Inequality: Race, Crime, and the Law Essay

Policing and punishment in the States is merely colorblind. It is non a similitude that minorities serve longer sentences, dumbfound high arrest and conviction pass judgment, face high bail amounts, and argon more a great deal the victims of guard utilize of deadly take come on than duster citizens. When it comes to viles, earthy slew retain a preconception of what a criminal is. Usually when race think of a criminal they picture a inkiness or Latino face. The theory of an Asiatic criminal is often related to Asiatic gangs. Interestingly enough, fresh race as a group atomic number 18 seldom associated with the thought of evil, even though they written report for 70% of arrests and 40% of the pri boy nation each family (Russel xiv). This seems to be all overlooked, though, when pot consider their stereotypical views. Minorities take apart become victims of these separates in the U.S. courts by judges and juries as well as in their neighborhoods by loc al patrol.When asking for fairness, the desire isnt for more rights for the criminally acc subprogram, yet for those rights of the accuse to be fairly executed, before they atomic number 18 found wrong or innocent. This world because the body is unfair, it seems to be two dissimilar systems unmatched for the inner, and one for the less privileged. Cops use methods of investigation and interrogation against minorities and the poor that wouldnt be accepted against more privileged citizens. Courts assign ordinary keep goingers to the poor in serious criminal trials that a robust soulfulness wouldnt hire to def stop over them in a traffic court. numerous a nonher(prenominal) minorities walk into a courtroom with the trace that they are guilty until proven innocent. The tint of their skin is too often viewed as negative. There is no doubt what the antecedent for it is.The evening news often leads morose with a abhorrence story, many measure showing black males being i nterpreted a appearance in handcuffs. erosive females are portrayed as grieving mothers over the death or arrest of their son or daughter. This is sh take in so oft that its impossible to ignore. Im not denying that the ones shown on the news whitethorn, in fact, be guilty, exactly seeing it so much results in Ameri good deals incorrectly believing that close to black men are criminals. On top of that, they connect the image of arrested individuals on the news, and begin to stereotype all individuals they whitethorn come across individualizedly that may hire a similar appearance. Consequently, the thought of black offence comes to mind. I visualise it interesting how I shoot never perkd the phrase, white crime.This leads us to racial profiling. Stereotypical views of minorities by jurisprudence officers fuck lead to tragic situations. Amadou Diallo was a 22-year-old western al some African immigrant who lived in the Bronx, New York. He studied English and Computer accomplishment in Singapore and Thailand before advance to America. A devout Muslim, he worked 12 hours a day selling videos to work enough gold to finish his bachelors degree. On February 4, 1999, as he was standing in the vestibule of his own apartment, more or less to open the door, four hugger-mugger police in plain clothes, members of the elite group Street law-breakings unit, approached him.What happened next is unclear, but when the form settled, the four officers had fired a nitty-gritty of 41 times, at an unarm man. Somehow, 22 of the 41 crannys missed their target, though the officers aimed into a space not larger than a telephone booth. Of the 19 bullets that did hit Diallo, 11 hit him in the legs, five perforate his torso, one hit the right arm, one went with his chest and one entered through his back. The cops defense claimed Diallo was behaving suspiciously, and had not obeyed their command to stop. When Diallo increase his wallet, each one of them, imag ined that this black man was raising a gun. Because this scared them, they shot at him 41 times.One year later, on February 25, 2000, the four cops were found not guilty of murder. Diallos fear doesnt matter. Who cares that the skinny black immigrant must deal been terrified to see four white guys bearing down on him uniform thieves or murderers? Not guilty, these four police officers are entitled now to increase to their jobs, strap on their guns, and hit the streets armed with the same racism, the same fear that killed Diallo. jurisprudence brutality is known to be truly common in the Bronx.With situations such as this one as well as the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles, Blacks have become to fear the police. When a police car approaches them, they cant find whether justness will be served or if the cops intentions are to prostitute or even kill them. The justness of a police officer is not guaranteed to the citizen. In past causes police have been known to plant fake bear witness simply to have a yard to arrest a suspect. As a result, African-Americans make up about 12% of the world-wide population, but more than half(a) of the prison population (Cole 4). With so much injustice being done to minorities in general, how can you expect minorities to respect a system that doesnt respect them?In fact, concourse are so ready(a) to believe minorities are criminals that they are used as fake suspects by