Preview

U.S. Criminal Justice System Flaws Essay Example

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
675 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
U.S. Criminal Justice System Flaws Essay Example
The United States Criminal Justice System In many ways, I believe the U.S. criminal justice system is extremely corrupt on every level. United States Criminal Justice System has so many flaws and fallacies that I could write an entire novel about it. The Federal Court, the State Courts, and all the Local Courts attempt to make every trial and arrest fair, but the truth is, it will never be fair the way that these courts come off to be. A trial can be seen in the eyes of every single person in that court room as fair, but there is always some type of bias among juries and judges no matter what somebody does or where they go. In many arrests and ticket distributions, it is based on mostly race and gender, which I will touch on in my writing. According to Shannon Jones in her article on the World Socialist Website, “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.” This quotation was made in the year 2000, and is consistent with today’s justice system, if not much worse. A town that has experienced this type of bias firsthand is the town of East Haven Connecticut, in which many Latino individuals have experienced police brutality and harrassment since 2008, according to Nina Bernstein. She also quoted that the East Haven Justice Department warned the town on April 15 that on the preliminary review, it showed that thair police department was “a shambles, with no modern rules of conduct for officers, no check on their use of force, inadequate training, and no functioning citizen complaint system.” As seen in East Haven, I believe that countless other cities are facing similar ordeals. Even in my own town, Edison, New Jersey, mostly men are ticketed when stopped, and women are usually hit-on by male officers, sometimes even harassed with words. I have witnessed the gender

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Court Systems Paper

    • 1224 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The United States court system is composed of numerous sections of bodies of law that function together to ensure justness is served in fulfillment with the United States Constitution, federal, state and local laws. These organizations include law enforcement, the courts and, correction system all of which have a legitimate responsibility to maintain the American Peoples trust. I am a strong advocate for our court system, although it can use some fine-tuning every level of Justice could stand some improvement but that takes time, commitment and the right officials in office.…

    • 1224 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    1. Examine the various search patterns investigators can use to systematically search crime scenes for evidence.…

    • 683 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Eugene Robinson’s essay “You Have the Right to Remain a Target of Racial Profiling,” Robinson argues that police officers still racially profile when pulling over people for traffic offenses. He uses a Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics report that states that white, African-American and Hispanic drivers are equally likely to be pulled over by the police in a traffic stop. He doesn’t believe this to be true and delves deeper into the findings. Robinson notes that African-Americans and Hispanics are much more likely to be searched and be the subject of “police use of force”. Black drivers were also twice as likely to be arrested as white drivers, and Hispanics were more likely to receive a ticket. Whites were more likely to receive written or verbal warnings that blacks or…

    • 514 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    From the use of a judge to listen to both sides of the trial, to the impartial jury that is used to decide the verdict of the trial. Everyone in the courtroom is there to offer a fair, and safe trial for whomever may have charges brought against them. It may be true that there are many things within the Criminal Justice system that may not work efficiently or even effectively, however there is nothing that is perfect. There is something to be said when it comes to the American Justice system; it gets many things right when it comes to equal rights and fairness for the American…

    • 1288 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the United States of America racial discrimination still exists to this day. Minorities in our country are not seen as equal people. When a person is deprived of their human rights it makes them feel degraded and troubled. In order to become a more civilized country, we must forget the color of our own skin and live with each other as one. In the article “Why Racial Profiling is a Bad Idea” by Tom Head, discusses the way cops pay more attention to those of minority races and how they usually find them guilty of crimes they didn’t commit. Even though many officers will deny their participation in this type of profiling, a lot use this tactic to pull over and arrest Minority races. The article “Racial Profiling Lives On” by Devon Carbado, Cheryl Harris and Kimberle Crenshaw, also displays examples of how racial profiling continues to this day. There are many ways cops can search/arrest African Americans or other Minorities for no reason and still keep from breaking the Fourth Amendment and the authors of “Racial Profiling Lives On” supports there claims with emotional examples that appeal to a pathological type of audience.…

    • 1254 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    stop and frisk policy

    • 761 Words
    • 4 Pages

    1. BIAS IN POLICE STOPS? In the late 1990s, popular, legal, and political concerns were raised across the United States about police harassment of minority groups in their everyday encounters with law enforcement. These concerns focused on the extent to which police were stopping people on the highways for “driving while black” (seeWeitzer 2000; Harris 2002; Lundman and Kaufman 2003). Additional concerns were raised about racial bias in pedestrian stops of citizens by police predicated on “zero-tolerance” policies to control quality-of-life crimes and policing strategies concentrated in minority communities that targeted illegal gun possession and drug trafficking (see Fagan, Zimring, and Kim 1998; Greene 1999; Skolnick and Caplovitz 2001; Fagan and Davies 2000, 2003; Fagan 2002; Gould and Mastrofski 2004).…

