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Inequality In The Legal System Essay Research

Inequality In The Legal System Essay, Research Paper


In the United States, true equality has never existed. From the


Declaration of Independence to modern times, the US legal system has failed at


any attempt at equality. ?…all men are created equal…? may be what the


Declaration says, but ?some men are more equal than others? is how the legal


system interprets that phrase. The actual reality of the Declaration of


Independence is that all free, white, landowning men are created equal.


Therefore, inequality has always existed in the united States? legal system


and continues to exist today; however, the inequality presently in the system


is not as blatant as what it once was. Slavery continued in the United States


for nearly ninety years after the Declaration, and African Americans still


feel the sting of inequality today. If the US legal system is blind and just


as it is supposed to be, why, then, is a minority, such as the African


American race, the majority?


One of the most controversial issues today is the act of racial


profiling. The most common form is direct, meaning victims are directly


profiled, usually by the police. In this form, individual officers act on


racial stereotypes against racial minorities, especially African Americans.


Recent studies in New Jersey and Illinois have confirmed that minorities are


disproportionately targeted by police officers, although minorities are almost


helpless in reporting ?color of law? attacks. It is their word against a


legal official and, in most cases, the minority victim does not receive


justification because the officers are cleared of charges. In 1957 President


Eisenhower mandated that the United States Department of Justice prosecute


civil rights violations, to include police misconduct, thus, allowing uniform


application of civil rights law across the nation. Officers cleared of


wrongdoing often do not understand the legal guidelines for police misconduct


and feel unjustly targeted by the Department of Justice or the Federal Bureau


of Investigation, which have jurisdiction in this matter. That feeling of


injustice is false, considering that out of nearly 10,000 color of law


complaints received each year by the Department of Justice, only about thirty


police officers are actually prosecuted (Schafer). Since 1957 approximately


74 percent of all civil rights investigations reported each year allege police


misconduct (Schafer). In the rare case that a police officer is actually


punished, penalties could range from probation all the way to the death


penalty depending on the severity of the crime. According to a June 1999


study done by the American Civil Liberties Union, many states have denied that


racial profiling occurs despite overwhelming evidence supporting it. The


public wants to believe that police officers are doing their jobs righteously


by protecting and serving; however, according to the study, most Americans can


recognize the difference between racism and assertive, effective policing


(Worden).


Millions of Americans watch television everyday for various reasons, but


the most common one is to get the latest news. People like to stay informed,


but what good is it when they are constantly being misinformed? The media


tend to ?profile? just as much, if not more, than police, just in an indirect


way, thus, the second form of racial profiling. The media fails to cover


their own profiling, but are the first to criticize police racial profiling.


When they actually do acknowledge their own profiling, they tend to try to


cover it up more than give coverage. The number of African Americans involved


in an issue are usually over-represented by the media, therefore further


racializing the issue. This fact that African Americans seem to be so largely


involved in so many issues is viewed as nothing more than unfortunate reality,


so it is not viewed as racism. Certain issues constantly associated with


African Americans include drugs, crime, welfare and the affirmative action


policy.


Indirect profiling by the media focused mainly on tow topics: drugs and


crime. Public opinion polls indicated the overwhelming majority of Americans


had ?relatively little firsthand experience with the extent of the problems


associated with drug use.? Also ?the majority of Americans report getting


most of their information about the seriousness of the illicit drug problems


from the news media, mainly television? (?Media Blackface?). An article


written by Raja Mishra appearing in the Denver Post on March 19, 1998,


reported how ?doctors said the public has been misled by media accounts of


certain issues? (Media Blackface?).


In March 1998 two studies on the United States drug policy were released


by the Physician Leadership on the National Drug Policy. The first study


concluded that drug treatment of drug addiction was not only an effective


health measure, but that it was much more cost-effective than the


criminalizing policies of the current ?drug war? (?Media Blackface?). One


section of the study showed how, contrary to popular perception, drug addicts


are not primarily members of minority racial and ethnic groups. The research


showed, conclusively, that drug addiction reaches across all strata of


society. The most likely drug users and abusers are actually educated


Caucasians. Last year over half of those who admitted using heroine and 60


percent of monthly cocaine users were Caucasian. 70 percent of regular


marijuana users were reported as Caucasian, while only one sixth were reported


as African American (?Media Blackface?).


