Race in the United States criminal justice system

[32] It continues to be a factor throughout United States history through the present, with organizations such as Black Lives Matter calling for decarceration through divestment from police and prisons and reinvestment in public education and universal health care.

Turner, an African-American Baptist preacher, believing that the Lord had destined him to free his race, followed through with his plans to conquer Southampton county through the enlistment of other slaves.

[32] The court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford made it so that African slaves and their descendants were considered non-citizens, further incorporating racism into the justice system.

[36] African American men were routinely rounded up, charged with being unemployed or having changed jobs without the consent of their previous employer (which were both illegal for Blacks in some southern states), and subjected to years of forced hard labor in a system of convict leasing and chain gangs.

[36] The Ku Klux Klan, was founded in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee as a vigilante organization whose goal was to keep control over freed slaves;[36] It performed acts of lawlessness against negroes and other minorities.

[63] A 2014 study involving computer-based simulations of a police encounter found a greater likelihood of undergraduate student participants shooting Black targets over White ones.

[67] Reports by the Department of Justice have also found that police officers in Baltimore, Maryland, and Ferguson, Missouri, systemically stop, search (in some cases strip-searching) and harass Black residents.

[70] Scholars have found that some racial and ethnic minorities, particularly African Americans, are disproportionately represented in the arrest and victimization reports which are used to compile crime rate statistics in the United States.

[96] A 2018 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that tall young Black men are especially likely to receive unjustified attention by law enforcement.

[100] Another recent study in 2012 raises a different concern, showing that Hispanics and Blacks receive considerably longer sentences for the same or lesser offenses on average than White offenders with equal or greater criminal records.

An early study by Joan Petersilia found that in California, Michigan, and Texas, Hispanics and Blacks tended to receive harsher sentences than Whites convicted of comparable crimes and with similar criminal records.

[106] Similarly, a 2005 meta-analysis found that Blacks tended to receive harsher sentences than did Whites, and that this effect was "statistically significant but small and highly variable.

A 2014 study revealed that judges subconsciously utilize the assumption that minorities are more likely to recidivate to issue a longer sentencing that will prevent the defendants from reengaging in criminal offenses.

This preconception that minorities are unable to economically support themselves warns the judicial system that they are more likely to resort to criminal activity in order to gain access to money or other objectives.

"[152] A study regarding the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act concluded due to mandatory sentencing Blacks have a 1 in 3 chance of spending some time in prison or jail.

Though the use of the Post Conviction Risk Assessment (PCRA), which proved to be highly accurate in predicting whether or not Whites and Blacks would return to prison after being released, showed that recidivism correlates less with race and more with criminal history.

It affirmed that sentencing policies are becoming harsher, and habitual offender statutes are currently just another tool that lawmakers use to incarcerate minorities at a higher rate than their White counterparts.

[176] Black and Latino juvenile offenders are also vastly more likely to be tried as adults by local prosecutors throughout the US, and are generally likelier to be given harsher, longer sentences by the judges presiding over their trials.

These numbers represent a clear racial disparity in sentencing, particularly so, given the fact that during this period New Jersey was only 14.8% Black and 19.7% Hispanic, in comparison to 56.2% of the state's residents being White.

Several scholars have claimed that the goal was to destroy the hemp industry,[184][185][186] largely as an effort of businessmen Andrew Mellon, Randolph Hearst, and the Du Pont family.

Mellon, United States Secretary of the Treasury and the wealthiest man in America, had invested heavily in the DuPont's new synthetic fiber, nylon, and considered[dubious – discuss] its success to depend on its replacement of the traditional resource, hemp.

[204] This recent comment by Ehrlichman made headlines primarily because it was the first instance of any person who was ever affiliated with the Presidential administration publicly framing the drug war as a political tactic to assist Nixon's win.

[205] Two competing hypotheses exist regarding why racial/ethnic minorities, especially African Americans, are overrepresented in the criminal justice system compared to their share of the general population.

They found that there is a 25-30% unexplained difference between arrest and incarceration and that disproportionality you need to understand the role that prosecutors, judges, and probation and parole officers contribute.

[212] Socio-economic, geographic, and educational disparities, as well as alleged unequal treatment in the criminal justice system, contributed to this gap in incarceration rates by race.

[225] Rios further argued that, societal institutions – such as schools, families, and community centers can impact youth by initiating them into this "system of criminalization" from an early age.

[209] Scholar Pettit and Western's research has shown how incarceration rates for African Americans are "about eight times higher than those for Whites", and prison inmates have less than "12 years of completed schooling" on average.

Men eventually released from prison will most likely return to their same communities, putting additional strain on already scarce resources as they attempt to garner the assistance they need to successfully reenter society.

[230] As African Americans and Hispanics are disproportionately affected by felon status, these additional limitations on employment opportunity were shown to exacerbate racial disparities in the labor market.

Some changes include reducing the length of some sentences, making resources such as treatment for substance abuse available to all and investing in organizations that promote strong youth development.