Racial Discrimination Justice System

Racial discrimination occurs when a person’s skin color and/or ethnicity is a factor in denying them rights they would normally receive if they were the preferred skin color and/or ethnicity. Racial discrimination can occur in job opportunities, housing and/or placements, schools, and transformation. Since 1960 the United States government has enacted many laws to prevent racial discrimination in many institutions (Banks, 2013).

Despite laws in place to prevent racial discrimination, many criminal justice researchers question whether racial discrimination occurs in the criminal justice system. To answer this question researchers use data on crime, arrests, and incarceration to determine whether there is a difference between races in arrests, incarcerations, and sentencing. Several researchers have found data that demonstrates that there are disparities among races in all parts of the criminal justice system such as encounters with police, jury selection, imprisonment, death penalty sentencing, etc. (Banks, 2013). The statistical evidence shows that racial discrimination exists in three levels (law enforcement, court system, prison) of the United States criminal justice system.

Law Enforcement and Arrests

The first encounter many citizens have with law enforcement is when a crime has taken place. In many police departments in the United States, African Americans are more likely to be targeted, stopped, frisked, and searched. According to U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to be targeted and stopped for committing a crime. In addition in the year 2009, when a person is stopped 10.2 percent of African Americas were searched, 11.4 percent of Hispanics were searched compared to only 3.5 percent of Whites (Hurwitz & Peffley, 2010).

One of the biggest areas of law enforcement where disparities exist are arrests for drug offenses. African Americans and Whites use illegal drugs at similar...