Inequality: Race, Crime, and the Law Essay

Policing and punishment in the States is hardly colorblind. It is non a coincidence that minorities serve presbyopicer sentences, squander higher condition of enlistment and conviction deems, face higher bail amounts, and ar more well-nigh(prenominal) the victims of police use of deadly force than gabardine citizens. When it comes to unlawfuls, publicy people have a preconception of what a criminal is. Usually when people think of a criminal they picture a Black or Latino face. The thought of an Asian criminal is oftentimes related to Asian gangs. Interestingly becoming, W dischargee people as a group atomic number 18 r atomic number 18ly associated with the thought of detestation, even though they news report for 70% of arrests and 40% of the prison population each year (Russel xiv). This seems to be overlooked, though, when people consider their stereotypical thoughts. Minorities have become victims of these stereotypes in the U.S. courts by judges and juries as well as in their neighborhoods by local police.When a scrapeg for fairness, the desire isnt for more rights for the criminally accuse, yet for those rights of the accused to be fairly executed, before they are found guilty or innocent. This being because the transcription is unfair, it seems to be two different systems unmatchable for the privileged, 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 public defenders to the poor in serious criminal trials that a rich person wouldnt wage to defend them in a traffic court. Many minorities walk into a courtroom with the feeling that they are guilty until proven innocent. The complexion of their skin is too often viewed as negative. There is no doubt what the priming coat for it is.The evening news often leads off with a crime story, many times showing black males being taken away in handcuffs. Black females are portrayed as grieving m sepa yards over the death or arrest of their son or daughter. This is shown so much that its impossible to ignore. Im not denying that the ones shown on the news may, in fact, be guilty, just seeing it so frequently results in Ameri provides wrongly believing that most black men are criminals. On devolve of that, they connect the image of arrested individuals on the news, and beginto stereotype all individuals they may come across personally that may have a exchangeable appearance. Consequently, the thought of black crime comes to mind. I find it interesting how I have never insured the phrase, w get toe crime.This leads us to racial pro register. stereotypical views of minorities by police officers discharge lead to tragic situations. Amadou Diallo was a 22-year-old western United States African immigrant who lived in the Bronx, New York. He studied English and ready reckoner Science in Singapore and Thailand before coming to Ame rica. A beloved Muslim, he worked twelve hours a day selling videos to earn enough gold to finish his bachelors degree. On February 4, 1999, as he was standing in the vestibule of his own apartment, about to open the door, quatern undercover police in plain clothes, members of the elite Street Crimes unit, approached him.What happened near is unclear, but when the dust settled, the four officers had fired a total of 41 times, at an unarmed man. Somehow, 22 of the 41 shots 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 pierced his torso, one hit the right arm, one went through his chest and one entered through his back. The cops excuse claimed Diallo was behaving suspiciously, and had not obeyed their command to stop. When Diallo raised his wallet, each one of them, imagined that this black man was raising a gun. Because this scared them, they shot at him 41 times. matchless 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 have been panicky to see four white guys bearing down on him comparable thieves or murderers? Not guilty, these four police officers are entitled instanter to return to their jobs, strap on their guns, and hit the streets armed with the kindred racism, the same fear that killed Diallo. Police brutality is known to be very plebeian 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 decide whether justice pull up stakes be served or if the cops intentions are to harm or even kill them. The integrity of a police officeris not guaranteed to the citizen. In past cases police have been known to plant sham evidence simply to have a reason to arrest a suspect. As a result, African-Americans make up about 12% of the oecumenic population, but more than half 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, people are so quick to believe minorities are criminals that they are used as fake suspects by citizens who indispensability to hide the real criminals. Racial Hoaxes are defined asWhen someone fabricates a crime and blames it on some other person because of his rush along OR when an actual crime has been committed and the culprit falsely blames someone because of his race. (Russel 70) The negative image of African-Americans has become so spoiled that imaginary Black people are invented as criminals. In some cases Black individuals were even chosen out of a line up and after being identified by who would end up to be the actual committer of the crime. Usually, somebody guilty of racial hoaxing is just charged 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 mass of people arrested for Hate Crimes are White. So why is it that we rarely hear about White crime? Although the term Black Criminality is often used you never hear the term, White Criminality. White crime is rarely labeled. If the media feels the necessity to label crimes then when rural crimes take place they can easily call it White crime. When they label crime by race it gives the wrong impression 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 discolor of Crime by Katheryn RussellWhites account for approximately 80 percent of those arrested driving force under the influence (86 percent), liquor law violations (80 percent), and drunkenness (81 percent). For these offenses White arr est rates are on parwith their percentage in the population. disconcert 7.2 also reports that Whites have high rates of arrest for several other offenses, including arson (74 percent), burglary (67 percent), loitering (76 percent), vandalism (73 percent), and sex offenses (75 percent). SOURCE Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics (1991-1995), part of Justice StatisticsWhites also have a much higher rate of white-collar crimes. Criminologists Francis Cullen and Michael Benson state The be 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 traditional street crimes.(Color crime PG 116) Still there is no one-year count of white-collar crimes. Some say that criminologists dont view them as real crimes. The belief that black crime is disproportionate is true, but the belief that African-Americans are responsible for a majority of crime is false. wherefore is it that we hardly see crime re presented 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, actually commit at a disproportionate rate as well. Only if the public could actually see the amount of Whites committing crimes, they would contemplate that their racial views about crime were misplaced.The O.J. Simpson case was proof of the racial theatrical role and views about how the law handles cases. Had he been an average middle or cut class Black man who couldnt afford a dear(p) attorney, he would have definitely been found guilty. Even with such elicit evidence that this injustice exists to poor minorities, you would never know it by examining the issue of most minorities accused of a crime.W hen it comes to statistics, lack of information may be misleading. The medias overemphasis on how differently Whites and Blacks viewed the criminal case also cloak 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 tangle he was innocent outnumberedBlacks 3 1. (Color crime, 31).The public as a safe and sound 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 fuss will exist. The fuss only makes itself worse as it continues. Inequality is infallible in todays society.This nation is too busy relations with the problems that ari se from the views of race and crime to focus enough attention on fixing them. The problem cant be fixed until we as a people can agree on what the root 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 need to use equality rather than personal views when making unwieldy decisions in society.Works CitedCole, David. No Equal Justice Race and stratum 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/reader/reader.asp?product_id=1331