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Nguyen 1 Tran Nguyen Jennifer Jazayeri 50413 November 21, 2016 Bias in the Criminal Justice System Until nowadays, America still has not been a complete melting-pot for the reason that racism has always been one of the most significant concerns in the world to be remarkably considered. As a result, race differences have also lead criminal justice to the edge of bias and created unfair sentencing and imprisonment. According to “Racial and Ethnic Disparity and Criminal Justice”, the authors claim that “in recent decades, a considerable literature focused on racial profiling by police and racial differences in imprisonment, sentencing, and other areas of criminal and juvenile justice processing has grown” (903). It is clear that racial discrimination in American criminology in all age groups, which are teenagers and adults, has not only been considerably rising but also becoming a major threat to our society over time without seeking for effort. In general, before the Civil War occurred, black people were rarely sent to Southern jails; instead, the majority of the imprisoned was white people before the year of 1870. It was mainly because of slavery; people of color were determined to be the minority group, and “most African Americans were not free”, “to lock up a slave was to "punish" his master by depriving the latter of labor” (905). In explanation, the dominant group’s income mostly depended on the slaves who worked for them, so in order to penalize the owner by removing his future labor, his slave was the one to be imprisoned. Moreover, as well as segregation was the reason for disparities in criminology, colored people had to work as slaves before being completely released out of prison. To support the former statement, according to the article, “convicts,

Nguyen 2 disproportionately black, were leased to plantation owners to work the same fields that they had as slaves before emancipation” (905). Furthermore, the result of uneven sentencing and judgment in criminal justice system could be because people tended to be more aware of people whose race had the greater rate of crime compared to others. Based on Christianson’s statistic report about imprisonment rates between black and white people, “in all states, the proportion of blacks imprisoned exceeded their representation in the general population” (906). As there was evidence that more black people were cast in penitentiaries, in further study, “he concluded that this disproportionate imprisonment was evidence of disparate treatment in criminal justice processing based on race” (906). In fact, multiculturalism recently has not been able to be a common idea to be developed to the United States justice system yet even with teenagers. In other words, the process of assimilation could not start to evolve even though time has approached to be in our generation. Studies have shown there appeared a massive number of black teenagers who were sentenced to be imprisoned, which was two times greater than and compared to the number of whites: In 2005, more than thirty-one million youth were under juvenile court jurisdiction. The total delinquency case rate for black juveniles (108.4 per 1,000 juveniles) was more than double the rate for whites (44.4 per 1,000 juveniles) and for American Indians (53.3 per 1,000 juveniles). African Americans aged ten to seventeen comprise about 15% of their age group in the population, yet they represent about 25% of all juvenile arrests, 30% of referrals to juvenile court,

Nguyen 3 40% of all incarcerated juveniles, and close to 60% of waivers to adult criminal court (911-912). In the aspect of the adult justice system, there has not been any accurate and obvious evidence provided for bias and disparities based on race. However, most of the studies signify that the overloading of imprisoned Latin Americans is generally due to discrimination. Particularly, the article indicates that “recent scholarship has broadened the conversation to include Latinos, revealing a compounded disadvantage at some decision points due to unique circumstances of some defendants, such as language barriers and legal status” (920). In addition, also due to racial disparity, research show that “while the majority of stops result in either a warning or a ticket, these interactions can also serve as a gateway to the justice system” (920). Therefore, there would happen a conflict between minority racial groups and officers as the stopping can be wasting one’s time resulting disturbance if the target was rushing for emergency or being late for work. In conclusion, it is apparent that racial disparity happens in both American juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. The authors declare that “when politicians call on young people to believe that they can be whatever they want to be, some will counter with the narrative of injustice” (932). As a consequence, people might want to start developing pluralism or try building a community with other people with different races as a function of socialization between cultures: And when police departments attempt to explain what looks to the residents of African American, Latino, Asian, or Native-American communities to be police misbehavior, those explanations are less likely to be accepted because of the persistence of the narrative of injustice (932).

Nguyen 4 Works Cited CRUTCHFIELD, ROBERT D., APRIL FERNANDES, and JORGE MARTINEZ. "Racial And Ethnic Disparity And Criminal Justice: How Much Is Too Much?." Journal Of Criminal Law & Criminology 100.3 (2010): 903-932. Academic Search Premier. Web. 31 Oct. 2016...