Реферат: Inequality In The Legal System Essay Research
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Inequality In The Legal System Essay, Research Paper
In the United States, true equality has never existed. From the
Declaration of Independence to modern times, the US legal system has failed at
any attempt at equality. ?…all men are created equal…? may be what the
Declaration says, but ?some men are more equal than others? is how the legal
system interprets that phrase. The actual reality of the Declaration of
Independence is that all free, white, landowning men are created equal.
Therefore, inequality has always existed in the united States? legal system
and continues to exist today; however, the inequality presently in the system
is not as blatant as what it once was. Slavery continued in the United States
for nearly ninety years after the Declaration, and African Americans still
feel the sting of inequality today. If the US legal system is blind and just
as it is supposed to be, why, then, is a minority, such as the African
One of the most controversial issues today is the act of racial
profiling. The most common form is direct, meaning victims are directly
profiled, usually by the police. In this form, individual officers act on
racial stereotypes against racial minorities, especially African Americans.
Recent studies in New Jersey and Illinois have confirmed that minorities are
disproportionately targeted by police officers, although minorities are almost
helpless in reporting ?color of law? attacks. It is their word against a
legal official and, in most cases, the minority victim does not receive
justification because the officers are cleared of charges. In 1957 President
Eisenhower mandated that the United States Department of Justice prosecute
civil rights violations, to include police misconduct, thus, allowing uniform
application of civil rights law across the nation. Officers cleared of
wrongdoing often do not understand the legal guidelines for police misconduct
and feel unjustly targeted by the Department of Justice or the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, which have jurisdiction in this matter. That feeling of
injustice is false, considering that out of nearly 10,000 color of law
complaints received each year by the Department of Justice, only about thirty
police officers are actually prosecuted (Schafer). Since 1957 approximately
74 percent of all civil rights investigations reported each year allege police
misconduct (Schafer). In the rare case that a police officer is actually
punished, penalties could range from probation all the way to the death
penalty depending on the severity of the crime. According to a June 1999
study done by the American Civil Liberties Union, many states have denied that
racial profiling occurs despite overwhelming evidence supporting it. The
public wants to believe that police officers are doing their jobs righteously
by protecting and serving; however, according to the study, most Americans can
recognize the difference between racism and assertive, effective policing
Millions of Americans watch television everyday for various reasons, but
the most common one is to get the latest news. People like to stay informed,
but what good is it when they are constantly being misinformed? The media
tend to ?profile? just as much, if not more, than police, just in an indirect
way, thus, the second form of racial profiling. The media fails to cover
their own profiling, but are the first to criticize police racial profiling.
When they actually do acknowledge their own profiling, they tend to try to
cover it up more than give coverage. The number of African Americans involved
in an issue are usually over-represented by the media, therefore further
racializing the issue. This fact that African Americans seem to be so largely
involved in so many issues is viewed as nothing more than unfortunate reality,
so it is not viewed as racism. Certain issues constantly associated with
African Americans include drugs, crime, welfare and the affirmative action
Indirect profiling by the media focused mainly on tow topics: drugs and
crime. Public opinion polls indicated the overwhelming majority of Americans
had ?relatively little firsthand experience with the extent of the problems
associated with drug use.? Also ?the majority of Americans report getting
most of their information about the seriousness of the illicit drug problems
from the news media, mainly television? (?Media Blackface?). An article
written by Raja Mishra appearing in the Denver Post on March 19, 1998,
reported how ?doctors said the public has been misled by media accounts of
certain issues? (Media Blackface?).
In March 1998 two studies on the United States drug policy were released
by the Physician Leadership on the National Drug Policy. The first study
concluded that drug treatment of drug addiction was not only an effective
health measure, but that it was much more cost-effective than the
criminalizing policies of the current ?drug war? (?Media Blackface?). One
section of the study showed how, contrary to popular perception, drug addicts
are not primarily members of minority racial and ethnic groups. The research
showed, conclusively, that drug addiction reaches across all strata of
society. The most likely drug users and abusers are actually educated
Caucasians. Last year over half of those who admitted using heroine and 60
percent of monthly cocaine users were Caucasian. 70 percent of regular
marijuana users were reported as Caucasian, while only one sixth were reported
as African American (?Media Blackface?).
