Excellent article and sadly so very true.

Shame on you BP and news one for not posting this entire article here and giving us a few sentences and a “read more” icon. You people at bp and news one don’t want us to succeed and care nothing for us…you attempt to use psychological social engineering at every turn….evil sub-humans you are.

“African Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people.”

Nuff SAID!

So true and yet so SAD! AMERICA isnt set up for black ppl. Not just the criminal justice system.

Great article..

Like Michael said below, this ENTIRE article should have been included here (if possible-I don’t know how BP gets permission anyway)

This article was the best one I have read since I became a memeber and this part of the article is all so true.
(Information on race is available for each step of the criminal justice system—from the use of drugs, police stops, arrests, getting out on bail, legal representation, jury selection, trial, sentencing, prison, parole and freedom. Look what these facts show.)

The biggest crime in the U.S. criminal justice system is that it is a race-based institution where African Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people.

Saying the U.S. criminal system is racist may be politically controversial in some circles. But the facts are overwhelming. No real debate about that. Below I set out numerous examples of these facts.

The question is—are these facts the mistakes of an otherwise good system, or are they evidence that the racist criminal justice system is working exactly as intended? Is the U.S. criminal justice system operated to marginalize and control millions of African Americans?

Information on race is available for each step of the criminal justice system—from the use of drugs, police stops, arrests, getting out on bail, legal representation, jury selection, trial, sentencing, prison, parole and freedom. Look what these facts show.

One. The U.S. has seen a surge in arrests and putting people in jail over the last four decades. Most of the reason is the war on drugs. Yet whites and Blacks engage in drug offenses, possession and sales, at roughly comparable rates—according to a report on race and drug enforcement published by Human Rights Watch in May 2008. While African Americans comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population and 14 percent of monthly drug users, they are 37 percent of the people arrested for drug offenses—according to 2009 congressional testimony by Marc Mauer of The Sentencing Project.

Two. The police stop Blacks and Latinos at rates that are much higher than whites. In New York City, where people of color make up about half of the population, 80 percent of the NYPD stops were of Blacks and Latinos. When whites were stopped, only 8 percent were frisked. When Blacks and Latinos are stopped, 85 percent were frisked, according to information provided by the NYPD. The same is true most other places as well. In a California study, the ACLU found Blacks are three times more likely to be stopped than whites.

Three. Since 1970, drug arrests have skyrocketed, rising from 320,000 to close to 1.6 million, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice.

African Americans are arrested for drug offenses at rates two to 11 times higher than the rate for whites—according to a May 2009 report on disparity in drug arrests by Human Rights Watch.

Four. Once arrested, Blacks are more likely to remain in prison awaiting trial than whites. For example, the New York State Division of Criminal Justice did a 1995 review of disparities in processing felony arrests and found that in some parts of New York Blacks are 33 percent more likely to be detained awaiting felony trials than whites facing felony trials.

Five. Once arrested, 80 percent of the people in the criminal justice system get a public defender for their lawyer. Race plays a big role here as well. Stop in any urban courtroom and look at the color of the people who are waiting for public defenders. Despite often heroic efforts by public defenders, the system gives them much more work and much less money than the prosecution. The American Bar Association, not a radical bunch, reviewed the U.S. public defender system in 2004 and concluded: “The fundamental right to a lawyer that Americans assume appl[ies] to everyone accused of criminal conduct effectively does not exist in practice for countless people across the United States. All too often, defendants plead guilty, even if they are innocent, without really understanding their legal rights.”

Six. African Americans are frequently illegally excluded from criminal jury service, according to a June 2010 study released by the Equal Justice Initiative. For example, in Houston County, Ala., eight out of 10 African Americans qualified for jury service have been struck by prosecutors from serving on death penalty cases.

Seven. Trials are rare. Only 3 to 5 percent of criminal cases go to trial—the rest are plea-bargained. Most African Americans defendants never get a trial. Most plea bargains consist of a promise of a longer sentence if a person exercises their constitutional right to trial. As a result, people caught up in the system, as the American Bar Association points out, plead guilty even when innocent. Why? As one young man told me recently, “Who wouldn’ rather do three years for a crime they didn’t commit than risk 25 years for a crime they didn’t do?”

Eight. The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported in March 2010 that in the federal system Black offenders receive sentences that are 10 percent longer than white offenders for the same crimes. Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project reports African Americans are 21 percent more likely to receive mandatory minimum sentences than white defendants and 20 percent more likely to be sentenced to prison than white drug defendants.

Nine. The longer the sentence, the more likely it is that non-white people will be the ones getting it. A July 2009 report by the Sentencing Project found that two-thirds of the people in the U.S. with life sentences are non-white. In New York, it is 83 percent.

Ten. As a result, African Americans, who are 13 percent of the population and 14 percent of drug users, are not only 37 percent of the people arrested for drugs but also 56 percent of the people in state prisons for drug offenses. (Marc Mauer, May 2009 Congressional Testimony for The Sentencing Project)

Eleven. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics concludes that the chance of a Black male born in 2001 going to jail is 32 percent, or one in three. Latino males have a 17 percent chance and white males have a 6 percent chance. Thus Black boys are five times and Latino boys nearly three times as likely as white boys to go to jail.

