In A Racist System, People Of Color Suffer The Most
Our criminal justice system is not perfect and anyone of color can be the victim of this flawed entity that looks to put people behind bars.
The lives of a black, white, and hispanic people all matter just the same, so it is infuriating to see the number of minorities going into prison and coming out dead. We cannot keep turning a blind eye on this issue anymore.
Data collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows: the United States imprisons more members of its society than any other country in the world with more than 6.8 million people, as of the year 2013, in some sort of correction facility.
Michelle Alexander, author of the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, suggests that there are more Blacks incarcerated now than they were in slavery conditions during the mid-1800s. Black men, in particular, account for just 30 percent of the U.S. population, yet they make up about 60 percent of the U.S. prisons’ population.
Statistics show Latinos are just as likely to be given unfair treatment in the eyes of the law.
According to the Census of Juvenile in Residential Placement’s data, Latino and Native American youths (under the age of 18) have higher chances -about two to three times- of getting charged and thrown in jail than a white citizen.
Black youth, have an even greater chance of getting arrested, with almost five times more likely to be arrested than white youth, even when they commit the same crime.
It is clear that we have a problem with racism in our jail systems. Recent incidents of police brutality have revealed a nasty world full of flawed public policies and programs that were designed to oppress poor communities.
And it’s time for us to take a moment and rethink our criminal justice system.
The previous statistics of how more likely minority youth are to be sent to jail, indicate that we are sending so many potential college students to jail where their chances for success drift further away. Finding a way to help these youth would be a much better than sending them off to a potential death in a racist system.
