After Research, I do feel that minorities are overrepresented within the criminal justice system. For example, "a suit filed Jan. 6 in Union County, N.J., alleges that a state law denying voting rights to parolees and probationers discriminates against blacks and Hispanics due to their overrepresentation in the criminal justice system"(Penal Disenfranchisement Law Called Biased). A good deal of research has noted major disparities in the extent of involvement of minorities, particularly blacks compared to whites, in the criminal justice system. The existence of disproportionate racial representation in the criminal justice system raises questions about the fundamental fairness and equality ...view middle of the document...
Its findings show that blacks, Hispanics and other minorities face unfair targeting by police and other law enforcement officials, racially biased charging and plea bargaining decisions by prosecutors and discriminatory sentencing by judges.In a report released from Washington DC- Amnesty International criticized Us Federal and state justice systems as riddled with racial discrimination. The report, Racism and the Administration of Justice, cites as evidence the disproportionate rate of minorities incarcerated, sentenced to death, and executed in the US. In its report, Amnesty International cited cases of racial profiling, unlawful use of force, unlawful shootings, and deaths in custody affecting minorities from at least 10 states in the US. African Americans and other minorities suffer disproportionate rates of incarceration, accounting for 60 percent of the 1.7 million people currently in jail or prison in the US. African American men are imprisoned at more than eight times the rate of white men, and one third of all young African American men are in jail or prison, on parole, or on probation. African American women are imprisoned at eight times, and Hispanic women at four times, the rate of white women. The overwhelming majority of victims of police brutality, unlawful shootings and deaths in custody are members of racial minorities.A study of 2,000 murder cases in Georgia found that the odds of a death sentence in cases in which blacks murdered whites were as much as 11 times higher than when whites murdered blacks. A study found that in Philadelphia a black defendant is four times more likely to receive a death sentence than a white defendant. Some people believe racism that perverts the course of justice is a daily fact of life for many in the US, yet this plague of bias is over looked, ignored or openly tolerated by police chiefs , prison wardens, judges and our political leaders. Today a full two-thirds of America's two million prisoners are minorities. One million are...
