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Cory Chipp
May 5, 2015
Ben A Jorgensen
English 1010
Racism in our Judicial System

In 1965, the Selma to Montgomery march was a demonstration of how our nation was
giving everybody their civil rights to move forward for racial equality. Its been fifty years and
this has still not been achieved. People of color have no equal justice. Racism surrounds us and
effects us as American citizens. We often try to pretend this problem doesn't exit, when in reality
its dividing us as a country. There is very little trust within our Judicial system, especially
throughout the colored community. There is research and facts that prove the racial disparity in
our Justice System. There needs to be change and it needs to happen now. Criminal law is
supposed to be color blind and class blind, but it isnt. The criminal justice system is in place to
protect the citizen but instead it sends the message that the colored people of the United States
are not being treated fairly with the fact the prison population is overwhelmingly the poor and
black. The United States operates two distinct criminal justice systems: one for the wealthy
people and another for poor people and minorities. (americanprogress.org/issue/race)
Your constitutional rights by law must protect you but law enforcement's prerogative will
almost always come before those rights. Today people of color continue to be incarcerated,
policed, and sentenced far more than whites. Prison population grew seven hundred percent from
1970 to 2005. The incarceration rates on average are one in fifteen African American males and

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one of thirty six hispanic males compared to one in one hundred six whites males. According to
the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in every three blacks males can expect to go to prison in
their lifetimes. (Bureau of statistic 2014) People of color have more encounters with law
enforcement than whites indicating that racial profiling is a continuing problem. When blacks are
stopped they are three times more likely to be searched and four times more likely to have force
used against them. Black offenders also receive longer sentences compared to white offenders.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission states that the black offenders receive sentences ten percent
longer than whites, and are twenty one percent more likely to receive mandatory minimum
sentencing, and twenty percent more likely to be prisoned. Even the number of colored women
incarcerated shows the racial disparities throughout the system. Women incarcerated has
increased eight hundred percent in the last three decades. The number of women incarcerated is
still pretty low but the racial disparity is still there. African American women are three times
more likely than white women to be incarcerated while hispanic women are sixty nine percent
more likely than whites. The juvenile incarnation rates have the same inequalities. According to
the Sentencing Project, even though African American juvenile youth are about sixteen percent
of the youth population, thirty seven percent of their cases are moved to criminal court and fifty
eight percent of African American youth are sent to adult prisons.
Americas War on Drugs has been targeting the colored and poor communities. According
to the Human Rights Watch, colored people are no more likely to use or sell drugs than whites,
but have higher arrest rates for drugs. African Americans make up about fourteen percent of
regular drug users, but are still thirty seven percent more likely to be arrested on drug offenses.
About one in three adults arrested for drugs are African Americans. African American

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are sixty two percent of the drug offenders sent to state prisons, yet they represent only twelve
percent of the population. Black men are sent to jails for drugs thirteen times the rate of white
men and fifty seven percent more into prisons. Even though so many people are arrested for
drugs According to the Global Commission on Drug Policy arresting and incarcerating people
fills prisons and destroys lives but does not reduce the availability of illicit drugs or the power of
criminal organizations. (globalissues.org) We need to look at the big picture, the drug war and
the way people are being punished for it is not just. Instead of law enforcement focusing on petty
crime in the poor communities they need to be going after real criminals and not based on race.
The people who are in the prison system are segregated for safety concerns . When
putting inmates in segregated cells it generally reduces the violence in the prison. States like
California are fighting to pass a law that only under extraordinary circumstance the inmates
wont be put together. They feel like this will help reduce prison gangs. Segregation also allows
the prison employees to easily fall into being bias towards their own race when punishing or
even just the way they treat colored inmates.
After going to prison, especially getting a felony, men and women have a hard time
getting a job that pays them a wage to help them get and stay out of poverty. Just to get by some
people resort back to their ways of getting money like selling drugs and they are basically stuck
in this awful cycle which leaves them tied up in the judicial system with no fair chance of ever
really getting out. A number of states have bans on people with certain convictions working in
domestic health-service industries such as nursing, child care, and home health careareas in
which many poor women and women of color are disproportionately concentrated.

