Racial Disparity in Criminal Justice

 Concerns about racial disparity in criminal justice are not new. But the crisis has grown dramatically worse in the years since the problem was first identified. Today it is beyond debate that Americans minorities are treated unfairly within the criminal justice system. Innocent minorities are detained and interrogated more often than whites. Minorities who violate the law are more likely to be targeted by arrest, less likely to be offered leniency, and subject to harsher punishment when compared to similarly situate white offenders. The effects of racial disparities in the justice system extend beyond prison, and can be found not only in the fact of incarceration, but in the length of prison, or jail time served. Today in America Racial disparities affect both innocent and guilty minority citizens. There is obvious reason to be outraged by the fact that innocent minority citizens are detained, by the police in the street, and in their cars far more than whites. In the justice system we see how blacks, and other minorities are victimized by disproportionate targeting, and unfair treatment by police, and other front-line law enforcement officials; by racially skewed charging, and plea bargaining decisions of prosecutors; by discriminatory sentencing practices; and by the failure of judges, elected officials, and other criminal justice lawmakers, yet they need to be consistent with the constitution‘s guarantees of equal treatment under the law. The first assumption is that minorities commit the majority of crimes, and such discretion is exercised to the detriment of America’s minorities, and that therefore is a sensible use of police recourses to focus on the behavior of those individuals.

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