Another study about the public misperception of drug use was ?The Public
and the War on Illicit Drugs?, a survey of fifty years of public opinion. It
appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study found
that although Americans did not think the so-called ?war on drugs? was
succeeding, they did not want to abandon the criminalization approach pushed
by the government (?Media Blackface?). The PLNDP presented the JAMA study at
its press conference to emphasize how public opinion and the judgment of
physicians were at odds against each other and how the news media was playing
a leading role in misinforming the public about the health and financial
issues at the heart of the ?Drug War? policy (?Media Blackface?). These
findings were not covered by any of the three major newsweeklies including
Time, US News & World Report or Newsweek. When the story was actually covered
by CNN Today, Associated Press, and USA Today, the dominant media focused on
the disconnection between the views of the public and the research of the
physicians-but said nothing about the role of the news media in fostering the
stereotypes fueling the bad drug policy (?Media Blackface?).
A crime study done by the UCLA professors Franklin Gilliam and Shanto
Iyengar entitled, ?Crime in Black and White: The Violent, Scary World of
Local news?, appeared recently in the academic journal Press/Politics. It
found through a content analysis of a local television station KABC in Los
Angeles that the coverage of crime featured two important cues: ?crime is
violent and criminals are nonwhite? (?Media Blackface?). It revealed how
television viewers were so accustomed to seeing African American crime
suspects on the local news that even when the race of the suspect was not
specified , viewers tended to remember seeing an African American suspect.
Another crime study done by Yale University professor Martin Gilen
entitled ?Race and Poverty in America: Public Misperceptions and the American
News Media?, was published in the Public Opinion Quarterly in 1996. The study
found that while African Americans make up 29 percent of the nation?s poor,
they constitute 62 percent of the images of the poor in leading news magazines
and 65 percent of the images of the poor on leading network television news
programs (?Media Blackface?). On these news programs the poor were not only
portrayed as African American, but they were also portrayed in the most
unsympathetic fashion. The study was only covered by the Associated Press and
CNN?s Reliable Source. The Associated Press?s coverage stood out because it
addressed Gilen?s point about the news media perpetuating racist
misperceptions of the poor that are associated with greater opposition to
welfare policy among whites (?Media Blackface?). CNN?s Reliable Source
avoided the point that racism was the reason ?blackface? was on poverty in the
first place. Gilen also pointed out how ?apparently well-meaning, racially
liberal news professionals generate images of the social world that
consistently misrepresent both African Americans and poor people in
destructive ways? (?Media Blackface?).
The practice of racial profiling has become a major destructive issue in
our society today. The practice has been going on for decades, but only in
recent years after heightened pressure by civil rights advocates and a flood
of lawsuits has any legislative action been taken. The American Bar
Association urged lawmakers to enact legislation to end racial profiling. It
passed a resolution calling for federal, state and local legislation requiring
law enforcement agencies to collect data on all traffic stops that would be
reported to the Justice Department (Worden). The Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer
said that legislation was severely needed otherwise bitterness and hate
towards the justice system would occur. Currently, eleven states have
introduced bills requiring data collection in all traffic stops (Worden).
Both North Carolina and Connecticut have recently passed laws (SB76 and
SB1282) to address racial profiling.
