Injustice in America Summary, Part 2

1. Injustice in AmericaSummary, Part 2 Dr. Matt Robinson CJ 3532 �Injustice in America� Appalachian State University

2. LCCR (Civilrights.org) The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights coalition, consisting of nearly 200 national organizations, representing persons of color, women, children, labor unions, individuals with disabilities, older Americans, major religious groups, gays and lesbians and civil liberties and human rights groups. LCCR was founded in 1950 and has coordinated national lobbying efforts on behalf of every major civil rights law since 1957.

3. LCCR (Civilrights.org) Justice On Trial: Racial Disparities in the American Criminal Justice System (2000) �Racial disparity in the criminal justice system is the most profound civil rights crisis facing America in the new century. It undermines the progress we have made over the past five decades in ensuring equal treatment under the law, and calls into doubt our national faith in the rule of law.� �� in one critical arena � criminal justice � racial inequality is growing, not receding.� Our criminal laws, while facially neutral, are enforced in a manner that is massively and pervasively biased.� The injustices of the criminal justice system threaten to render irrelevant fifty years of hard-fought civil rights progress.�

4. LCCR (Civilrights.org) Examples: 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in employment. 33% of black males born today will serve time in prison. 1965 Voting Rights Act prohibits discrimination in voting. 13% of black males cannot vote due to convictions. �Our civil rights laws abolished Jim Crow laws and other vestiges of segregation, and guaranteed minority citizens the right to travel and utilize public accommodations freely.� Yet today, racial profiling and police brutality make such travel hazardous to the dignity and health of law-abiding black and Hispanic citizens.�

5. LCCR (Civilrights.org) U.S. Constitution�s guarantees of equal treatment under the law have been eroded because of criminal justice: �Unequal treatment of minorities characterizes every stage of the process.� Black and Hispanic Americans, and other minority groups as well, are victimized by disproportionate targeting and unfair treatment by police and other front-line law enforcement officials; by racially skewed charging and plea bargaining decisions of prosecutors; by discriminatory sentencing practices; and by the failure of judges, elected officials and other criminal justice policy makers to redress the inequities that become more glaring every day.�

6. LCCR (Civilrights.org) The main problems with policing, according to this report, include: The use and abuse of discretion by police, which allows and even encourages under legal techniques (such as pre-textual traffic stops and stop and frisk searches), to use racial profiling to disproportionately stop African Americans with little evidence of wrongdoing; Department policies and laws that permit and encourage police to respond to flight by citizens as suspicious behavior, which increases the risk of use of force and use of lethal force by police against people not involved in criminal activity; Police brutality and corruption, each of which disproportionately affects minorities; and The disparate enforcement of open air drug markets (which disproportionately occur in inner-cities where minority residence is high) rather than markets that are better hidden and tend to involve the people who are most likely to deal drugs � Caucasians.

7. LCCR (Civilrights.org) The main problems with courts, according to this report, include: The unchecked discretion of prosecutors in deciding whom to prosecute, what charges to press, and what sentences to pursue, which generally benefits Caucasian defendants (except for in death penalty cases); The discretion of federal prosecutors to decide in some cases to pursue some cases (especially drug cases) in federal courts rather than state courts, where sentences are generally harsher. With drug cases, this disproportionately occurs when cases involve alleged minority defendants; The disproportionate use of preventive detention for African Americans and the poor rather than grating bail, as well as the use of inflated bail amounts to deny the poor freedom while awaiting the disposal of their cases; Mandatory sentencing laws (such as three-strikes laws) are disproportionately used to harm minorities, especially when it comes to drug laws, by tying the hands of judges and not allowing them to use their own discretion to impose more rational sentences for relatively minor offenders; Death sentences are more routinely handed down for cases involving Caucasian murder victims, especially Caucasian victims murdered by minorities.

8. LCCR (Civilrights.org) The main problems with corrections, according to this report, include: The abolition of parole at the federal level and in some states, which lengthens time served in prison and worsens correctional overpopulation; A massive increase in minority incarceration above and beyond their actually involvement in crime; Generally longer sentences for minority males and females for drug offenses; and The increased imprisonment of non-violent offenders, who are disproportionately likely to be minority males and increasingly minority females

9. LCCR (Civilrights.org) The main consequences include: Disenfranchising minorities convicted of criminal offenses (e.g., voting rights); Destabilizing communities by routinely removing large numbers of African Americans males and females from certain neighborhoods over decades; Compromising criminal justice by reducing respect for the law; Reducing the willingness of minorities to assist police with investigations, crime prevention through community policing, because of perceived racial bias; Reducing the willingness of minorities to serve on juries, because of perceived racial bias; Reducing funding for education and other social services, which also disproportionately affects the poor and people of color; Increasing exposure to harmful conditions, including illnesses and violence in overcrowded prisons; Increasing economic strain on American society by reducing the size of the American work force and tax base; and Reducing America�s standing in the world by harming our human rights image.

10. LCCR (Civilrights.org) Conclusion: �If the American criminal justice system were a corporation, it would be found to violate the civil rights laws so extensively that it might well be shut down. But for several reasons, racial inequality in the criminal justice system cannot be eradicated easily.� Recommendations for reform: http://www.civilrights.org/publications/reports/cj/recommendations.html