JUSTICE REALLY SERVED? Criminal Justice System in the United States of America

The criminal justice system is a set of legal and social institutions for enforcing criminal law that follows a defined group of procedural rules and limitations. The criminal justice system’s goal includes the rehabilitation of offenders, preventing other crimes, and moral support for victims.

The criminal justice system’s primary institutions are the police, prosecution and defense lawyers, the courts, and prisons. Well, this justice system of America is not fair and becomes different according to the race of the convict. According to a survey conducted by Pew Research

Center, nearly 9 in 10 Black adults say Black Americans are treated less fairly than their white counterparts. The incongruity in judgment exists almost across the board, on views around policing, sentencing, and parole. The reason for this disparity is mainly due to our intellect, how we see the world, its experiences, etc. Police are one of the institutions to maintain justice, but the police act more as an oppressive force when dealing with Black people than in dealing with white people. Black adults are about five times as likely as white adults to be stopped by the police just because of their color. We can prove that police show a disparity in aggression when it comes to Black people by taking the case of Jacob Blake. Jacob Blake, 29 was shot many times in the back as he went to the car and opened its door in the city of Kenosha. Due to this aggressive act of Wisconsin police officers, Blake was paralyzed from the waist down. Mr. Blake’s shooting comes as the US grapples with the treatment of African-Americans at the hands of US law enforcement, as well as wider questions about racism in society. Another example of police aggression towards Blacks is the George Floyd incident. Now we can come to the inequality of the justice system by taking an example of a 17-year-old white boy who killed 2 people and severely injured one during the protest in Kenosha. Why did the police allow him to carry a gun in a protest? Why did the police allow the White people to create issues when Black people are conducting a peaceful protest? Is the justice for Black served?

So, from the above paragraph, it is clear that America has two systems of justice for Black and White Americans. The reality of America is what we have seen over generations and frankly, since our inception and America has two justice systems, the Black Americans also fight for equal justice under law. The most reasonable people who are attentive to these justice facts would dispute that there are racial disparities and a system that has engaged in racism in terms of how the laws have been enforced. Protests against racial injustice, particularly in law enforcement, have swept across America as police violence against Black Americans is being noticed, including the cases of Jacob Blake and George Floyd, which I mentioned above. So, America has to re-imagine how they are going to accomplish public safety. Black people are prone to discrimination in the justice system, and they are also victims of racism in the prison system. According to the Pew Research Centre, in 2016, the racial demographics were as follows:

● African Americans represented 12% of the US population, but 33% of the prison population

● Caucasians accounted for 64% of the population, but only 30% of those in prison.

Hispanics held 16% of the nation’s population, but over 23% of prison inmates in America. People of color are incarcerated in state and federal prisons across the country at higher rates than white people, with African Americans landing in prison at more than five times the rate of white people. In the following five states, states with predominately white communities, this number jumped to a rate of 10 to one: Iowa Minnesota New Jersey Vermont Wisconsin Oklahoma, which is the state with the highest black incarceration rate in the nation, holds more than one in every 15 black males over the age of 18 in prison.

To put these numbers into perspective, let’s compare the same crime committed by two people of two different races. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a black person is 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for possession of marijuana when compared to a white person, despite the rate of use between the two races being approximately the same.

Hispanics and Latinos see nearly the same range of racial disparity, with Latinos in the US imprisoned at 1.4 times the rate of whites. However, Blacks are still more than twice as likely to wind up in prison than Hispanics. is political dynamite. No officeholder can afford this label. Irrespective of the difficulty of the challenge, we must accept the responsibility. The National Conference on Public Trust and Confidence in the Justice System developed a number of overarching strategies, which I have listed below:

There is clearly a serious problem with lingering racism in the criminal justice system, whether at the stateorfederallevel.Withracialprofiling,harshdrug laws and overcriminalization, mass incarceration rates, and institutionalized discrimination are to blame for these shocking numbers. The problem also is in socio-economic status. The American system doesn’t favor lower class people, which in turn affects many people of color.

Racism cannot be allowed to exist within our system of justice; however, it is extremely difficult to get to the source of this problem. The police, prosecutors, courts, juries, penal administrators, legislators, and members of the executive branches of both federal and state governments are all involved in the criminal justice system and each plays a key role. Furthermore, reforming the justice system is politically perilous. Being labeled as “soft on crime” 1. Improve external communication. 2. Improve education and training. 3. Make courts more inclusive and outreaching. 4. Improve management and information technology. 5. Make changes in existing laws and rules governing court procedures. 6. Simplify courts to make them more accessible to pro se parties. 7. Change the economics of courts and the legal profession. 8. Strengthen and improve the relations of the judiciary with other branches of government and court-related agencies. 9. Enforce court procedures and powers of superintendence. 10. Make the courts [and other organizations making up the judicial system] demographically representative of the communities they serve. Let’s all fight together against this disease that Black people are now facing and let’s put an end to it. Content : from an outside source