Race and the Criminal Justice System

RACE AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Disparity is the discrepancy between the percentage of a group in one population when compared to the percentage of that same group in another population . To illustrate , if Latin-Americans are arrested 12 percent of the time but account for 45 percent of those people taken into custody there is a disparity (Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparity , 2004 n .p . Disparity can be in the form of either an overrepresentation or underrepresentation of the specific group being measured . There is overrepresentation where a larger proportion of

a group is present at various stages within the justice system (such as intake , detention adjudication , and disposition ) than would be expected as a result of equally fair treatment of that same group based on their proportion in the population that is being used as a basis of comparison (Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparity , 2004 , n .p . Underrepresentation , on the other hand , is the opposite of overrepresentation . It pertains to a situation where a smaller proportion of a specific group is present at various stages within the justice system (such as intake , detention adjudication , and disposition ) than would be expected as a result of equally fair treatment of that same group based on their proportion in the population that is being used as a basis of comparison (Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparity , 2004 , n .p

Discrimination , on the other hand , is the result of disparate treatment - when a certain group is treated differently than others for invalid reasons such as gender , racial , and /or ethnic status (Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparity , 2004 , n .p . Discrimination in the criminal justice system is achieved through

racial prejudice that subsists in each individual in this racist society a system designed without any accountability at each segment a actually works and a legislators , and institutional wardens and custodians about African American culture , for example , history and the current societal challenges created by the racially prejudiced handling of African Americans all over history

There is no other issue in criminal justice that is more disturbing than the occurrence of racial disparity within the system . In all of its stages - from the arrest to imprisonment and parole - substantial racial and ethnic disparities are found in almost all jurisdictions . Years and years of discrimination , slavery and segregation , according to Butler (1997 , have created the social environments that fuel high levels of African-American criminal behavior (p .43 . Hence , the hypothesis is that similar to low standardized test scores , poor grades , and depressed wages , black criminality is another product of a history of white supremacy . Furthermore , with regard to drug enforcement , blacks comprise a mere 13 of drug users but are 74 of those incarcerated for drug offenses . Butler (1997 ) asserts that even though conscious discriminatory intent may not exist , the criminal justice system is presently administered in a racially discriminatory fashion (p . 49

Michael Tonry (1994 ) avers that racial disparities in the US prison system have been increasing throughout the last third...