Is the Criminal Justice System Bias Essay

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This paper will inquire several inquiries and hopefully answer most of those inquiries. Questions like is the condemnable justness system prejudice against the hapless and is the condemnable justness system prejudice against minorities. We so explore some of the possible solutions to the jobs that could do prejudices. We so look at a survey done on several communities where dealingss between constabulary and the populace had repaired their relationship.

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It’s easy to understand why people see the condemnable justness system as biased. Our of all of our provinces captives forty per centum can non even read ; and 67 per centum did non hold full-time employment when they were arrested. So there are more uneducated people in prison so there are educated people. This seems like so that our system of condemnable justness is operated on an unequal system against hapless or uneducated people. However. one of the jobs we run into when we try to compare the affluent violators to hapless violators is the broad difference between the sum of affluent people and hapless people we have in our population. “In 1989. the wealthiest one per centum of United States families owned about 40 per centum of the nation’s wealth. The wealthiest 20 per centum owned more than 80 per centum of the nation’s wealth. That leaves cherished small for the rest” ( Cole. 2000 ) . This isn’t merely true with grownups. but with kids and adolescents excessively.

The figure of poor/under-funded schools in America far outweighs the figure of affluent schools in America. That’s likely the chief ground our system appears to be unjust against the hapless. The ground that any pole or state broad research will be bias against the hapless or lower category is because there is a much larger poor/lower category population than a wealthy/high category population. Most American’s will likely non desire to believe that our condemnable justness system is non operated on equality. After all our states Supreme Court even has the stating “Equal Justice Under Law” written above the entryway. There are several really celebrated Supreme Court’s determinations that uphold equality for the hapless. In Gideon v. Wainwright they made it a jurisprudence that the province must supply a attorney to all suspects who have been charged with a serious offense and can non afford a attorney. In Miranda v. Arizona the Supreme Court decided that constabulary must supply all suspects with an lawyer.

These tribunal determinations might be a small misleading since both were decided during the clip of Chief Justice Earl Warren. who was strongly broad and really supportive of economic equality. Since so the rules of equality from both determinations for Gideon v. Wainwright and Miranda v. Arizona have been cheated and twisted so that neither determinations are upheld to the full extent that they were intended ( Cole. 2000 ) . That’s plenty socking our tribunal system. There are really many things that police officers do hex can be biased. For illustration the Fourth Amendment says that we have a right against improper hunts and ictuss. However. constabulary officers all the clip and bespeak their consent to seek them or their properties ( without of all time holding any footing for intuition ) without of all time informing them of their right to decline the hunt. This isn’t needfully a prejudice against the hapless but it makes sense to me that an officer would judge person on visual aspect.

There is besides the agencies of transit we have to see if jurisprudence enforcement is bias to the hapless. Say hypothetically some affluent individual is going across the state to a birthday party. How are they traveling to go? Most affluent people would likely go across state like that by agencies of winging. While winging. people do non come in contact with that many constabulary officers nor are they in many places where they would usually interrupt the jurisprudence. However. state there is a hapless individual who is going the same distance to the same party but does non hold the money to wing. The cheapest manner of transit is decidedly by manner of kiss. While going by kiss there is decidedly a larger opportunity of contact with the constabulary than when going by air. There are besides many more chances for offense to be committed while going on a kiss. Again we have the state of affairs where it’s non needfully that the hapless are treated otherwise but are possibly merely in environments where offense is committed more frequently. which would explicate why it seems that the system is biased against them ( Rothwax. 1996 )

So I feel like we could come to an understanding now that the condemnable justness system is non needfully biased against the hapless at the jurisprudence enforcement side of the condemnable justness system. However. the courtroom side of the condemnable justness system seems indirectly biased against the hapless. merely because each test can be different depending on how much money they defence and the prosecution have available to them. Now lets talk about other ways that the condemnable justness system could be bias. What about race? Are people treated otherwise depending on their ethnicity? Most people likely agree that there are some cultural groups who are treated otherwise than other cultural groups in the condemnable justness system. Statistically minorities are disproportionately victimized by offense.

“African Americans are victimized at a rate of 150 per centum higher than whites” ( Cole. 2000 ) . Blacks are typically more involved in about every sort of offense more so than Whites. These offenses can include colza. aggravated assault. and armed robbery. Homicide is really the figure one taking cause of decease among immature black work forces. Most offense is interracial and so it could be argued. merely as it can with the subject of prejudices against the hapless that the ground for higher offense rates for black is because most poorness afflicted countries. or the interior metropolis. have bulk black populations. Therefore the felons would be black. the victims would be black. and all the statistics that came from that country would rate inkinesss more prone to perpetrate offense than Whites. Now lets expression at some instances. For case the videotaped whipping of Rodney King by Los Angeles Police Department officers was a immense eye-opener for most of America. It was said of that whipping that for many inkinesss saw that as intervention they expected from the constabulary. They were non surprised by that crushing what so of all time.

