Significant Numbers Of African American Prisoners example essay topic

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 American race, the majority 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 a cros 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 (Worden). 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 policy.

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 PL NDP 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 Shan to 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 nations 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 CNNs Reliable Source.

The Associated Pre coverage stood out because it addressed Gilen point about the news media perpetuating racist misperceptions of the poor that are associated with greater opposition to welfare policy among whites (Media Blackface). CNNs 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 (SB 76 and SB 1282) to address racial profiling. As a direct result of racial profiling, African Americans have almost never been thought of highly in this countrys 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 Justice statistics (Cose 42). 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 racialize d 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 prisoners 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 Behind Bars Revisited). 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 cant 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 premium on Caucasian life. 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 of Release). 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 dis proportionality 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 adapt to allow for inequalities.