence plainly reveals how the police carried out more stops on African American and Hispanic residents even when other relevant factors were controlled for. Officers were also most likely to use force against minority residents even though stops of minorities were less likely to result in weapons seizures than stops of whites.
Once incarcerated, African Americans continue to encounter prejudice and racism in the court and prison system. Statistics from 300 homicides involving an aggravating felony were examined to determine what factors influence a prosecutor’s decision in seeking the death penalty. It was found that the race of the victim was significantly related to the decision to seek the death penalty (Paternoster, 1984, p.4). Moreover, in Paternoster’s study, it was confirmed that “blacks who kill whites are significantly more likely to face the death penalty request than are whites who kill whites” (1984, p.18). Over and over, studies have proved that the death penalty is sought more often against people who kill white victims than African American or Hispanic victims. The decisions about who lives and who dies are being made along racial lines by a nearly all white group of prosecutors. Additionally, New Jersey Supreme Court Report finds evidence concerning race and the death penalty; The report released by the New Jersey Supreme Court found that the state’s death penalty law is more likely to proceed against defendants who kill white victims. As per the Law on the books, the death penalty should be sought after for heinous crimes, however, in action, it is being sought after for the meer fact that the defendant is black, and the victim was white. The Death Penalty Information Center shares that more than twenty percent of African Americans that were on death row, and executed had all white juries. However, The DPIC does report,141 Black death row inmates have been exonerated since 1973. An African American male was released from death row because the prosecutor in the case had removed blacks from the jury. This process is illegal, but it does not stop prosecutors from continuing to do this. They justify and get away with their actions because they give their own reasons for excluding jurors, and their ‘reasons’ are not being challenged.
Minorities are discriminated against no matter the age. In the juvenile system, black children are up to 18 times as likely to be sentenced as adults than white children, and African American youth that is accused of felonies are inclined to be viewed as more at fault for their crimes than are white youth. Research that was constructed by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency and the Center for Children’s Law and Policy suggested that minority youth are presented with harsher treatment than their white peers through almost every stage of the juvenile justice process. The process is already the punishment, but being a minority can make it worse. Minority juveniles are sentenced for longer periods and are less likely to receive alternative sentences or probation compared to white juveniles (Armour & Hammond, 2009, p.4).
African American communities are far less likely to see justice, and they face unequal treatment by police. The unequal treatment African Americans receive is noticeable by all other ethnic groups. A study in Washington, DC examines citizens’ perceptions of racialized policing in three neighborhoods: a middle-class white community, a middle-class black community, and a lower-class black community (Weitzer, 2000). The interviews in this study examined residents’ awareness of contrasting police treatment of individual blacks and whites, and diverse police practices in black and white neighborhoods. They found that that there is substantial agreement within the communities that believe the police treat blacks and whites differently, and there is racial variation in respondents’ explanations for racial disparities.
“Law-on-the-books” and “Law-in-action” often diverge. We examined sentencing processes and outcomes for 89 U.S. federal judicial districts over a 17-year period. We found strong evidence that power imbalance between court actors—specifically when prosecutors have more discretionary power than judges—gave rise to inequality in case outcomes.Our findings send a cautionary message about the processes and prospects for legal change
It is no secret whites and blacks in America go through life differently because of their race. My results proved that there was differences in the way African American and caucasian people in American are treated differently within the criminal justice system. The burdens and failures of the United States justice system fall most heavily and unfairly on communities of color. Such a system of injustice is not merely unfair and unconstitutional–it tears at the very principles to which this country struggles to adhere.