Twelve. So, while African American juvenile youth are but 16 percent of the population, they are 28 percent of juvenile arrests, 37 percent of the youth in juvenile jails and 58 percent of the youth sent to adult prisons. (2009 Criminal Justice Primer, The Sentencing Project)

Thirteen. Remember that the U.S. leads the world in putting our own people into jail and prison. The New York Times reported in 2008 that the U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population but a quarter of the world’s prisoners, over 2.3 million people behind bars, dwarfing other nations. The U.S. rate of incarceration is five to eight times higher than other highly developed countries and Black males are the largest percentage of inmates, according to ABC News.

Fourteen. Even when released from prison, race continues to dominate. A study by Professor Devah Pager of the University of Wisconsin found that 17 percent of white job applicants with criminal records received callbacks from employers, while only 5 percent of Black job applicants with criminal records received callbacks. Race is so prominent in that study that whites with criminal records actually received better treatment than Blacks without criminal records!

So, what conclusions do these facts lead to? The criminal justice system, from start to finish, is seriously racist.

Professor Michelle Alexander concludes that it is no coincidence that the criminal justice system ramped up its processing of African Americans just as the Jim Crow laws enforced since the age of slavery ended. Her book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” sees these facts as evidence of the new way the U.S. has decided to control African Americans—a racialized system of social control. The stigma of criminality functions in much the same way as Jim Crow—creating legal boundaries between them and us, allowing legal discrimination against them, removing the right to vote from millions, and essentially warehousing a disposable population of unwanted people. She calls it a new caste system.

Poor whites and people of other ethnicity are also subjected to this system of social control. Because if poor whites or others get out of line, they will be given the worst possible treatment, they will be treated just like poor Blacks.

Other critics like Professor Dylan Rodriguez see the criminal justice system as a key part of what he calls the domestic war on the marginalized. Because of globalization, he argues in his book “Forced Passages,” there is an excess of people in the U.S. and elsewhere. “These people,” whether they are in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib or U.S. jails and prisons, are not productive, are not needed, are not wanted and are not really entitled to the same human rights as the productive ones. They must be controlled and dominated for the safety of the productive. They must be intimidated into accepting their inferiority or they must be removed from the society of the productive.

This domestic war relies on the same technology that the U.S. uses internationally. More and more we see the militarization of this country’s police. Likewise, the goals of the U.S. justice system are the same as the U.S. war on terror—domination and control by capture, immobilization, punishment and liquidation.

What to do?

Martin Luther King Jr. said we, as a nation, must undergo a radical revolution of values. A radical approach to the U.S. criminal justice system means we must go to the root of the problem. Not reform. Not better beds in better prisons. We are not called to only trim the leaves or prune the branches, but rip up this unjust system by its roots.

We are all entitled to safety. That is a human right everyone has a right to expect. But do we really think that continuing with a deeply racist system leading the world in incarcerating our children is making us safer?

It is time for every person interested in justice and safety to join in and dismantle this racist system. Should the U.S. decriminalize drugs like marijuana? Should prisons be abolished? Should we expand the use of restorative justice? Can we create fair educational, medical and employment systems? All these questions and many more have to be seriously explored. Join a group like INCITE, Critical Resistance, the Center for Community Alternatives, Thousand Kites, or the California Prison Moratorium and work on it. As Professor Alexander says, “Nothing short of a major social movement can dismantle this new caste system.”

4 examples of racism

BET
Miss Black USA
Black scholarship fund
affirmative action
African American

If people would see how high the percentage of people who are arrested for violent and property crimes compared to blacks, and then look how it is basically reversed when it comes to conviction and incarceration rates people would be shocked.

I see this article as kind of like telling a kid not to touch the stove becuase it’s hot and will burn you, and like a kid, many blacks don’t listen, they still go out and get involved with crime when they know the risks.

Blacks per capita commit more crimes than whites. So its no surprise that in a white dominated society that blacks are treated more harshly than whites. White juries will more easily convict blacks because of perceived stereotypes that are mostly true. Heres some advice…STOP COMMITTING CRIMES! I’m tired of black people blaming “the justice system” for the plight of incarcerated blacks.

@JesseJackoph Seems like you’re bitter

@YourDaddy123-I don’t know your race nor gender yet as a black woman living here in america I can say YOU ARE WRONG on this one. White people have been getting away with murder for years now and still do or when they get caught they are giving a light sentence like the officers who killed Oscar Grant and only facing a year and he is going to be put on lock-down so noone can hurt him. Only because he is white and a ex cop. Yet his crime was murder and when did the law protect anyone black who got the same charge? Half of the black people are in prison because of the lies that was told and mistaken identtification which equal out to white jurys who have been giving the wrong information,facts,and lack of evidence by the DA and law enforcement and the judge believed it all as well…to bring up the charge and sentence them to a higher sentence of which they would have if they was white. So yeah blacks can scream this all day because its the TRUTH. Someone like you will say dumbsh!t until it happen to you or someone you love. When white people catch a charge they are given a slap on the back or over looked and when it come to a black person the book is threw at them and then some.(JMOARTY)

[...] post:  14 Examples Of Racism In U.S. Criminal Justice System | News One By admin | category: criminal justice lawyer | tags: been-involved, big-role, color, [...]

