Racism In Criminal Justice Essay

Racism has had an important significance in court cases against Hispanics and African Americans. In United States there are more than 2.5 million inmates. According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Statistical Report of 2014, there are 150,361 inmates in the state. From this, 52,119 are Blacks, 49,800 Hispanics and 47,676 are Whites. In the criminal justice system, people of color and Latinos are imprisoned disproportionately due to racist laws; furthermore, they do not have access to the rehabilitative options given to white skinned people. While people of these minorities commit the same crimes at the same rate as Whites, the unequal imprisonment and treatment of Hispanics and Blacks in the criminal justice system, from arrest to sentencing, has shown the disproportionate imprisonment of these groups. One of the most emblematic articles that illustrate this topic is White Racism, Black Crime and American Justice by Robert Staples. In the article, the author emphasizes that discrimination based on race is real in the American Criminal Justice System, and it is because the system is compound by different white men cartels whose main purpose is to protect the interests of the privileged groups they are part of, so they discriminate other races and ethnicities. …show more content…
There are many different social groups who share traditions, language, religion, ideals, etc. In the beginning of its history, United States was a country where most part of its population were Whites, due to the first European conquerors; creating the idea of Whites as the most privileged group that had multiple rights above others, making the Anglo-American group to be catalogued as supreme.
Carlos Hoyt Jr., in his book, The Pedagogy of the Meaning of Racism: Reconciling a Discordant Discourse, states that racism could be defined as “the belief that all members of