Disparity And Discrimination

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Disparity and Discrimination Savannah Slorp University of Phoenix May 30, 2011 Disparity and Discrimination The United States is like a melting pot. It is full of individuals from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Although it is common for the different racial and ethnic backgrounds to get it along, however it can lead to disparity and discrimination. Throughout this paper disparity and discrimination will be defined as well as discuss how it affects to the criminal justice system. Examples of how disparity and discrimination play a role in Criminal Justice will be shown. Disparity is best described as “unfair or unjust lack of equality.”(Vocabulary-Vocabulary, date unknown) The most frequent type seen in racial disparity. Racial disparity arrives from the different treatment individuals based on race. An example of racial disparity involving the criminal justice system would be, “blacks are four times as likely as whites to be arrested on drug charges—even though the two groups use drugs at almost the same rate.” (CliffsNotes, May, 2011) Disparity has been known to be present when a larger group’s population is compared to a group with a lower population and the two group’s interaction with the Criminal Justice System. Racial Disparity is based on an individual social class, gender and race. If one was to take a glimpse at the two one may believe that discrimination and disparity are very similar however that is not the case. They are in fact different in many ways; however racial disparity can often be linked together with discrimination Discrimination is based on the denial of privileges or rights to a certain individual or group because of race, age, sex, nationality, religion, or handicap. However not to any surprise, racial discrimination is not unheard of in the criminal justice system.
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