Felicia Mitchell
English Online
Dr. Logan
December 12, 2013

Criminal Justice System is it "Justice" or "Just Us"

Section I: Introduction
I have always been intrigued with the criminal justice system every since I started working as a Correctional Officer for Solano State Prison. I also worked in the Inmate Appeals Division where inmates had the right to appeal a write up written upon them by any staff. It is not my intention to raise any more controversy on the subject but to open the eyes of people to see their is still discrimination against those of color than whites still in the 20th century. While working in this division, I noticed a lot of discrimination within this system such as the African Americans and Hispanics would receive a denial on their appeal and their property would be taken away from them whereas, if a Caucasian inmate appealed the same situation they would receive a granted appeal and get their property back. Working as an Officer, their were a lot of mistreatment in the prison system; such as if their were fights among the Blacks and Hispanics or Whites and Blacks or Whites and Hispanics, the minorities would always receive the harsher treatment by being locked down for months whereas the white inmates would just be locked down for a few days.

At a presidential primary debate Senator Barack Obama charged that blacks and whites “are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates, and receive very different sentences . . . for the same crime.” Not to be outdone, Senator Hillary Clinton promptly denounced the “disgrace of a criminal-justice system that incarcerates so many more African-Americans proportionately than whites.”

In 2006, blacks were 37.5 percent of all state and federal prisoners, though they’re under 13 percent of the national population. About one in 33 black men was in prison in 2006,