...Inserts His/her Name Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name Customer Inserts Grade Course (06, 07, 2012) Racism in criminal justice system Introduction Justice is a term that we hear a lot in our everyday life and also accept it although many of us might have a doubt as to what it truly means. Justice is the phenomenon through which we could achieve righteousness and equality. But unfortunately racism has been a common practice in the criminal justice system. Racism is actually discrimination against a group or individual based on color, social and financial status. It is something that occurs more than we notice. Many scholars believe that racism play a more important role in targeting and sentencing process in the criminal justice system and this is something which should not happen in any country no matter what. In order to understand the role that racism plays in the criminal justice system we must, first, look at the role that it plays before the criminal reaches the day of sentencing in the court. There are various publications that speak on profiling and actuarial methods which unwillingly get people into the system. Though these are two major components of the discriminatory acts that exist within the criminal justice system, it does not actually begin with these institutionalized methods. It is the laws and crime control policies that create discrimination in the system. It has been witnessed that in some instances these laws and policies are set in favor of the white...
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...justice system consists of three main parts: 1) the police; 2) the courts; and 3) the corrections. In the criminal justice system, these three groups function together under the rule of law to maintain the law within society. Despite its important role, there is a sufficient amount of evidence that blacks and aboriginal people are over-represented in the criminal justice system. The logic behind this problem is that racial discrimination and profiling is present, or it is the result of the differential offending patterns of the minority. After researching, I believe that aboriginal and blacks are over-represented in the criminal justice system due to racial discrimination and profiling. My reasoning behind this is based on the collected data that supports the fact that racial discrimination and profiling is apparent in the criminal justice system. Racial discrimination and profiling is most associated with the police, and that is strictly because they are the first contact with the suspects, victims, citizens, and the offenders. I also believe that the causes of the problem and the potential solutions are the same for both aboriginal and black people. The only variable that might alter the causes of the problem, and the potential solutions is the location in which the aboriginal and blacks live in. This being said, racial discrimination and profiling are without doubt the primary attributes in the over-representation of aboriginals and blacks in the criminal justice system. Although...
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...Patterns of Discrimination in Police Agencies Lauren Raven CJS/221 Alan Hazel 3-15-2015 Patterns of Discrimination in Police Agencies Experiences with social institutions and law enforcement agencies shape the worldview by influencing community-police relations through individual and group perception. The patterns and existence of institutionalized discrimination, contextual discrimination, and individual discriminatory behaviors within the criminal justice system carry considerable influence on public perception of police departments. The effects of social class, race, and ethnicity on citizen opinions of how law enforcement agencies operate include instances of corruption, systematic discrimination, and general misunderstandings of cultural diversities. Institutionalized discrimination describes a wider pattern of events regarding discriminatory practices incorporated into processes, procedures, and organizational structure (Walker, Spone, Delone, 2012). An example may include policies that permit judges to consider employment or domestic history in their decision making process.Whether these occurrences are due to prejudice or racism, or are the result of a general lack of consideration for the needs of various social identities, they essentially indicate a problematic system. Pure justice provides restorative justice for victims and their rights, yet attains an unbiased, unprejudiced...
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...been enforced on a person, the case is brought to the American Court System. In this system, there are prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and a jury of the peers that work to serve a correct verdict. However, a fair trial does not often happen, especially in the police shooting trials. Therefore, the race of the police officer and the race of the victim creates different punishments during trials. To start off, it might seem that African Americans feel that they are treated inferior to Whites, so they might say that they are often singled out in criminal circumstances and trails even. Some might claim that America has not yet...
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...American Males Victims of the Criminal Justice System? Institution Tutor Name Date Table of Contents Chapter One 3 Chapter One Introduction The United States of America is credited to have the largest criminal justice framework globally, as at 2011, seven million people were under various programs within correctional facilities and programs. Among these people, 2.2 million were incarcerated in federal, state as well as local correctional facilities. Such incarceration rates dwarf the rates of all other countries globally. However, its magnitude is not void of challenges. The criminal Justice System is ailing form a vast array of challenges. Of importance to us with regard to this context is racial disproportionality within the criminal Justice system. By definition, racism is the perception that inherent differences between various racial groups consequently lead to the superiority of certain races and discrimination of other groups. This is the perception that great men such as Booker. T. Washington, as well as Martin Luther King, fought against during the 1960’s in a bid to end racism. For years these men under the African- American Civil Rights movement advocated for equality for all leading to the ‘end’ of racist perceptions. Today, the belief that their efforts halted racism stands to be questioned, on further examination of this subject it is eminent that racism is still existent in the twenty- first century. Racism has simply found ways of adapting to our...
