Racial Discrimination In The Criminal Justice System Essay
Today, as a nation we are seeing a comeback of racial discrimination in modern society. Recently we have been seeing this problem in the criminal justice system.
In America, we are celebrating our 40th year of the return of the death penalty after it was ruled out by the supreme court in 1981, resulting as a form of “cruel and unusual punishment.” However, the first use of lethal injection followed in 1982, after much debate by the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the new “death shot.” The state then put to death Charles Brooks, the first time using lethal injection, with no complications. Little did the nation know, this would open a door to a whole new set of debate, controversy, and a fight of the racial blind eye in the criminal justice system. Today, 35 out of the 36 states that allow the death penalty use this method of execution (Pickert, 2009). It is unfortunate that in the 21st century race still plays a major contributor to sentencing in the criminal justice system. According to the book, The Death Penalty in Black and White: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides: New Studies on Racism in Capital Punishment, “Over 50% of all death row …show more content…
According to the definition of the Conflict Theory by the New World Encyclopedia that says, “In sociology, conflict theory states that society or an organization functions so that each individual participant and its groups struggle to maximize their benefits, which inevitably contributes to social change such as political changes and revolutions” (Hagar, 2000). This theory would work well with the idea the the race plays a active role in who receives the death penalty because theorists who follow this theory would say that race plays a very large factor in this because it arrises from the stem of issues with social class ranking and social displacement. To show as an example, the American Civil Liberties Union released a statement
In America, we are celebrating our 40th year of the return of the death penalty after it was ruled out by the supreme court in 1981, resulting as a form of “cruel and unusual punishment.” However, the first use of lethal injection followed in 1982, after much debate by the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the new “death shot.” The state then put to death Charles Brooks, the first time using lethal injection, with no complications. Little did the nation know, this would open a door to a whole new set of debate, controversy, and a fight of the racial blind eye in the criminal justice system. Today, 35 out of the 36 states that allow the death penalty use this method of execution (Pickert, 2009). It is unfortunate that in the 21st century race still plays a major contributor to sentencing in the criminal justice system. According to the book, The Death Penalty in Black and White: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides: New Studies on Racism in Capital Punishment, “Over 50% of all death row …show more content…
According to the definition of the Conflict Theory by the New World Encyclopedia that says, “In sociology, conflict theory states that society or an organization functions so that each individual participant and its groups struggle to maximize their benefits, which inevitably contributes to social change such as political changes and revolutions” (Hagar, 2000). This theory would work well with the idea the the race plays a active role in who receives the death penalty because theorists who follow this theory would say that race plays a very large factor in this because it arrises from the stem of issues with social class ranking and social displacement. To show as an example, the American Civil Liberties Union released a statement