What Is It Like To Black In The Criminal Justice System Essay

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“The evidence is clear: Black prison rates result from crime, not racism” (MacDonald). Both black and white people get arrested for crimes they have committed. Some blacks believe that white criminals do not face the same harsh punishments for doing similar crimes of what a black person commits. However, the discrepancy in punishments may be due to the type or seriousness of the altercation. During strong racial discrimination times such as the Jim Crow days, I believe that race could have been a factor in doling out criminal punishments.
Today, after a black person is convicted of a crime, “blacks were more likely to receive prison sentences, however-an outcome that reflected the gravity of their offences as well as their criminal records” (MacDonald). Although blacks and whites committed the same crime, the history of their criminal records might not be the same. If a white man and a black man have a kleptomaniac attitude, they …show more content…
But now, “a shocking number [of blacks] have been killed in encounters with police in the year since Ferguson and in years before.” This quote comes from What It’s Like to Be Black in the Criminal Justice System. Because of the prevalence of news reports and social media reporting, we hear much more about altercations between police and members of the African-American community. It seems as if there has been a rise in the number of blacks who have been killed by police officers over the years following the Ferguson shooting. We never can truly know what the circumstances are during an encounter between a citizen and a police officer. I can assume that the majority of police officers do not feel relieved nor satisfied after they have killed anyone, no matter the race. In order for a police officer to take the drastic action of pulling their weapon and firing a shot, there had to be a reason in the officer's
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