As a direct result of racial profiling, African Americans have almost
never been thought of highly in this country?s legal system. This does not
allow them to have fair trials and more often than not, African Americans end
up in prison. These two statements get truer every year by the steady rise of
the African American population being imprisoned. In 1985 only around three
percent of the United States population of prisoners were African American,
but had risen to nearly seven percent by 1997 according to the Bureau of
African Americans are admitted to prisons at higher rates than
Caucasians, a difference at least partly due to discrimination in the
administration of justice. The prison system is not responsible, since it has
no control over who is admitted or the number of people admitted, but it is
wholly accountable for the treatment of prisoners. Mistreatment is the
general theme that racism behind bars may be used to intimidate African
Americans and other racialized prisoners, operating as an indirect method of
control (?Racism Behind Bars Revisited?). Prisoners who are seen to conform
to the ?norms? of the institution and who obey the rules quickly and quietly
are offered rewards such as early parole, permission to be absent during their
prison term and may receive other privileges while in jail. Prisoners who are
not perceived as compliant may find their privileges withheld, parole denied,
or involuntary transfers imposed. They may also be subjected to institutional
punishments, such as segregation cells or forcibly controlled through violence
by correctional officers or other prisoners provoked by the staff (?Racism
Behind Bars Revisited?). Although imprisonment involves the loss of some
personal freedom, the law makes it clear that the state cannot take away all
of the prisoner?s rights. Most prison policies promote key principles to
govern the treatment of prisoners including to be entitled to equality, to be
entitled to justice, and to be entitled to respect. Thus both formal law and
official policies require that prisoners be treated in accordance with the
fundamental values of equality, fairness, accountability and decency (?Racism
Most prisons also use a system of institutional punishments when
punishing their inmates. Some rules emphasize demeanor or attitude and
respect for authority; some concern harm to persons or property; others focus
on risks to security and control (?Racism Behind Bars Revisited?). Although
there are rules, many prisoners complain that the power to punish is not used
evenly and fairly. They insist that correctional officers punish African
American prisoners more frequently, more severely and for less reason than
Caucasian prisoners. Correctional officers, both African American and
Caucasian, expressed the same concerns. They supported that African American
inmates were more severely punished for insignificant incidents, that twice as
many African Americans were put into segregation merely because they were
African American, and that African American inmates receive far harsher
misconducts than Caucasian inmates due to the perception that African American
inmates are more violent or are instigators in most incidents (?Racism Behind
Bars Revisited?). The Commission designed a study to investigate disciplinary
practices at five prisons that hold significant numbers of African American
prisoners. The study findings were consistent with the perception that
African American prisoners are more likely to be charged with misconduct and
punished than Caucasian prisoners (?Racism Behind Bars Revisited?).
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 3, 219
prisoners on death row in 1996. The majority were Caucasian with 57 percent,
but the people on death row were disproportionately African American, compared
with the African American share of the population (Klein 39). African
Americans made up 43 percent of the death row inmates, which was more than
three times the 13 percent share of the US population (Klein 39). This is
mainly because African Americans rarely receive strong legal representation.
They either can?t afford good attorneys or attorneys who have experience in
that area are so overburdened that defendants must rely on public defenders or
other attorneys with little or no expertise in covering a capital defense
(Ebony 100). Most African Americans are on death row for the accusation of
killing a Caucasian person, which makes the public wonder if there is a
Currently there are around 3,500 inmates on death row and at least 14
percent are believed to be innocent according to statistics provided by the
Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, DC. At least seven Illinois
inmates have been released in the past eight years by reinvestigation into
their cases (Ebony 100). That fact proves that an unlimited amount of inmates
could be innocent, but still on death row because their case has not been
re-examined. There have been a total of 87 pardons as of March 20, 2000.
Eight of those included DNA testing to prove the defendant innocent. Of the
prisoners released, a highly surprising number of 41 were African American,
while only 35 were Caucasian (?Prisoners Freed from Death Row in Order by Year
While many prisoners have been pardoned over the years, many more have
been executed, whether they were innocent of the crimes they were accused of
or not. As of December 7, 2000, there have been a total of 682 executions in
the US since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. Texas performed
a total of 239 of those executions. The highest number of executions occurred
in 1999, when 98 were performed (?Execution Statistics Summary–State and
Year?). Currently there are 24 execution dates set for December 2000 through
April 2001 (?Pending US Executions?).
The United States? legal system has never been truly equal because it
was founded on inequality and has always depended on inequality. The system
could easily be changed to eliminate those inequalities, such as racial
profiling, discrimination among prisoners and the disproportionality of death
row, but that will not likely happen. So long as there is a majority
dependent on the disparities of a minority, the system will maintain its
current sanctity. In doing so, the system will remain dependent on inequality
and provide means for future inequalities. The US legal system will always
Название: Inequality In The Legal System Essay Research
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Реферат: Inequality In The Legal System Essay Research
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