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Race In The Criminal Justice System

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Race In The Criminal Justice System
Race in the Criminal Justice System
Introduction
Sociologists seek to understand, generalize, and predict human behavior. The relationship between crime and racism is one that sociologists pay a lot of attention to. The goal of sociologists is to better understand people and their relationships with people of different ethnicities and how they interact in order to prevent and control crime. The relationships between certain ethnic groups of people threaten social control imposed by the criminal justice system often due to stereotyping and prejudices. Crime rates and statistics are often incorrect, the justice system is corrupt, racial profiling is ineffective, the jury tends to sometimes sway towards one group of people or another, technology
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“America experienced a rude awakening of its multi-religious landscape in the form of religious prejudice, stereotypical mentalities, hate crimes, and outright ignorance; all of which created an atmosphere of two extremes: those who were feared, and those who were fearful,” (Unequal Protection: The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2005). After the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon national security became a very large issue. Airport security was one major concern. Luggage searches were instituted at “random,” mostly targeting minorities. Minorities in the US had a very difficult time; stereotypes caused the majority of people in America to deem these minorities as a threat and often linked these people to the terrorist groups. Following the attacks the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes in the US increased exponentially from 42 cases (2002), to 93 cases in 2003, to 141 cases in 2004. Often times these hate crimes are the result of stereotyping. Minorities were often mistaken to be Muslims simply because of their …show more content…
A jury is a body of persons sworn to inquire into a matter submitted to them and to give their verdict. Sociologists believe that most corruption can be seen in the jury process. The jury selection process is when people are chosen to serve on a trial jury. There are many methods to select these individuals to avoid an unfair trail. The pool is first selected at random choosing people from the community within the jurisdiction of the court. These perspective jurors are sent to summons, questioned thoroughly and obligated by law to appear in court on the specified date. The selection process is very important because the jurors will potentially be making a verdict that may or may not drastically change someone’s

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