Criminal Justice System By Kali Holloway: Article Analysis

In her article, A Critique of What Science Tells Us about the Ugly Biases of Our Criminal Justice System, Kali Holloway argues that America’s criminal justice system is inconsistent, outdated, ineffective, and biased. Kali Holloway’s article concludes that the American justice system is not about justice; instead, it is a system built on racial, social, and systematic injustices and bias. The norms of the American criminal justice system have been to punish certain segment of the American population, whether or not they have been properly proven guilty. According to Kali Holloway, the American criminal justice system is as flawed as the individuals maintaining it. Most of Kali Holloway’s support for her argument derives from one source, …show more content…
Holloway’s usage of psychological research to support her claims allows her to make a scientifically supported argument. Also, the article was well organized and writing format helped to highlight Holloway’s conclusion. Holloway effectively shows how long-standing bias affected many different levels of the criminal justice system. Overall, Kali Holloway did a great job in proven her point. In fact, because she did such a great job, I only have one suggestion for Holloway, elaborate more on eyewitness testimony. As Holloway pointed out, eyewitness testimony plays a significant role in sending innocent people to prison (Holloway, 2015). Yet, I feel that she only vaguely covered the topic. Because eyewitness testimony is a major component of the American criminal justice system, Holloway should have better emphasized the faultiness of eyewitness …show more content…
For example, Kali could have written about own-ethnicity bias (also known as other-ethnicity effect or cross-ethnicity effect) and how it affects eyewitness testimony. As stated in Matlin’s textbook, Cognition (2012), an individual from a racial in-group has more trouble identifying distinctive facial features of an individual from a racial out-group, and vice versa. Therefore, if someone white has to identify someone who is African American (or Black), Asian, or Hispanic and Latino they (the white individual) likely will not be able to accurately distinguish one person from one race from another person of that same race (Matlin, 2012). This could lead to misidentification and the wrongful imprisonment of an innocent person. Also, memory schemas can affect eyewitness testimony. For example, as stated in Matlin’s Cognition (2012), past view point or schemas can affect present day perceptions. If an eyewitness consciously or unconsciously believes that a certain group of individual are more violent or are more likely to commit crimes than that schema can cloud their perception of the crime they witnessed. Cognitive psychology has extensive research on why eyewitness testimony is unreliable. Holloway’s argument could have been stronger if she incorporated some findings on eyewitness testimony by cognitive psychologists. Especially, since she indicated that