Is the Criminal Justice System Bias Essay

AbstractThis paper volition ask near(prenominal)(prenominal) questions and hopefully answer most of those questions. Questions like is the woeful barelyice arranging bias against the brusque and is the criminal conscionableice transcription bias against minorities. We thus explore some of the possible solutions to the problems that could ca rehearse biases. We hence look at a study done on several communities where relations between law and the in the cosmos eye(predicate) had repaired their relationship.BodyIts abstemious to understand why race see the criminal justice transcription as slanting. Our of in all of our states prisoners forty percent burn non redden read and sixty-seven percent did not rich person full- succession occupation when they were arrested. So there atomic number 18 more(prenominal) uneducated hatful in prison then there are educated slew. This seems like then that our brass of criminal justice is operated on an unequal placem ent against misfortunate or uneducated people. However, one of the problems we run into when we refine to compare the cockeyed lawbreakers to woeful lawbreakers is the wide expiration between the amount of wealthy people and unworthy people we corroborate in our population. In 1989, the wealthiest one percent of United States households owned nearly forty percent of the solid grounds wealth. The wealthiest twenty percent owned more than eighty percent of the kingdoms wealth. That leaves precious little for the rest (Cole, 2000). This isnt just square(a) with adults, but with children and teenagers too.The reduce of poor/under-funded schools in America far outweighs the number of wealthy schools in America. Thats probably the main reason our system appears to be unfair against the poor. The reason that every pole or nation wide research will be bias against the poor or begin air division is because there is a much larger poor/lower phratry population than a wealthy/high class population. Most Ameri butts will probably not fate to believe that our criminal justice system is not operated on par. by and byall our nations coercive Court even has the saying Equal evaluator Under Law written above the entranceway. There are several very famous Supreme Courts decisions that uphold equality for the poor. In Gideon v. Wainwright they make it a law that the state must(prenominal) provide a lawyer to all defendants who ease up been charged with a serious crime and cannot afford a lawyer. In Miranda v. Arizona the Supreme Court firm that legal school of thought must provide all suspects with an attorney.These greet decisions might be a little mis star(p) since both were decided during the time of Chief referee Earl Warren, who was strongly liberal and very confirming of economic equality. Since then the principles of equality from both decisions for Gideon v. Wainwright and Miranda v. Arizona put on been cheated and twisted so that neither decisi ons are upheld to the full extent that they were intend (Cole, 2000). Thats enough bashing our court system. There are actually some(prenominal) things that patrol jurisprudence officers do witch can be biased. For example the stern Amendment says that we have a right against unlawful searches and seizures. However, police officers all the time and request their consent to search them or their belongings (without ever having any basis for suspicion) without ever informing them of their right to refuse the search. This isnt considerfully a bias against the poor but it makes sense to me that an officer would reckon somebody on appearance.There is also the means of back breaker we have to consider if law en rivement is bias to the poor. Say hypothetically some wealthy person is go awaying across the artless to a birthday party. How are they going to travel? Most wealthy people would probably travel across country like that by means of flying. While flying, people do not come in contact with that many police officers nor are they in many positions where they would normally break the law. However, say there is a poor person who is traveling the alike(p) distance to the same party but does not have the money to fly. The cheapest mode of transportation is definitely by way of buss. While traveling by buss there is definitely a larger chance of contact with the police than when traveling by air. There are also many more opportunities for crime to be committed while traveling on a buss. Again we have the situation where its not necessarily that the poor are treated differently but are maybe just in environments where crime is committed more often, which would explain why it seems that the system is biased against them (Rothwax, 1996)So I feel like we could come to an sympathy now that the criminal justice system is not necessarily biased against the poor at the law enforcement side of the criminal justice system. However, the court of law side of the crimin al justice system seems indirectly biased against the poor, patently because each trial can be different depending on how much money they defense and the prosecution have available to them. Now lets sing about other ways that the criminal justice system could be bias. What about race? atomic number 18 people treated differently depending on their ethnicity? Most people probably agree that there are some ethnic groups who are treated differently than other ethnic groups in the criminal justice system. Statistically minorities are disproportionately victimized by crime.African Americans are victimized at a rate of one hundred fifty percent higher than whites (Cole, 2000). Blacks are typically more involved in almost every kind of crime more so than whites. These crimes can include rape, aggravated assault, and armed robbery. Homicide is actually the number one leading cause of death among young black men. Most crime is mixed and so it could be argued, just as it can with the topic of biases against the poor that the reason for higher crime order for black is because most indigence stricken areas, or the inner city, have majority black populations. thereof the criminals would be black, the victims would be black, and all the statistics that came from that area would rate blacks more disposed to commit crime than whites. Now lets look at some cases. For caseful the videotaped beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles Police Department officers was a vast eye-opener for most of America. It was said of that beating that for many blacks saw that as word they expected from the police. They were not surprised by that beating what so ever.Curtis Tucker, a California Assemblyman, was