    • 761 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Broken Windows Theory

    • 639 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Criminal Justice System is a necessary aspect of American life. America is known for being the land of the free. If you are living in America you have something called “rights”. Rights as a U.S. citizen are based off “The Bill of Rights” in the United States Constitution. The Constitution clearly states the rights that each and every American citizen are entitled to. Most of the population don’t quite understand how many rights they actually do have as an American. With freedom and rights in our citizens’ defense, it’s only natural that more crimes occur and the criminals become incarcerated. But, did you ever think maybe the innocent get put behind bars all because they did not understand their rights? I have the perfect example which forever changed American history and those wrongfully accused; it’s the case of Gideon v. Wainwright.…

    • 639 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the 20th century, the American criminal justice system greatly advanced mainly through the evaluation of the Cleveland Survey, the professionalization of the modern police, and the development of the Modern Penal Code.…

    • 589 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Although most cases of police brutality occur south of the Mason Dixon Line, this is the imaginary line which divided the North and South during the tine of slavery, and states with histories of racism and segregation, police brutality happens throughout the United States of America. The influence of people and the media, ignorance, and the unwillingness to accept others can explain why this happens. One can also look at statistics and come to the conclusion that minorities are not favored amongst police officers. Because being colored is a metaphysical dilemma that many have not learned to accept, all minorities, African Americans and Latinos especially, almost always seem to “fit the description: There is a statistic which asserts that minorities are two to four times more likely to be stopped, questioned, frisked, ticketed, etcetera while driving or walking by…

    • 1696 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    US District Court Judge, Shira Scheindlin, in Rich Calder’s article discusses how the NYPD has been systematically targeting minorities and violating their 14th amendment guarantees of due process and equal protection (NYPD’s stop-frisk policy violated rights: judge). It shows evidence that minorities are treated poorly in comparison to other races, which increases their animosity towards the police. By seeking out innocent minorities, it not only deprives them of their rights, but also relinquishes the purpose of the stop and frisk.…

    • 1047 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    We all know it’s there. Sitting there, watching us, judging us, eventually it’s going to come up in our lives in one way or another. The criminal justice system of the United States of America. Some say it’s great, others hate it, probably because they’ve been through it. We’ve all seen it on T.V.- Cops, Law and Order SVU, I Almost Got Away With It. Someone commits a crime, the police get the bad guy, end of story. Unfortunately it’s not always as perfect as it may seem in real life. Sometimes the bad guys get away with it and innocent people are wrongly imprisoned. If the criminal justice system remains unrevised and prejudiced towards minorities then innocent citizens will continue to be incriminated for crimes they did not commit.…

    • 1313 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Color Vs Police Brutality

    • 817 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The average indictment rate of police brutality against african-americans is 13% (2012 Supplementary Homicide Report, FBI). This is simply an embarrassment of the judicial system when the indictment rate of police brutality against white Americans is a staggering 63% (2012 Supplementary Homicide Report, FBI). With a 50% difference between the two, this implies the superiority persona officers of law enforcement believe they have when it comes to minorities. To stand in a police officer’s shoes and think one can walk away from shooting an unarmed person of color because the judicial system will not indict them is a dishonor to everything law enforcement is supposed to stand…

    • 817 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The criminal justice system, like any system designed by human beings, clearly has its flaws” - Ben Whishaw. Case after case after case could prove this statement. The O.J. Simpson Trails, The State of Florida vs. George Zimmerman, the fictional Tom Robinson case from To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Case of Emmett Till are all examples of our flawed Justice system. So yes, our justice system is flawed.…

    • 743 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The way that the police uses excessive force with any minority class men is considered brutality disregarding their ethnicity or economic status. Police brutality has a dramatic change on how the community looks at the law enforcers. Nobody will look at policemen the same way after all the accusations and prove that shows how they are abusive of the power granted to them by the government. Every human, regardless of ethnicity, the color of skin, being a minority, and having legal status in the country has his Miranda rights. Miranda rights can not be broken by police officers when being arrested for a minor crime or a bigger felony. The way a person looks, dresses, acts, or who they hang out with should not be a cause for arrest and brutality…

    • 2242 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Since before the official establishment of the United States, discrimination and segregation among whites and other ethnicities had already been in practice among people all over the world, bringing us to a surging problem in today’s society of profiling in our criminal justice system. Many might question how a problem like racism and profiling can occur in a system of those who set and follow the standards of what is supposed to be right and what is wrong. Acts of racism might not seem possible in such a group especially after everything our nation has been through to prevent racism; a war, tiresome and sometimes violent pushes…

    • 2724 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays