Inequality and Corruption of the Criminal Justice System

📌Category: Crime, Criminal Justice
📌Words: 928
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 14 April 2022

Red and blue lights flash, a police car pulls up. The officer says, “Get out of the car and put your hands up, you're under arrest for speeding and being a minority.” Just 5 hours later, the same police officer sees another car speeding, but that person is white. He says, “Sir this is just a warning, but stop speeding. "The unsettling fact is it happens all the time here in the U.S.A. People are wrongfully and unequally convicted because of their race and gender. In addition to that, many are also not convicted because of these same factors. But when people are imprisoned wrongfully, their rights are taken away by the snap of a finger. If it does not get any worse than that, they are then mistreated. Some people believe the criminal justice system is perfect and has no faults. But the fact is, it has many faults that need to be addressed. The criminal justice system in the U.S.A is corrupt and unequal, so it desperately needs more attention. 

To start off, many people of color in the criminal justice system are like thirsty dogs. Their lives are yearning for attention to be fixed. There is a domino effect, the more wrongful incarcerations the more skewed the voting representation is. For instance, the website “Brennancenter.org” mentioned that mass incarceration disproportionately affects minorities. Soon after, the same website said that Black people are underrepresented when it comes to voting because of mass incarceration. According to “medium.com” mass incarceration is “the unique way the U.S. has locked up a vast population in federal and state prisons, as well as local jails.” The text also goes over the fact that the people that are mass imprisoned are Blacks and Latinos. What this evidence is showing is that mass incarceration unequally targets minorities. After individuals have experienced this unjust treatment, their right to vote is taken away. So, it’s a vicious cycle: minorities getting locked up wrongfully causing their inability to vote and the system not changing because they can't vote. Might as well call the criminal justice system a never-ending problem. 

 

In addition, gender plays a huge role in the criminal justice system. There are many gender inequalities in this system. For example, it’s seen and noticed in sports all the time. Gymnastics has seen its share of problems. As proof, an online article written by Mary Clare Jalonick, Will Graves, and Michael Balsomo stated: that federal law enforcement agents ignored and pushed back many of the U.S.A. gymnasts’ claims. The claims involved sexual abuse from the team’s doctor. What this shows is because women were alleging something about a man people did not feel it was important. As presented with evidence, the criminal justice system can go from one extreme to the other. It goes from incarcerating too many individuals to not incarcerating enough. This is just one example but there are way too many to write. On the same topic of gender, many women in jails across The United States are denied basic reproductive health services and feminine hygiene products. For example, the article titled “The Top 5 Facts About Women in Our Criminal Justice System” expresses that woman are repeatedly appealed critical health services like pregnancy tests. Moreover, they are denied prenatal care and feminine hygiene products. Prenatal care is regular medical care during pregnancy. This is important because it reduces problems during pregnancy. A result of the unequal way women are treated in the criminal justice system is their babies can suffer and so can their bodies. Since they are in jail, they suddenly can't have basic health services.  

Additionally, race can also play a huge part in your faith as it relates to the criminal justice system. People of color are sentenced more time in prison for committing the same or similar crimes as white people. In particular, a study in 2000 showed that African- Americans were imprisoned 15 times the rate in which whites were. Then, in 2016 the number moved to 5 times the rate. Still, this is very unequal. If this was not enough, abcnews.go.com wrote that “The Comision's Analysis of demographic prison” found that black men serve 19.1% longer than white men for similar crimes. This clearly illustrates the untrustworthiness of the criminal justice system. In simpler terms, if you had two people who committed the same crime only one is getting hit hard. By getting hit hard I mean a longer time in prison, and they are more likely to be put in prison. 

On the contrary, a law was passed in Florida aiming to stop violent protests. The Anti-riot bill was put in place to keep the streets safe. To illustrate, NBC news said that “The bill would increase criminal penalties for assaulting law enforcement officials while engaging in a "riot" and defacing monuments and other public property during riots.” So, the criminal justice system is not as corrupt as said above. Many people feel as though this was a great bill that will do more good than bad. Alternatively, this law is horrible. To the fact that just a few months after it was passed it was deemed unconstitutional. The criminal justice system is so corrupt that it allowed an unconstitutional law to be passed. According to a U.S district judge, the law directly violates our freedom to protest. So, the bill is trying to imprison more people on the matter of protesting.  

All things concluded, everything mentioned above is just a few reasons the  criminal justice system is disreputable and unbalanced. People are wrongfully imprisoned way too much. Gender plays a massive role in the system. Also, an individual's time sentence can change based on their race. Lastly, a law passed that was unconstitutional aiming to put more people in prison for protesting. As said, this system needs many fixes. Therefore, people need to pay more attention to the criminal justice system. There are just problems after problems. If this inequality and corruptness is not addressed soon who knows what will happen next.

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