These past few years have been filled with protests and calls for justice from communities of color, especially the African-American community, regarding the ever-present racism in the criminal justice system. Recent tensions between civilians and police began to simmer with the killing of Trayvon Martin and reached a boiling point after the shooting of Michael Brown. Since then, protesters have filled the streets with anger and despair, calling for answers in cases of injustice and discrimination.
Simultaneously, many observers have questioned whether these protests are justified, and some have even claimed that the protesters are the ones who have created a racial divide in America. It is easy to dismiss activists as criminals and whiners who will find any reason to protest, but they actually do important work by calling attention to the various subtle and systemic ways in which the criminal justice system is biased against communities of color. Their efforts are paramount in the struggle to transform a system that has continuously failed people of color.
Many studies and investigations support the notion that racial bias exists in the criminal justice system. Compared to unarmed White men, unarmed Black men are twice as likely to be shot and killed by police, despite being significantly less likely to have been attacking an officer. Although Black men constitute only 6 percent of the U.S. population, they made up 40 percent of unarmed people shot and killed by the police in 2015. While it is true that most Black homicide victims had Black perpetrators, most White victims had White perpetrators as well. The victims of most crimes are the same race as those who commit them because of enduring residential segregation in this country, which tends to put people of the same race in contact with each other much more frequently than it mixes different races. In addition, the concentration of poverty results in higher crime rates, and African-Americans disproportionately live in areas with concentrated poverty – the result of hundreds of years of racist practices and legislation including slavery, redlining and employment discrimination. In urban areas, poor African-Americans experience similar, if not slightly lower, rates of violence than poor White Americans do. Yet African-Americans consistently receive harsher treatment by police than White Americans despite not exhibiting any more dangerous behavior.
Furthermore, although there is no meaningful difference in the rate of drug use by White and Black Americans, Blacks are 10 times more likely to go to jail on drug charges than Whites. This is largely due to discriminatory legislation like the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which mandated far harsher minimum sentences for crack cocaine, whose users were disproportionately Black, than for powder cocaine, whose users were disproportionately White.
In instances of driving, Blacks and Latinos are more likely to be pulled over and have their licenses suspended than Whites despite no differences in driving behavior. Blacks and Latinos are also treated more harshly when police officers suspect that they have committed a crime. There are even disparities in who receives protection from police. A study of 10,500 complaints in Chicago found that only 1.6 percent of complaints were sustained if the complainant was African-American.
This evidence should be enough to identify differential treatment and outcomes of races; however, racial bias in the criminal justice system does not simply start and end with an encounter with the police. The court system is also skewed against people of color. For instance, defendants convicted of killing Whites are four times as likely to receive the death penalty as defendants killing Blacks. All-White jury pools convict Black defendants 16 percent more frequently than White defendants – a disparity that almost disappears when there is at least one Black person in the jury pool. Additionally, Black Americans on average serve longer sentences than White Americans for the same offense.
The racial bias inherent in the criminal justice system is reinforced by broadcast and print news’ reports of crimes involving Black and Latino individuals. According to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization advocating for criminal justice reform, news outlets overrepresent minority individuals as crime suspects and White individuals as crime victims. When pictures are included, African-Americans and Latinos are more likely than their White counterparts to be portrayed using mug shots. The fact that African-American and Latino suspects are more likely to go unnamed in TV news and newspapers further shows how media reports dehumanize people of color by representing them not as individuals but as inscrutable threats.
It is clear that racism runs through every aspect of the criminal justice system. By choosing to ignore that fact or in justifying it by framing minorities disproportionately as criminals, we only exacerbate and perpetuate the systemic problem. We must call out the racial bias in our punitive justice system and work toward building a system that actually protects Blacks and Latinos instead of vilifying them.
The ugly truth is that the criminal justice system has never been in favor of communities of color. People are mistrustful of the justice system because of how unfairly it has historically and continuously marginalized them. This is the reason why people are protesting in the streets nearly every day for a radically different future that is equitable for everyone.
Ipuz-Rengifo is a rising fourth-year global studies student and Yip is rising fourth-year Asian-American studies and political science student.