Unequal Treatment Within the Criminal Justice System by Race Essay Example

The topic of unequal treatment of people within the criminal justice system based on their race is an important one for several reasons. First, it has been a rooted problem in society for a very long time. Research that done thirty-six years back showed a significant disparity in the rates of arrest, sentencing and release as well as general treatment of criminals based on their races (Petersilia, 1983). Today, the issue is still an enormous problem in many parts of the country and the world over. It is also important to discuss this topic because today the diversity of people in our country based on culture is increasing. If the problem is not solved, very soon it will be an issue facing the majority of the country's population. In a few generations, the number of the other cultures may rise so much as to be higher than that of the people giving unequal treatment and the tables may turn. This problem should be solved while the opportunity exists to avoid having a lousy narrative in our future.

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The sociological theory which speaks with precision on this topic is the theory of symbolic interactionism. It proposes that ethnic grouping and races provide potent sources of people's identity (Cole, 2018). Therefore, the different treatment afforded to individuals of different races is an effort by the perpetrator to find a way of belonging with a particular group. The perpetrator will deal with people of his race favorably because they identify together and they will deal with people from other races unfavorably as a way of shunning any association with them.

The criminal justice system is made up of three main areas; the law, courts with their accompanying lawyers and correctional institutions where offenders are detained and supervised. These work together in the process of enforcing law and order. The unequal treatment that exists in the criminal justice system has been shown to affect all three areas. In the United States of America, the race mostly implicated in unequal treatment is the African American population. Other people such as Hispanics also find themselves getting bad services which would be different for the more indigenous communities (Sentencing policy, 2018).

In the year 2010, more than one-third of all arrests made were African Americans. The African Americans got arrested for possession and trafficking of illegal drugs, prostitution, drunkenness in public, gambling and theft. Some people attribute the large numbers of African American arrests to the high crime rate among members of that race, but research has shown that there the police have been involved in some discrimination against members of the community which has had a contribution in the numbers (Constitutional rights foundation, 2019). In the court system, there is also a high rate of inequality between Caucasian defendants and non-Caucasian ones. White people have been shown to do better in plea bargains compared to African Americans. The Hispanics seemed to have the least success in reducing their sentence terms through plea bargaining. The study, however, did not provide reasons why the statistics were this way (Constitutional rights foundation, 2019). Several studies done on jury verdicts show that the race of the defendant and that of the victim played a significant role in the determination of the final result, with all jurors making decisions more favorably for their races. When the juries are of mixed race, the tendency to decide based on race seemed to disappear (Constitutional rights foundation, 2019). On the aspect of sentencing in the court system, a study by RAND Corporation showed that convicted felons of the black race are more likely to go to prison than those of white race. Baldus of the University of Iowa investigated the rate at which courts passed a death penalty. His study showed that a perpetrator was four times more likely to receive a death penalty for killing a white person than for killing a black person (Constitutional rights foundation, 2019). Other areas where a non-Caucasian individual may receive poor treatment that Caucasians wouldn't include the holding cells where blacks receive less dignity and respect (Constitutional rights foundation, 2019).Studies by Vera Institute of Justice have shown that African American are more likely than Caucasians to be stopped by law enforcement officers, they are detained in higher numbers before trial and are more likely to get convictions for more severe crimes during a trial. They also get harsher sentences than white people (Vera Institute of Justice, 2018). There is an inherent bias among decision makers in every stage of the criminal justice system, and that is to the significant disadvantage of African Americans. An article from Britain reported the existence of institutional racism in their criminal justice system. By definition, institutional racism is when an organization fails to give the proper professional treatment to an individual based on their race, culture or ethnicity (Thompson, 2016). The term was coined in 1999 when the metropolitan police were unable to successfully prosecute six white youth who had shouted racist insults at an African Caribbean boy then stabbed him to death, in spite of having a lot of substantial evidence against them. The institutional racism manifests through thoughtless conversations and actions, stereotypes based on race, ignorance, and prejudice. A chief constable did admit that officers stereotype people in their interactions which results in discriminatory acts and unfairness.

