For the past 5 days I have been doing a paper entilted "UNEGUAL: Justice A focus of African Americans in the United Stated criminal justice System" I have learned so much about how African Americans are treated and it makes me sick to my stomach because these problems are documented but, no one has came up with some type of resoulution for the many problems that African Americans face in the criminal justice system . Here are a few bits and pieces of my essay:
Justice on Trial: Racial Disparities in the American Criminal Justice System” the study finds that minorities in the US face discriminatory treatment at every stage in the judicial process, from arrest to incarceration. Its findings show that blacks, Hispanics and other minorities are targeted unfairly by police and other law enforcement officials, racially biased charging and plea bargaining decisions by prosecutors and discriminatory sentences by judges.
They also found that public defenders went for guilty pleas in 75.4 percent of their cases, compared to 53 percent of cases with private counsel and 63.1 percent represented by the Bar Association committee. Public defenders had 18 percent acquittals, compared to the 30 percent by private attorneys (ibid.: Table 2). Nagel reported that defendants received more favorable treatment with hired counsel than with provided counsel at all stages of the criminal justice process, except on matters of delay and shortness of prison sentences (1973: 414-415). His findings suggest that the inability of public defenders to devote sufficient research and investigation to each case, their youth and inexperience, and the greater likelihood that they would be understaffed and overworked. Massive research concludes that the majority of blacks are dependent on public defenders therefore, that is one reason why some many blacks are in prison.
Today, African American defendants are far more likely to receive the death penalty than are white defendants charged with the same crime. And black defendants, along with Latinos, are sentenced to death far out of proportion to their presence in the population. For instance, African Americans make up 25 percent of Alabama’s population, yet 43 percent of Alabama’s death-row inmates and 71 percent of those actually executed since 1976 are black. The population of Georgia’s Middle Judicial Circuit is 40 percent black, but 77 percent of the circuit’s capital decisions as of 1996 had been found against black defendants. The same state’s Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit posts remarkably similar numbers. In 79 percent of the cases which the district attorney sought the death penalty the defendant was black, despite the fact that only 44 percent of the circuit’s population is black.
Sorry for the long post!! I know someone must feel as passionate about this issue as me.
I never realized
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