Discrimination in the American Criminal Justice System
- Lauren Fryman
- Apr 8, 2018
- 2 min read
Minorities face higher rates of incarceration than whites, which is just one example of the racial discrimination that takes place within the American criminal justice system. According to Fitzgerald, sixty-six percent of the United States prison population is nonwhite. [if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span>CITATION Fit171 \p 324 \l 1033 <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span><[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif] The use of the death penalty more frequently on African American males than white males is another form of racial discrimination in the U.S. criminal justice system. The US Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia (1972) the racial bias of capital punishment and its constitutionality was brought into question. Fitzgerald states:
The court determined that no specific guidelines existed on which to base the sentencing of capital punishment versus a life sentence without parole. Without such guidelines, Justice Thurgood Marshall declared, the option of imposing a sentence of death was an ‘open invitation to discrimination.’” (Fitgerald, 2017, p. 334)
As a result of this case, the death penalty was not in use between 1972 and 1976. In 1976, however the case Gregg v. Georgia, determined that the death penalty was acceptable as long as the jury was properly educated on the acceptable terms for capital punishment, and thus, the death penalty was reinstated in the United States.
The United States has the highest rate of incarceration and this era of hyper-incarceration began in the mid-1970s. In fact, many of the nation’s prisons were former plantations, lending an important element of the racial discrimination that still prevails in the prison system today, with a history of black prisoners being used in place of slave labor, the passing of vagabond laws, and chain gangs. Nixon’s “war on crime” and Reagan’s “war on drugs” is directly correlated with the rise in hyper-incarceration and the prison industrial complex that exists today.
Bibliography
Fitgerald, K. A. (2017). Chapter 9: Crime and Criminal Justice. In K. A. Fitzgerald, Recognizing Race and Ethnicity: Power, Privilege, and Inequality. Boulder: Westview Press.
Comments