quoted saying at a subsequent hearing on Los Angeles Police Department practices, When black people in Los Angeles see a police car approaching, they dont know whether justice will be meted out or whether judge, jury, and executioner is pulling up merchantman them. There was even this one officer who earned the nickname the grease monkey because he would tune people up which apparently is police assimilate for beating up people. This Mechanic once testified that the beatings were widespread. When asked the question of weather he beat up people whom he arrested he replied, No. We just beat people up in general. If theyre on the street, temporary removal around dose locations. JustIt was a show of force (Rothwax,1996). The officer even admitted that the majority of the beating victims were either black or Latino although he claimed that the attacks were not motivated by racial tension. There have been very disturbing patterns of corruption and brutality in the police force of almost every high-crime area studied.These corrupt acts include stealing from drug dealers, engaging in unlawful searches, seizures, and car stops, even dealing and exploitation drugs. If instances like this is what our police force has come down to then our country is far worse off the n I ever realized. I do however believe that this is probably a much small percentage than what some statistics would lead us to believe but it is not a problem that I believe can be overlooked. So what can be done? Can something be done? Are we as a country so far gone that we can come back? I believe we can. I believe that we have become to far separate from the society. We have to bridge the gap that has magnanimous between law enforcement/the criminal justice system and the humankind lower class people. How do we do that? The thing we need most is sentiment (Walker, 1980). One thing that could be the answer to our problem is confederation establish policing. In Canada they passed the Police serve Act of 1990 that might be a good reference for our current agencies to look back on. What the Police Services Act did was make the Chief of Police responsible for lodge-oriented policing (Kuck, 2004).Community ground policing is both a philosophy and an organizational strategy that allows the police and community to work together in new ways to solve problems of crime, disturbance and safety. It unfeignedly only has two elements changing the methods and practice of the police and pickings steps to establish a relationship between the police and the public (Groenewald, 2004). The Philosophy of community ground policing is ground off of the idea that the public has a right to give their input on policing. It also relies on the idea that to find a solution for community problems both the police and the public must look past individual crimes and incidents, and instead try to find ways of confronting the more important community problems. What does community based policing look like though?Community based police officers need to be much more than mere crime fighters and must be public servants in many ways. Reforming the police alone, however, is not enough. Community comport and assistance are also necessary. Community based policing therefore encompass es strategies to orient the public who, forgood reasons, have been leery and distrustful of the police. Building partnerships between the police and communities is a major challenge that not many people or organizations have every really attempted. The philosophy of community based policing asks both the police and the public to take a leap of opinion and a commitment to change. It would be a long process that would occupy drastic action to be taken at multiple levels marrow that there would be detailed planning necessary to turn philosophy into reality within the police and among the public.There was a study where Kuotsia tom Liou from the University of Central Florida and Eugene G. Savage from Florida State University looked at the impact of community policing by looking at three neighborhoods in West Palm Beach, Florida in the first place and after the implementation of a community oriented policing program. Lets take a look at what they found. They had 3 communities with t he first consisting of primarily white residents, mainly champion-family homes, apartments, and small businesses. The second community was primarily black consisting of a knockout public housing project, single family homes, apartments, small businesses, several churches, and a public middle school. The last community consisted of whites, Hispanics, blacks, and Haitians. The community was made up of single family homes, apartments, small businesses, and several churches. It was their goal to find out how community policing affects difference types of communities.The results of their study showed that after the community based policing had been going on cardinal percent of surveyed citizens felt that crime had decreased. All age groups, race groups, and all three neighborhoods shared the belief that crime had decreased. Even if the crime rates had not gone down in reality it would still really help relations with police officers just that the citizens believe it had. In supplemen t to the feeling like crime had gone down they also asked in their survey how they felt about the relationship after six months of the community policing.Among the respondents to the survey eighty-eight percent felt that the relationship between the police and their communities as getting better. We started this paper with the question of is the criminal justice system bias. We talked about the relationship between law enforcement and the public. We talked about one of the possibilities of how we could make that relationship. We then looked at some research where a relationship was made better by use of community policing.Hopefully we can use research like this to help make this world a more perfect world.Reference PageCole, D. (2000). No equal justice, race and class in the american criminal justice system. New York New Press, The.Rothwax, H. (1996). red-handed The collapse of criminal justice. New York Random House.Walker, S. (1980). Popular justice. New York Oxford University P ress.Kuck, H. (2004). racial pride and consciousness trilogy Addressing hate crime and racial discord with community policing. Canadian Journal of Police and Security Services. Dec. 2004 243. Criminal Justice Collection. Web. 29 Oct. 2012.Groenewald, H. and Peake, G. (2004). Police Reform through Community-Based Policing. New York.Liou, Kuotsai. and Savage, Eugene. (1996). Citizen perception of community policing impact.