Another study about the public misperception of drug use was ?The Public


and the War on Illicit Drugs?, a survey of fifty years of public opinion. It


appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study found


that although Americans did not think the so-called ?war on drugs? was


succeeding, they did not want to abandon the criminalization approach pushed


by the government (?Media Blackface?). The PLNDP presented the JAMA study at


its press conference to emphasize how public opinion and the judgment of


physicians were at odds against each other and how the news media was playing


a leading role in misinforming the public about the health and financial


issues at the heart of the ?Drug War? policy (?Media Blackface?). These


findings were not covered by any of the three major newsweeklies including


Time, US News & World Report or Newsweek. When the story was actually covered


by CNN Today, Associated Press, and USA Today, the dominant media focused on


the disconnection between the views of the public and the research of the


physicians-but said nothing about the role of the news media in fostering the


stereotypes fueling the bad drug policy (?Media Blackface?).


A crime study done by the UCLA professors Franklin Gilliam and Shanto


Iyengar entitled, ?Crime in Black and White: The Violent, Scary World of


Local news?, appeared recently in the academic journal Press/Politics. It


found through a content analysis of a local television station KABC in Los


Angeles that the coverage of crime featured two important cues: ?crime is


violent and criminals are nonwhite? (?Media Blackface?). It revealed how


television viewers were so accustomed to seeing African American crime


suspects on the local news that even when the race of the suspect was not


specified , viewers tended to remember seeing an African American suspect.


Another crime study done by Yale University professor Martin Gilen


entitled ?Race and Poverty in America: Public Misperceptions and the American


News Media?, was published in the Public Opinion Quarterly in 1996. The study


found that while African Americans make up 29 percent of the nation?s poor,


they constitute 62 percent of the images of the poor in leading news magazines


and 65 percent of the images of the poor on leading network television news


programs (?Media Blackface?). On these news programs the poor were not only


portrayed as African American, but they were also portrayed in the most


unsympathetic fashion. The study was only covered by the Associated Press and


CNN?s Reliable Source. The Associated Press?s coverage stood out because it


addressed Gilen?s point about the news media perpetuating racist


misperceptions of the poor that are associated with greater opposition to


welfare policy among whites (?Media Blackface?). CNN?s Reliable Source


avoided the point that racism was the reason ?blackface? was on poverty in the


first place. Gilen also pointed out how ?apparently well-meaning, racially


liberal news professionals generate images of the social world that


consistently misrepresent both African Americans and poor people in


destructive ways? (?Media Blackface?).


The practice of racial profiling has become a major destructive issue in


our society today. The practice has been going on for decades, but only in


recent years after heightened pressure by civil rights advocates and a flood


of lawsuits has any legislative action been taken. The American Bar


Association urged lawmakers to enact legislation to end racial profiling. It


passed a resolution calling for federal, state and local legislation requiring


law enforcement agencies to collect data on all traffic stops that would be


reported to the Justice Department (Worden). The Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer


said that legislation was severely needed otherwise bitterness and hate


towards the justice system would occur. Currently, eleven states have


introduced bills requiring data collection in all traffic stops (Worden).


Both North Carolina and Connecticut have recently passed laws (SB76 and


SB1282) to address racial profiling.


As a direct result of racial profiling, African Americans have almost


never been thought of highly in this country?s legal system. This does not


allow them to have fair trials and more often than not, African Americans end


up in prison. These two statements get truer every year by the steady rise of


the African American population being imprisoned. In 1985 only around three


percent of the United States population of prisoners were African American,


but had risen to nearly seven percent by 1997 according to the Bureau of


Justice statistics (Cose 42).