Examples of instances when there was unequal treatment in the criminal justice system abound. In Los Angeles 1991, a bystander made a video recording of four law enforcement officers beating Rodney King, a black man, after a car chase. There had been longstanding complaints of brutality against the blacks by police, but there was no progress on that front due to lack of proof and such other bottlenecks. After this video was made public, the members of the African American community thought that they would make headway in their complaints. Contrary to the hope of many, the court acquitted all four policemen of the charges of police brutality and the use of excessive force. If it had been a Caucasian, who had undergone the same ordeal or African American police officers, the order of events might have been different.

An example of race-based prejudice and stereotype is that of a senator of the United States Tim Scott (R-S.C). He made a speech on the floor of the Senate recounting how he had been pulled over several times by police officers who seemed very suspicious of a black person driving a good car (Balko, 2018). He shared about a high ranking African American staffer had also experienced the same problem to the extent of exchanging his vehicle for a lower grade one in an attempt to void the problem. The only thing that caused these men to get flagged down was their lineal descent. There were not expected to be having such good vehicles unless they were criminals. Probably they would have been arrested on false accounts if they were not officials of the US government.

Many people proposed solutions since the matter of racial inequality became a recognized problem. Some individuals suggest that the only way to get rid of the problem is through policies that will forcefully change the economy of the country (Cooper, 2018). The author feels that the core problem is that there is a vast gap in the economic capacity of the different races. Therefore, if policies were put in place to ensure that the economic divide is done away with, then no one would feel superior enough to treat the other in a way that they would not treat one of their own. He views the current justice system as one that was not set up to protect the citizens but rather to keep a specific community of people under close supervision. If all were equal, there would no longer be a need for monitoring, which will abolish injustice.

A group of three professors conducted studies on the matter and came up with a theory that the prosecutors have the highest unchecked power in the criminal justice system (Baughman et al., 2016). They are the ones who decide who to prosecute and who not to arraign in court. They also choose the charges an individual will have to answer in court. When they want to ensure that an individual does not get a long sentence term, they come up with charges that will not warrant a lengthy jail term. Similarly, when they want an individual to receive a lengthy sentence term, they charge them with multiple offenses. Thus according to the professors, the opportunity for unequal treatment in the justice system is provided by a prosecutor and the prosecutor is a strategic position from where they can propagate the inequality. The solution according to them is to blindfold the prosecutors. When the prosecutors receive a case file that belongs to an individual who should face justice, the data should not include the race or identifiers that may give away the ethnic descent. By doing that, all perpetrators will be at an equal playing field, and bias that may be introduced by a prosecutor disappears. I agree with this solution. It will not correct all ills in the criminal justice system because people can still undergo racism before they get to the prosecutor, but it removes a significant contributor t the problem. The country will be some steps closer to achieving equality in dealing with criminals of different races.

References

Balko, R. (2018). There's overwhelming evidence that the criminal justice system is racist. Here's proof. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/09/18/theres-overwhelming-evidence-that-the-criminal-justice-system-is-racist-heres-the-proof/

Baughman, S., Robertson, C., & Sah, S. (2016, October 22). 3 professors have a radical idea for how to remove bias from the criminal justice system. Business Insider. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-remove-bias-criminal-justice-system-2016-10

Constitution rights foundation. (2019). The Color of Justice. Retrieved from http://www.crf-usa.org/brown-v-board-50th-anniversary/the-color-of-justice.html

Cooper, R. (2018, January 31). How do you fight racism in the criminal justice system? With brute-force economic policy. The Week. Retrieved from https://theweek.com/articles/751839/how-fight-racism-criminal-justice-system-bruteforce-economic-policy

Nicki Lisa Cole, Ph.D. (2018, December 31). Symbolic interaction theory: History, Development, and Examples. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/symbolic-interaction-theory-p2-3026645

Patersilla, J. (1983). Racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/127137NCJRS.pdf

Sentencing Policy. (2018, August 7). Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System. Retrieved from https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/un-report-on-racial-disparities/

Thompson, K. (2017, January 2). Racism in the British Criminal Justice System - Selected Evidence. Retrieved from https://revisesociology.com/2016/11/23/racism-in-the-british-criminal-justice-system-selected-evidence/

Vera Institute of Justice. (2018, May 4). An Unjust Burden: The Disparate Treatment of Black Americans in the Criminal Justice System. Retrieved from https://www.issuelab.org/resource/an-unjust-burden-the-disparate-treatment-of-black-americans-in-the-criminal-justice-system.html