[...] 14 Examples Of Racism In U.S. Criminal Justice System | News One [...]

Nothing has really changed over 120 years….I read in those admission files in OHIO peniitenturies that even the ones (BLACKS) committed serious crimes (B & L, rape, murder) got LONGER sentences for pick pocketing, life with mercy and even got threatended with lynchings back in the day, and it seems the patteren is STILL on a negative path….Maybe if these young/old people who commit these crimes, knew what’s instore for them when they get caught, then they wouldn’t commit thse crimes and FEWER would be punished incarcerated and had to put up with that bulls**t convicts had to put up with back over 100 years ago when racism was so RIPE, but sadly they don’t listen………..

Despite the college degree or working at a job, AAS are STILL getting screwed even if they followed the bulls**t rules implied by the WHites…. yet when you go down the OTHER path, they want to KEEP you there with their foot on your back…….damned if you do, damned if you don’t……

Sociology 101….

Great article

My heart goes out to the ones who go to jail and put up with thr bulls**t racism there, like the pick pockets, first time offenders, but I CANNOT have sympathy for those who rape women, molest children or take someone’s life over some stupid s**t like bumping into each other or the drug dealers killing OUR people by selling s**t that WILL kill us….those triflers DESEVE to get the punishment, even if the measures and treatments are racist…..

if the prison system here is this evil towards our people. Check out the prison system in Australia towards our people there, they make prison system here like clubmed. thats how bad racism/white supremacy system is towards us regardless where you at in world as long as your black.

Get lifter or get lift behind.

sooo many evil white ppl

There’s another to be added to the list, in Penns Grove,N.J.A young man was in the parking lot at one of the developments there acting unruly.Someone called the cops.He was unarmed but the cops called for backup from three other municipalities because they claimed he wouldn’t stop on command.A cop got him in a choke hold and broke his neck and he died.The media says he had clashed with this cop before.NAACP,pastors,politicians wanted to wait for a grand jury result.Result,cop exonerated,white cop,black victim.Prosecuter says case is closed.I hope there will be a legitamate outcry over this. I also hope it will draw some bigtime publicity.South Jersey is KLAN country.

Having worked at some of the toughest prisons in the East,and having taken more than a few Black, white and Hispanic offenders to court, I can say without equivocation, the Criminal Justice System is the most racist organization in the USA.

I have seen judges hand out widely disparate sentences when both Black and white offenders have committed the same or similar offenses.

One case I shall never forget occurred in Jersey City, NJ. A dude on parole was busted with a pocket knife in his pocket, on top of being violated he received a sentence of eight years.

The same judge sentenced the white offender on parole to three years for weapons possession during armed robbery. The white offender had a .38 and a sawed off shotgun.

Both men had the same public defender. I started working in New Jersey in 1974, we were approaching one million inmates. Today we have over two million men and women presently incarcerated in our nation’s prisons.

I am not soft on crime, I have no problem with locking up any thug. but justice is not blind in this country.

A Black man with no record has a tough time getting a job. If you are Black and have a record you have no chance at a job, a place to live or in many cases a chance at an education.

This is all so true in many ways. but remember this my people, things like this does not lasts forever. a time will come when god will use true justice, on the worlds grestest sinners, no matter what race thay my be ( you too white people ). i hope a time like that will come, because there too many things that go on in this world, that have been left unchecked.

@ JessieJackoph

It’s an irrational sense that being “pro-black” is “anti-white”, “pro-me” is “anti-you.” These thoughts make no sense if you really think about it. Just because I have different fears and needs than someone other than me, doesn’t mean I am anti-you. This irrational fear manifests itself as irrational behavior.

If you still believe what you say is true, then you must feel that any race-based org is racist.

Some examples:
Ancient Order of Hibernians (Irish-Catholic)
National Italian American Foundation
Sons of Italy
National Council of La Raza (Hispanic)
Anti Defamation League (Jewish)
Polish American Congress
Deutsch Amerikanischer National Kongress (German)

While I feel sad for you, I think you fell for the lie and it’s kinda your fault………your loss.

The KKK traded their white robes for police uniforms,suits and ties,military uniforms,judges robes,genocide in full effect,he who forgets his past is doomed to relive it.

[...] 14 Examples Of Racism In U.S. Criminal Justice System Supreme Court To Review Life Sentencing For [...]

Websites You Should Visit…

[...]very few websites that happen to be detailed below, from our point of view are undoubtedly well worth checking out[...]…

putin piano-playing…

[...]share these on social networking sites for further spreading your great thoughts..[...]…

Trackback Link…

[...]Here are some of the sites we recommend for our visitors[...]…