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...inequality in the form of racism throughout the Canadian society. For instance, a few months ago, a black male was asked to leave the St. Laurent shopping centre by the mall securities as the position of his pants were viewed as not family-friendly but this type of fashion is normal for teenagers who are influenced by the hip-hop culture. As the man did not want to cause any trouble, he obeyed the securities but as he was escorted, the securities used unnecessary forces which caused scars and bruises to the individual. Furthermore, the black male was arrested and detained for 3 hours, then fined $65 by the Ottawa Police, and banned from the mall for 5 years. One witness stated that this was a case of racial profiling as she saw that the mall securities had no reason to assault the individual. Although many deny the existence of racism in the Canadian society, this type of inequality still largely exists. To further analyze this topic, articles written by various scholars on racial profiling in the criminal justice system and racism in the workplace in Canada will be compared and contrasted. Moreover, various sociological concepts learned from the class will be applied to explain racism. In addition, the Symbolic interactionist and Conflict perspectives will be compared and contrasted to have a better understanding of racism. Racism has been a long-standing problem that various individuals face in the Canadian society throughout the history. Particularly, racism has been an issue observed...
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...turning point in the evolution of racism and fueled the issue of racial inequality in America. Students walked into the school bathrooms to find the words “for whites” and “for colored people” written along the stall doors. Staff members and the student body witnessed the heinous presence of racist graffiti on the white tinted walls of the school bathrooms. Blacks were pressured to enter separate stalls than whites and reexamine their status in society. Students and faculty members were compelled to analyze the role of white supremacy and the effects of racial prejudice throughout our nation. The notions of race and ethnicity have been negatively...
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...Institutional racism is viewed in many ways within the American society, which was founded on the discrimination of slavery. This can be seen in the Jim Crow racial caste system, which regulated African Americans to the status of second class citizens, according to Ferris State University. Imagine being paralysed by racial discrimination, unable to go anywhere or do anything without your race impacting on your opportunities in life. Imagine if your own religion was twisted against you? This was the reality of many African Americans during the time of Jim Crow laws. Even church leaders claimed that blacks were cursed to be servants and that God supported racial segregation, which finally ended in 1954. Although this horrible discrimination has now officially ended, instutionalised racism still corrupts justice in...
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...Race and Social Justice: Land of the Slaves Racism is common. It depicts how people think they are superior to others. Black people have experienced racism or discrimination from white people. Racism in America is like a form of xenophobia. White people harass the people who are not so powerful or who they just don't like. Discrimination is the leading cause of violence in America. It is a strange phenomenon that we are continually scrambling to make sense of. It is evident in our judicial system, schools, and it powers our politics. There are cases of discrimination in our schools, justice system, and prisons. The three articles discuss the causes, effects, and solutions to these problems. Mary Ellen Flannery, in " The School-to-Prison Pipeline:...
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...know discrimination has been around for a while now. So what really is the true meaning of discrimination? Discrimination is when an individual or even a group of people are treated differently due to race, national origin, age, gender, etc. Never once will the person doing the discriminating shed light on what that person’s qualifications and individual behavior are, nor have they ever cared. To illustrate the point, here are a few examples of employment discrimination. Up until the 1960s, almost all police departments, especially the southern ones, never would hire officers that were African American. If you were lucky enough to be hired as an African American officer, there were many restrictions that came with it. For example African American officers could not arrest Caucasians, and were not allowed to work in Caucasian neighborhoods. As an African American you were kept in minority neighborhoods. These are the types of work practices that show what discrimination is. Just because of an individual’s race you were treated much differently with many restrictions. Lastly around the same time frame, males were not allowed to be flight attendants. Only females were allowed to work this position. This is an example of gender type discrimination. Never were qualifications and experience reviewed about an individual first. In today’s day and age, police agencies and our criminal justice system as a whole still show many patterns of discrimination. Some of those discrimination patterns...