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This has a big impact on our countrys voting system, because voter laws prohibit people
with felony convictions to vote, which impacts the colored community. An estimated 5.3 million
Americans are denied the right to vote based on a past felony conviction.
(americanprogress.org/issue/race) This means approximately thirteen percent of black men have
the right to vote, and the felony disenfranchisement policies have led to eleven states denying the
right to vote to more than ten percent of the African American population. This imbalance
maintains values and systems based on the already dominant white male group. We barely allow
the colored community to have a chance in the government or court system. We are setting them
up to never have a voice and to make it appear like it is their fault.
There has been many cases of police brutality just like the Oscar Grant shooting, where a
twenty-two-year-old unarmed black man was fatally shot in the back after the officers were
responding to a fight at the train station. They had detained him at the Bart Station. He was face
down and hand cuffed and the officer still continued to shot him in his back. He was declared
dead the next morning. This was all captured on many different video recording systems. The
community looked at this shooting as an execution and had both peaceful and violent protest.
The officer that was involved resigned his position and still pleaded not guilty. There was an
extensive trial his defense attorney argued that he was intending to use his taser and not his
pistol. The officer was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. With that charge riots broke
out nearly eighty people were arrested. The officer was only sentenced two years in jail and he
was put in protective custody for his safety. In my opinion this is a perfect example of racism and
a white officer racially profiling somebody and receiving very little consequence for this. If the

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roles were switched the officer would have gotten a harsher sentence and the community would
have fought for that.
We are living under a racist system that allows white officers to do things like this and
feel like they are protected. Another familiar case is the shooting of eighteen year old Michael
Brown who lived in Ferguson Missouri and stole small items from a local store and shoved the
employee. Officer Wilson is the one who responded to that call the two men got into an
altercation with Brown trying to get away. It ended with the officer firing his gun at the boy
several times hitting the front of him, when he was done he had fired twelve shots at an unarmed
boy who should've been only convicted of petty theft. The grand jury didn't find wilson guilty of
murder and allowed him to get off on self defense. Even though he clearly abused his license to
kill.(racismtoday.blogspot.com/) They grand jury had nine whites and three blacks jurors. The
shooting ignited people all over the United States protest and riot. They had to set rules in
Ferguson such as night curfews to try and stop all the violence. Wilson had no lack of remorse,
he did not need to fire his gun twelve times at an unarmed boy. Police shoot and kill blacks
almost twice as frequently as any other racial group.
Now that we all understand we what are dealing with we need to ask what we are doing
to correct this issue of discrimination and racial bias within our system? With racism becoming
extremely well documented and understood we are able to takes big steps in closing the racial
gaps. We need to stop unreasonable searches and seizures. This is justification for officers to
target anybody they want and be protected under the law. Even when they say its voluntary
people feel pressured with police displaying badges, guns and being aggressively authoritative.
People feel an obligation, few feel like they can just walk away. We need to step up our public

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defenders with performance testing to prove their competence. We all need equal defense. The
United States should establish a National Criminal Justice Commission to examine incarceration
and racial disparities. The commission should develop recommendations for systemic reform of
the criminal justice system at the federal, state, and local levels. (racismreview.com) We need to
save the resources we are using to fight the drug war and stop prosecuting people in federal court
and use the money saved to invest in evidence-based drug prevention and treatment measures.
Each case that comes before the judge need to be looked at per situation, we need to look at the
details of the case. We need to set up some and make sure all funding is going where it need to be
so federal, state, and local governments can operate they way they need to be and not just
ticketing people with little reason other than profit. We could adopt several different policies for
example the use of racial impact statements three states have already done this. Other policies
like training to reduce racial bias for everybody involved with the judicial systems. Trying to
train individual to be behaviorally colorblind. We can set policies that show why we need to be
racially neutral so we can progress with the struggle of racism. There are so many great and
powerful things we as Americans should be doing so we can raise our children to not judge or
discriminate. We need to address the problem starting in our government. I hope that one day I
will be able to say as a nation we are truly colorblind.

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Works Cited Page
americanprogress.org/issue/race
alternet.org
motherjones.org
forbes.com
globalissues.org
huffingtonpost.com/news/racism
juancole.com
motherjones.org
racismreview.com
racismtoday.blogspot.com/
thedailybeast.com/racism
wikipedia.org

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(juancole.com)