According to official statistics, there are some significant ethnic differences in the likelihood of being involved in the criminal justice system. Black people, and to a lesser extent Asians are over represented in the sample. For example black people make up just 12.8% of the population, but 11% of the prison population and Asians make up 4.7% of the population, but 6% of the prison population. By contrast, white people are under-represented at all stages of the criminal justice process. The Ministry of Justice states that members of the black communities are seven times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched , three and a half times more likely to be arrested, and five times more like to be sent to prison.
Introduction Giving a glaze of attention towards prison populations today in countries such as Britain and America, it is not hard to see that most prisons got racial disproportionality where most of the prisoners are not ‘white’. A question that criminologists has been pondering on for the last decade where as if the racial disproportionality in prisons has to do with errors in the criminal justice. Another question criminologist has been debating about for the last decade is if ‘blacks’ do commit more crime than whites and if they do, has that got to do with the racial disproportionality in prisons. Some researchers claim that ‘blacks’ have a lower IQ than others which leads to the disproportionality. Other claims that it has to do with
The Comparison Between Prison and Slavery by John Dewar Gleissner The fairly new term, "mass incarceration," means that the U.S. has 2.2 million prisoners, more than any country in the world. A greater percentage of the U.S. population is in prison than in any other nation. The U.S. has 5% of the world's population and almost 25% of the world's prisoners. The entire U.S. correctional population, including those on probation, on parole and awaiting trial, is about 7.3 million Americans. These eye-popping numbers came about for many reasons: mandatory minimum sentences, three-strikes legislation, illegal drugs, gangs, immorality in all its modern forms, the war on drugs, the decline of marriage and families, high rates of recidivism, incarceration of the mentally ill, the decline of capital punishment, problems with the criminal justice system and all the forces pushing tough crime policies.
Even within the same cities, "murder rate among black teens in Washington, D.C., is twenty-five times higher than that of white teens living a few Metro stops away." There are many facts that prove that the media cannot be the issue in this situation. Also, it isn't even children being violent most of the time. Three-Fourths of murdered kids are not murdered by children, but by adults. Also, the suicide rate of black teens is almost the same rate as black adults.
My expectation for this research is to have an in-depth knowledge of why more black people are in prison compared to any racial demographics in the United States. What l will be interested in learning will be the statistics of the prison population with regards to prisoners under jurisdiction, inmates held in custody, total inmates in custody and the total incarcerated population. I will also focus my attention on number of prisoners admitted to and released from prison each year; imprisonment rates for prisoners sentenced to more than 1 year; age, race and sex distributions; offense distributions; and the number of non-U.S. citizens and inmates under age 18 held in custody. One issue that l would also like to address is what becomes of you when you commit crime and get punished for it; does your problems stops there, the answer is no. So how do we as a society rehabilitates people who have paid their debt to society when we don’t give them a second chance at life; because the moment you are labeled a felon, it follows you for the rest of
Racism is very apparent in our criminal justice system as well. Drug laws, prison sentences, and police contact disproportionately affect African-Americans in a negative way. According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report of 2009, the percentage of arrestees in metropolitan areas of African-American race was 24.2% with Whites making up74.4% and the remaining made up of Pacific Islander, Asian, Alaskan American Native, or Native American. This shows a disproportionate rate of offending among African-Americans seeing as according to 2009 U.S. Census data they only make up 13.6% of the United States population. Why are the rates disproportionate?
Research Paper Final: “A Washington, DC-based think-tank that advocates for alternatives to prison, has found that after two decades of harsh criminal justice policies, there are more black men in jail or prison than in college. At the end of 2000, 791,600 black men were behind bars and 603,032 were enrolled in colleges or universities” ("Black men in jail"). This has become an ongoing problem in America. Black males tend to have a lack of education; when people think of blacks, they usually have negative thoughts about them, which includes performance rates in the classroom, crime rates, the lack of family involvement, and the negative media. “Today's "black" problem is underdevelopment, not discrimination.
By doing so the school district, whether unintentional or not, alienated qualified teachers of other races. This includes the majority race of the students, in favor of white teachers. One major example of institutional racism is in our legal system. According to the FBI Homicide Table 3, in 2010 there were 4,849 white offenders convicted of murder and 5,770 black offenders convicted of murder. Considering African Americans make up only 13.1% of the American population, these numbers are astonishing.
Housing approximately 500,000 people in jail awaiting trial who cannot bail costs $9 billion a year. Most jail inmates are petty, nonviolent offenders. Twenty years ago most non-violent defendants were released on their own recognizance (trusted to show up at trial). Now most are given bail, and most pay a bail bondsman to afford it. 62% of local jail inmates are awaiting trial.
Disparity and Discrimination Introduction Many people tend to believe that disparity and discrimination are one in the same. However, that is not the case they are actually more different than they are similar. In order to determine if an area is struggling with disparity or discrimination a person would have to look at how many people live in a certain area, what their races are, what was the arrest percentages for those groups, what were the conviction rates for those groups and what is the percentage of people in those groups who are housed in a jail system (Collective & Jones, 2009). Disparity Disparity means that there is a difference in a certain group. Such as cities there is a difference in the amount of races within that area.