Do you believe the criminal justice system in the US is racist?

Question

Do the use of deadly force and the death penalty reflect deeplpy buried racial prejudices? How about the fact that over 50% of the individuals under corectional supervision are African-American?

Answer 1

African american or latino = GUILTY!

Thats the awful thruth.

Answer 2

its 40% by the way- and yes im sure some small town's somewhere profile people and what not---- predjudice is only one of the problems though

Answer 3

As far as the death penalty goes,  the racial aspect is best seen if you look at the race of the victim.  Whites and blacks are murder victims in approximately equal numbers but 79% of all executions are for murders of whites.  

Sources:  www.deathpenalyinfo.org.  Click on execution database for the race of the victim in murders leading to an execution.

FBI   http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/data/tab... for the race of murder victims

Answer 4

Unfortunately sometimes race is the reason but I believe it is only a small factor in the equation. In today's day and age when Racism is closely monitored and often prohibited, it is much less of the issue than in the past 50 years or so and according to statistics the rate of blacks in jail is higher today than it has ever been. I personally believe that sometimes blacks expect for the criminal justice system to be biased towards them so when they find themselves in a situation that they are faced with charges they deem it as racism and act out only to make the situation worse (sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of thing). We just covered this in my Sociology class and were discussing this exact subject on deviance among races in American society. I also think that the above mentioned happens to all races that have a certain stigma attached to the criminal justice system in the US, not just blacks. Popular African American culture also plays an important role in it as well but as a whole, the US criminal justice system only plays a small percentage of it.

Answer 5

Well the crime rate for African Americans is up across the board.

It's them not society, don't believe me.

It's even higher in their own countries were they are the majority.

Answer 6

MAYBE just MAYBE blacks commit more crimes. if they do not commit more crimes, MAYBE they are less careful to cover their tracks. i'm not saying they do or don't but what i don't under stand is why areas with large black populations have higher crime rates.check out  http://www.city-data.com/

for stats