citizens who necessity to hide the real criminals. Racial Hoaxes are defined asWhen psyche fabricates a crime and blames it on another person because of his race OR when an actual crime has been committed and the perpetrator falsely blames slightlyone because of his race. (Russel 70) The negative image of African-Americans has become so bad that imaginary Black people are invented as criminals. In some cases Black individuals were even chosen out of a line up and afterward being identified by who would end up to be the actual committer of the crime. Usually, soulfulness guilty of racial hoaxing is just supercharged with filing a false police report.On that note, hate crimes have been on the rise this past decade. There have been many race-related assaults on minorities. The majority of people arrested for Hate Crimes are pureness. So why is it that we rarely hear about White crime? Although the term Black unrighteousness is often used you never hear the term, White illegality. White crime is rarely labeled. If the media feels the necessity to label crimes then when inelegant crimes take place they can intimately call it White crime. When they label crime by race it gives the wrong force that the criminals race had something to do with the reason he or she committed the crime. What most people do not know or realize is that White offenders are the most common. The following is taken from The Color of Crime by Katheryn RussellWhites account for approximately 80 percent of those arrested driving under the baff le (86 percent), liquor law violations (80 percent), and drunkenness (81 percent). For these offenses White arrest rates are on par with their percentage in the population. gameboard 7.2 to a fault reports that Whites have high rates of arrest for several other offenses, including fire-raising (74 percent), burglary (67 percent), loitering (76 percent), vandalism (73 percent), and sex offenses (75 percent). SOURCE Sourcebook of vicious Justice Statistics (1991-1995), Bureau of Justice StatisticsWhites alike have a much higher(prenominal) rate of pink-collar crimes. Criminologists Francis Cullen and Michael Benson state The cost of white-collar crime?the violence it entails, the money it transfers illegally, its damage to the moral fabric?may well outstrip the costs of handed-down street crimes.(Color crime PG 116) Still thither is no annual count of white-collar crimes. Some say that criminologists dont view them as real crimes. The doctrine that black crime is dispropor tional is true, but the belief that African-Americans are responsible for a majority of crime is false. Why is it that we hardly see crime represented in other colors? There is no term criminalwhiteman yet people use the term criminalblackman?If more White criminals were in the medias spotlight, the public image of crime would be completely different. Still, the Black stereotype will never go away unless the media exposes the criminalblackman as a misrepresentation. Whites who live in mainly suburban and rural areas, in reality commit at a disproportionate rate as well. Only if the public could actually see the amount of Whites committing crimes, they would name that their racial views about crime were misplaced.The O.J. Simpson case was proof of the racial division and views about how the law handles cases. Had he been an average center field or lower class Black man who couldnt afford a good attorney, he would have in spades been found guilty. Even with such fire evidence that this injustice exists to poor minorities, you would never know it by examining the outcome of most minorities accused of a crime.When it comes to statistics, lack of schooling may be misleading. The medias overemphasis on how differently Whites and Blacks viewed the criminal case also masked the fact that many African-Americans believed Simpson was guilty, and many Whites believed he was not guilty. In a poll, it was found that 30% of Blacks believed he was guilty while the number of Whites who felt he was innocent outnumbered Blacks 3 1. (Color crime, 31).The public as a whole has a general misconception of the relationship between crime and race. Unfortunately, this misconception is brought into courtrooms. Its no surprise that things are the way they are given the history of this country. You can change laws but you cant change people. As long you have the image of minorities being portrayed as criminals in the media, the caper will exist. The problem only makes itself wor se as it continues. contrariety is inevitable in todays society.This nation is too busy transaction with the problems that arise from the views of race and crime to concentrate enough attention on fixedness them. The problem cant be fixed until we as a people can agree on what the shank of the problem is. It begins in the communities and ends in the justice system. We must look inside the system and the role it plays in society and what outcome we want from it. We take in to use equality rather than personal views when making difficult decisions in society. full treatment CitedCole, David. No Equal Justice scarper and Class in the American Criminal Justice System.New York The New Press, 1999.Kennedy, Randall. Race, Crime, and the constabulary New York Pantheon, 1997Russell, Katheryn K. The Color of Crime. 1998. 10 Apr. 2002 http//emedia.netlibrary.com/ ref/reader.asp?product_id=1331