Essay One: Overrepresentation of Minorities in Criminal Justice

Introduction

There are racial and ethnic inequalities within the U.S. criminal justice system. A disproportionately high number of minority Americans are arrested, convicted, incarcerated, denied early parole and rearrested. There is some evidence of ethnic (Hispanic vs. non-Hispanic) disparities. However, many government agencies do not collect ethnicity data, so it is more difficult to draw firm conclusions about ethnic disparity (Brown, p. 96). There is a similar lack of information about American Indian or Alaska Natives and Asians due to their relatively small percentages in the population, but there is some evidence that American Indian or Alaska Natives are overrepresented, whereas Asians' criminal justice outcomes are similar to those of Whites. However, there is a lot of variability in culture and socioeconomic status between different minority groups, so it is likely that their experiences in the criminal justice system vary widely (Free, p.221).

This essay explores the extent of the problem in each stage of the criminal justice system nationwide (policing, pre-trial detention, sentencing and court processing, community supervision, prison and the death penalty), discusses possible reasons why such disparities occur, and describes US efforts to reduce the problem. The essay concludes with recommendations for reducing overrepresentation of minorities in the US criminal justice system.

Discussion

Minorities are currently overrepresented in American criminal justice systems. In fact, minorities are estimated to be overrepresented in 80 percent of the states in America. Overrepresentation means that although African Americans constitute 13 percent of the general population, they comprised 27 percent of all arrests in 2002 (Free, p. 203). Self-report studies of criminal behavior challenge the arrest statistics, since the majority of self-report results do not indicate significant racial differentials. Some self-report research, however, does suggest that African Americans commit more serious offenses. In 2002, African American youth comprised 49 percent of all arrests for violent crimes and 26 percent of all property crimes. However, additional research submits that even if African Americans commit more crime proportionate to their makeup in the general population, it is not enough to correspond to their arrest and confinement rates (Brown, p. 126).

There are countless factors that influence the social phenomenon of minority overrepresentation.

Race and ethnicity are based on social and cultural background as well as ancestry. Therefore, people who identify themselves as Hispanic can be of any race. The Office of Management and Budget defines six different categories of race (American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and White) although they recognize that an individual can be more than one race. The Office of Management and Budget's terminology for racial and ethnic groups is used in this paper. Groups for which the Office of Management and Budget provides more than one label are given the label that the majority of the group members prefer (Crow, p.523). For example, a recent Gallup survey showed that 24% of African Americans prefer the term, “African American,” 13% prefer the term ...