African Americans are admitted to prisons at higher rates than


Caucasians, a difference at least partly due to discrimination in the


administration of justice. The prison system is not responsible, since it has


no control over who is admitted or the number of people admitted, but it is


wholly accountable for the treatment of prisoners. Mistreatment is the


general theme that racism behind bars may be used to intimidate African


Americans and other racialized prisoners, operating as an indirect method of


control (?Racism Behind Bars Revisited?). Prisoners who are seen to conform


to the ?norms? of the institution and who obey the rules quickly and quietly


are offered rewards such as early parole, permission to be absent during their


prison term and may receive other privileges while in jail. Prisoners who are


not perceived as compliant may find their privileges withheld, parole denied,


or involuntary transfers imposed. They may also be subjected to institutional


punishments, such as segregation cells or forcibly controlled through violence


by correctional officers or other prisoners provoked by the staff (?Racism


Behind Bars Revisited?). Although imprisonment involves the loss of some


personal freedom, the law makes it clear that the state cannot take away all


of the prisoner?s rights. Most prison policies promote key principles to


govern the treatment of prisoners including to be entitled to equality, to be


entitled to justice, and to be entitled to respect. Thus both formal law and


official policies require that prisoners be treated in accordance with the


fundamental values of equality, fairness, accountability and decency (?Racism


Behind Bars Revisited?).


Most prisons also use a system of institutional punishments when


punishing their inmates. Some rules emphasize demeanor or attitude and


respect for authority; some concern harm to persons or property; others focus


on risks to security and control (?Racism Behind Bars Revisited?). Although


there are rules, many prisoners complain that the power to punish is not used


evenly and fairly. They insist that correctional officers punish African


American prisoners more frequently, more severely and for less reason than


Caucasian prisoners. Correctional officers, both African American and


Caucasian, expressed the same concerns. They supported that African American


inmates were more severely punished for insignificant incidents, that twice as


many African Americans were put into segregation merely because they were


African American, and that African American inmates receive far harsher


misconducts than Caucasian inmates due to the perception that African American


inmates are more violent or are instigators in most incidents (?Racism Behind


Bars Revisited?). The Commission designed a study to investigate disciplinary


practices at five prisons that hold significant numbers of African American


prisoners. The study findings were consistent with the perception that


African American prisoners are more likely to be charged with misconduct and


punished than Caucasian prisoners (?Racism Behind Bars Revisited?).


According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 3, 219


prisoners on death row in 1996. The majority were Caucasian with 57 percent,


but the people on death row were disproportionately African American, compared


with the African American share of the population (Klein 39). African


Americans made up 43 percent of the death row inmates, which was more than


three times the 13 percent share of the US population (Klein 39). This is


mainly because African Americans rarely receive strong legal representation.


They either can?t afford good attorneys or attorneys who have experience in


that area are so overburdened that defendants must rely on public defenders or


other attorneys with little or no expertise in covering a capital defense


(Ebony 100). Most African Americans are on death row for the accusation of


killing a Caucasian person, which makes the public wonder if there is a


premium on Caucasian life.


Currently there are around 3,500 inmates on death row and at least 14


percent are believed to be innocent according to statistics provided by the


Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, DC. At least seven Illinois


inmates have been released in the past eight years by reinvestigation into


their cases (Ebony 100). That fact proves that an unlimited amount of inmates


could be innocent, but still on death row because their case has not been


re-examined. There have been a total of 87 pardons as of March 20, 2000.


Eight of those included DNA testing to prove the defendant innocent. Of the


prisoners released, a highly surprising number of 41 were African American,


while only 35 were Caucasian (?Prisoners Freed from Death Row in Order by Year


of Release?).


While many prisoners have been pardoned over the years, many more have


been executed, whether they were innocent of the crimes they were accused of


or not. As of December 7, 2000, there have been a total of 682 executions in


the US since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. Texas performed


a total of 239 of those executions. The highest number of executions occurred


in 1999, when 98 were performed (?Execution Statistics Summary–State and


Year?). Currently there are 24 execution dates set for December 2000 through


April 2001 (?Pending US Executions?).


The United States? legal system has never been truly equal because it


was founded on inequality and has always depended on inequality. The system


could easily be changed to eliminate those inequalities, such as racial


profiling, discrimination among prisoners and the disproportionality of death


row, but that will not likely happen. So long as there is a majority


dependent on the disparities of a minority, the system will maintain its


current sanctity. In doing so, the system will remain dependent on inequality


and provide means for future inequalities. The US legal system will always


adapt to allow for inequalities.

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