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...RACISM IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM By Nichole Griffith Advised by Professor Chris Bickel SOC 461, 462 Senior Project Social Sciences Department College of Liberal Arts CALIFORNIA POLYTECHNIC STATE UNIVERSITY June, 2012 © 2012 Nichole Griffith Table of Contents Research Proposal ............................................................................................................................1 Annotated Bibliography ...................................................................................................................2 Outline..............................................................................................................................................6 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................7 Research ..........................................................................................................................................8 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................29 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................31 Research Proposal The goal of my research is to expose the racism in the criminal justice system that is so hidden. I want to show how racism contributes to the huge number...
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...out the disparity in wealth and inequality of incarceration between whites and blacks with similar family characteristics and education. It also points out that poor white kids are less likely to go to prison than rich black kids. I feel that the whites started out with an enormous advantage over blacks because whites had a longer history of prosperity so a large percentage of whites tend to get more of their family inheritances. For instance, assets like houses are passed down from parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and they appreciate throughout the year. The blacks on the other hand had generations of discrimination, mass incarceration, and voracious finance. This have prevented the blacks from succeeding and disallowed them from building wealth for themselves and their families. They are treated unfairly when dealing with police officers, in the court system, applying for a house loan of any sort and in workplaces. For example, a white man receives a job offer over a black man with more qualification and educational background....
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...RRacism is a topic of discussion that will always bring out a debate. Many events have occurred that one would find horrifying just based off racism. Simply being judged or opposed by the color of your skin or ethnic features, something one has simply no control of. All humans are under one race, the human race, yet some still discriminate against others of different backgrounds. “Is racism a permanent feature of American society?” is the matter at hand though. In this article, this question is answered and given many points to view when answering this question. The debate of this question in this article begins with two different viewpoints. There is case that someone who goes by the name Derrick Bell, says yes to racism being a permanent feature in American society and then there is Dinnesh D’Souza who thinks otherwise. The article then goes to show what people believe racism is and ways to end it in American society. Derrick Bell feels that racism is a permanent feature in American society. He feels this way because there are whites that truly won’t let go of the past racial discrimination and will only stand for their color. He gives examples such as lower class whites will stand with upper class white; who don’t have a real interest in helping the lower class, rather join blacks who share the same needs as them. He also says that whites only view blacks as being lower than they are that’s why blacks don’t stand a chance in competing with whites in society. He...
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...ideologies. P1 Racism First of all racism is a criminal offence that is extremely offensive and can be taken up for some serious jail time, racism is where someone has a form of hatred towards someone for the colour of their skin, they can show this by all kinds of ways. One of the many ways that people use nowadays is by telling jokes, although some people might find these quite ‘funny’ people can take extreme offence to this, they have a right to. Also they could assault someone because of their race, some are singled out, bullied because of it, which also leading the person to think they have something wrong with them and they could see themselves as different, therefore if they see themselves as different they’re whole family. Racist Getting off the subject of Racism, although Racism sounds quite similar to the word Racist they are quite different. A racist is someone who uses racism fairly often, if someone was a racist you would know about it, a racist isn’t someone who tells a racist joke every now and then a racist would probably have tattoo’s to show what they think they are superior against, such as someone who uses Racist words in most sentences. However the Police service conduct racism very well although a few years ago there has been proof that police officers have postponed investigations involving black people, however now it is more equal. So now the police service are getting strict on policing Racism, however there are some cases in the police service that...
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...03-Banks.qxd 1/30/04 4:52 PM Page 57 3 Racial Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System ETHICAL BACKGROUND It is generally agreed that discrimination based on ethnic origin is morally wrong and a violation of the principle of equality. The equality principle requires that those who are equal be treated equally based on similarities, and that race is not a relevant consideration in that assessment (May and Sharratt 1994: 317). In other words, it is only possible to justify treating people differently if there exists some factual difference between them that justifies such difference in treatment (Rachels 1999: 94). Equality is a nonspecific term that means nothing until applied to a particular context. Thus, in a political context, equality means equal access to public office and equal treatment under the law, and equal treatment extends to equality in terms of job hiring, promotion, and pay. Race refers to groups of persons who are relatively alike in their biological inheritance and are distinct from other groups (American Anthropological Association 1997: 2). Ethnicity is a cultural phenomenon referring to a person’s identification with a particular cultural group (Hinman 1998: 403). Race is socially constructed, and the notion that persons “belong” to a particular race was developed in the last century based on the belief that there was a biological basis for categorizing groups of people. Biologically, however, the term race has no meaning, yet society...
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