Curtis Tucker. a California Assemblyman. was quoted stating at a subsequent hearing on Los Angeles Police Department patterns. “When black people in Los Angeles see a constabulary auto nearing. they don’t know whether justness will be meted out or whether justice. jury. and executioner is drawing up behind them. ” There was even this one officer who earned the moniker “the Mechanic” because he would “tune people up” which seemingly is police slang for crushing up people. This “Mechanic” one time testified that the whippings were widespread. When asked the inquiry of conditions he beat up people whom he arrested he replied. “No. We merely beat people up in general. If they’re on the street. hanging around drug locations. Just—It was a show of force” ( Rothwax. 1996 ) . The officer even admitted that the bulk of the whipping victims were either black or Latino ; although he claimed that the onslaughts were non motivated by racial tenseness. There have been really upseting forms of corruptness and ferociousness in the constabulary force of about every high-crime country studied.

These corrupt Acts of the Apostless include stealing from drug traders. prosecuting in improper hunts. ictuss. and auto Michigans. even covering and utilizing drugs. If cases like this is what our constabulary force has come down to so our state is far worse off so I of all time realized. I do nevertheless believe that this is likely a much smaller per centum than what some statistics would take us to believe but it is non a job that I believe can be overlooked. So what can be done? Can something be done? Are we as a state so far gone that we can come back? I believe we can. I believe that we have become to far divide from the community. We have to bridge the spread that has grown between jurisprudence enforcement/the condemnable justness system and the public lower category people. How do we make that? “The thing we need most is perspective” ( Walker. 1980 ) . One thing that could be the reply to our job is community based policing. In Canada they passed the Police Services Act of 1990 that might be a good mention for our current bureaus to look back on. What the Police Services Act did was do the Chief of Police responsible for community-oriented policing ( Kuck. 2004 ) .

“Community based policing is both a doctrine and an organisational scheme that allows the constabulary and community to work together in new ways to work out jobs of offense. upset and safety. It truly merely has two elements: altering the methods and pattern of the constabulary and taking stairss to set up a relationship between the constabulary and the public” ( Groenewald. 2004 ) . The Doctrine of community based policing is based off of the thought that the populace has a right to give their input on patroling. It besides relies on the thought that to happen a solution for community jobs both the constabulary and the public must look past single offenses and incidents. and alternatively seek to happen ways of facing the more of import community jobs. What does community based patroling expression like though?

Community based constabulary officers need to be much more than mere offense combatants and must be public retainers in many ways. Reforming the constabulary entirely. nevertheless. is non plenty. Community support and aid are besides necessary. Community based patroling therefore encompasses schemes to reorient the populace who. for good grounds. have been mistrustful and distrustful of the constabulary. Constructing partnerships between the constabulary and communities is a major challenge that non many people or organisations have every truly attempted. The doctrine of community based policing asks both the constabulary and the public to take a spring of religion and a committedness to alter. It would be a long procedure that would necessitate drastic action to be taken at multiple degrees intending that there would be detailed be aftering necessary to turn doctrine into world within the constabulary and among the populace.

There was a survey where Kuotsia Tom Liou from the University of Central Florida and Eugene G. Savage from Florida State University looked at the impact of community policing by looking at three vicinities in West Palm Beach. Florida before and after the execution of a community oriented patroling plan. Lashkar-e-taibas take a expression at what they found. They had 3 communities with the first consisting of chiefly white occupants. chiefly single-family places. flats. and little concerns. The 2nd community was chiefly black consisting of a concentrated public lodging undertaking. individual household places. flats. little concerns. several churches. and a public in-between school. The last community consisted of Whites. Hispanics. inkinesss. and Haitians. The community was made up of individual household places. flats. little concerns. and several churches. It was their end to happen out how community patroling affects difference types of communities.

The consequences of their survey showed that after the community based policing had been traveling on 68 per centum of surveyed citizens felt that offense had decreased. All age groups. race groups. and all three vicinities shared the belief that offense had decreased. Even if the offense rates had non gone down in world it would still truly assist dealingss with constabulary officers merely that the citizens believe it had. In add-on to the feeling like offense had gone down they besides asked in their study how they felt about the relationship after six months of the community policing.

Among the respondents to the study 88 per centum felt that the relationship between the constabulary and their communities as acquiring better. We started this paper with the inquiry of is the condemnable justness system prejudice. We talked about the relationship between jurisprudence enforcement and the populace. We talked about one of the possibilities of how we could reconstruct that relationship. We so looked at some research where a relationship was made better by usage of community policing. Hopefully we can utilize research like this to assist do this universe a more perfect universe.

Mention Page:
Cole. D. ( 2000 ) . No equal justness. race and category in the American condemnable justness system. New York: New Press. The.

Rothwax. H. ( 1996 ) . Guilty: The prostration of condemnable justness. New York: Random House.

Walker. S. ( 1980 ) . Popular justness. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kuck. H. ( 2004 ) . Racial pride and consciousness trilogy: Addressing hatred offense and racial strife through community policing. Canadian Journal of Police and Security Services. Dec. 2004: 243. Condemnable Justice Collection. Web. 29 Oct. 2012.

Groenewald. H. and Peake. G. ( 2004 ) . Police Reform through Community-Based Policing. New York.

Liou. Kuotsai. and Savage. Eugene. ( 1996 ) . Citizen perceptual experience of community patroling impact.

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