Bias In The Criminal Justice System Essay

The United States of America consists of five percent of the entire world population, but somehow makes up around twenty-five percent of the total number of people incarcerated in the world according the NAACP. While this number seems outrageous, what is even more startling is that people of color make up about sixty percent of our nations prison populations while only representing thirty percent of the nations total population (Kerby). One of the biggest questions for the criminal justice system today is, why is there such an overrepresentation of minorities in our prison systems? There seem to be multiple reasons, however, racial biases throughout the system, the war on drugs, the media, and socioeconomic status, are the main causes for the …show more content…
When someone enters the criminal justice system, more likely than not they are read their Miranda Rights, which explicitly state, “You have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you.” For the wealthy, this statement does not really even faze them, but for the lower classes this means a public defender. Public defenders carry a much heavier workload than that of a private attorney, and because they are paid on a state salary, no one defendant is that important to he or she. Where with a private attorney, if you can pay for one, you can also probably pay for bail if you were awarded that opportunity you are able to meet with your attorney freely and on your schedule, however for those unable to pay for an attorney more likely than not, they were not awarded bail or if they were they cannot pay for it. This means in order to meet with their attorney, it is on that attorney’s schedule which as mentioned is a heavier case load than that of the price attorney. While this a indirect response to the fact that African Americans and Hispanics are more likely than whites to be poor, (Walker, 286) it makes a huge impact on the