Racial Disparities
Racial Disparities in the Judicial Systems
Carlos Summons
ENG122: English Composition II
Instructor First Name Last Name
August 5, 2013
Racial Disparities in the Judicial Systems Every year the people of the United States of America celebrate the Selma to Montgomery marches for voting rights, also known as Bloody Sunday, which occurred on March 7, 1965 in Alabama. Let’s not forget the individuals who stood up for civil rights like Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Gandhi, Thurgood Marshall, Mother Teresa, Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Emmett Till, and Stokely Carmichael; all of whom have paved the way for where we are today. These celebrations are meant to for us to remember our history of the civil rights movement and our supposed progress with racial equality in our nation. Yet, still today in the twentieth century, we have what is called, “a broken criminal-justice system”, which has proven that we still have a long way to go to achieve civil rights equality. Why are minorities targeted or likely to be incarcerated? Is it because they are more likely to live in poverty or less likely to get a good education or have parental support in the home which contributes to challenges in behavior at an early age? A justice system which tolerates injustice is doomed. (The Sentencing Project, 2008) Why are people of color today continuously out of proportion when incarcerated, policed, and when put on death row at much higher rate than Caucasian individuals? There have been studies of other racial differences in the criminal judicial system that threaten our communities of color and leaving thousands without voting rights and then also taking away their equal rights to employment, higher education, housing, and public benefits in which millions of others races have the right to access. These major disparities make it imperative that our American criminal-justice system gets to where it exhibits the rights of every race and make it a
Carlos Summons
ENG122: English Composition II
Instructor First Name Last Name
August 5, 2013
Racial Disparities in the Judicial Systems Every year the people of the United States of America celebrate the Selma to Montgomery marches for voting rights, also known as Bloody Sunday, which occurred on March 7, 1965 in Alabama. Let’s not forget the individuals who stood up for civil rights like Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Gandhi, Thurgood Marshall, Mother Teresa, Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Emmett Till, and Stokely Carmichael; all of whom have paved the way for where we are today. These celebrations are meant to for us to remember our history of the civil rights movement and our supposed progress with racial equality in our nation. Yet, still today in the twentieth century, we have what is called, “a broken criminal-justice system”, which has proven that we still have a long way to go to achieve civil rights equality. Why are minorities targeted or likely to be incarcerated? Is it because they are more likely to live in poverty or less likely to get a good education or have parental support in the home which contributes to challenges in behavior at an early age? A justice system which tolerates injustice is doomed. (The Sentencing Project, 2008) Why are people of color today continuously out of proportion when incarcerated, policed, and when put on death row at much higher rate than Caucasian individuals? There have been studies of other racial differences in the criminal judicial system that threaten our communities of color and leaving thousands without voting rights and then also taking away their equal rights to employment, higher education, housing, and public benefits in which millions of others races have the right to access. These major disparities make it imperative that our American criminal-justice system gets to where it exhibits the rights of every race and make it a
References: Dunnaville, Jr., C. M. (2000, December). Unequal Justice Under the Law - Racial Inequities in the Judicial System. Retrieved from http://www.vsb.org/docs/valawyermagazine/dec00dunnaville.pdf Fellner, J., & Human Rights Watch (Organization) (2009). Decades of disparity: Drug arrests and race in the United States. New York, NY: Human Rights Watch. Gaines, J. S. (2007). Social correlates of psychological distress among adult African American males. Journal of Black Studies, 37(6), 827-858.Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40034958 Hopson, R. K. &Obidah, J. E. (2002). When getting tough means getting tougher: historical and conceptual understandings of juveniles of color sentenced as adults in the United States. The Journal of Negro Education, 71(3), 158-174. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3211234 Lawyer, C. (2011).Closing the School-to-Prison Pipeline | Center for American Progress. Retrieved from Center for American Progress website: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/news/2011/08/15/10146/closing-the-school-to-prison-pipeline/ Pettit, B., & Western, B. (2004). Mass imprisonment and the life course: race and class inequality in U.S. incarceration. American Sociological Review, 69(2), 151-169. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3593082 TheSentencingProject.org (2008).Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System; A Manual for Practitioners and Policymakers.Retrieved from http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_reducingracialdisparity.pdf