Racial Profiling of African Americans in the Criminal Justice System

Racial Profiling of African Americans in the Criminal Justice System

Introduction

Criminal Justice Administration is the organization that is performing and controlling the criminal laws and justice system. It is the institution of governments that directs social control, mitigating and deterring crime, or sanctioning those who infringe laws. It imposes criminal penalties and rehabilitation. The criminal justice organization is appeared from history and tradition of British common law. It is part of American legal system. The paper will discuss the issue of race and ethnicity with respect to the criminal justice system (Pattillo, Weiman, 2006).

Criminal justice system is well evident of the partiality with regards to race and ethnicity. There are racial and ethnic inequalities with the minorities in the U.S. criminal justice system. A disproportionately high number of minority Americans are arrested, convicted, incarcerated, denied early parole and rearrested. There lie sufficient evidences of disparities between Hispanic and Non-Hispanic populations. Issues of racial profiling, prejudice, and affirmative action are widely prevalent. There are countless factors that influence the social phenomenon of minority overrepresentation. Some of these are legal factors such as prior record or nature of the current offense; some are extralegal factors such as race or demeanor; and then there may be a combination of both types (Holbert, Rose, 2004).

In some areas of the United States, especially in large cities, the criminal justice system is in danger of being overwhelmed by the volume of legal matters that need to be addressed. These facts have usually taken the form of discrimination, including denial of access to public places or by calls to boycott foreign goods, offenses against property, such that arson of places of worship, or damage to persons characterized by attacks physical or verbal. Such behavior, but they remain a minority among our citizens, are intolerable in the undermine the very foundations of the republican principles of hospitality, tolerance and respect beliefs and choices of others (Lynch, 2007).

Discussion

United States is well recognized for attaining the absolute distinction of preserving the world's largest prison. The rate of prisoner in jails is increasing dramatically. The largest population in the US imprisonment is African American. It can also be defined as 2.3 million i.e. 700 are imprisoned in 100,000 populations (Pattillo, Weiman, 2006). This rate is five to eight times higher than the industrialized nation.

Facts and Figures

50% of all black men at some point in their lives spent a time in prison (Free, 2003).

23% of all black men between ages of 20-29 years are either in prison, in custody, on probation or have an appeal process. This is much higher than the white Americans.

Black men represent 6% of the total population, but nearly 46% of all prisoners (598 000) (Collins, 1997).

There are more black men in prison than in college or at university (Lynch, 2007).

The total number of African Americans who are serving in the U.S. has or is serving a prison sentence, amounts to 3.74 million people (Harris, Miller, ...