Mandatory sentencing

The New Jim Crow Mass incarceration in the Age of colorblindness by Michelle Alexander is a book that I feel every person should read, it is not only limited to the African American people. When Michelle Alexander wrote her book, she had a specific audience in mind. This book was written for those unaware of “the magnitude of the crisis faced by communities of color because of mass incarceration” (Alexander, 2010). During many periods of life there has been chaos among American communities of…

As the nation sees what they want to see, we fail to look at the truth. As the United States becomes an increasingly diverse nation, the lack of Black legal professionals is cause for major concern. The complex look into the obstacles facing African Americans reaching the status of judge will be examined. Furthermore, we will examine the process it takes to become a judge, the education as well as social disparities faced amongst African Americans. The lack of African American Judges can be…

Why would you want to take another person life? What does you get out of it? When you think of murder you think of a person killing another human being. Which can be unlawful and lawful depends on the situation. Murder is the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another. To start with not all homicides are crimes. Homicides include all killings of humans. Many homicides, such as murder and manslaughter, violate criminal laws. Others, are as a killing committed in justified…

crack cocaine has a mandatory minimum sentence of five years; however, the minimum sentence for drunk driving is two to ten days in jail even though drunk driving caused 22,000 deaths annually at the end of the 1980s (Alexander 206). The reason for this discrepancy in sentencings between the two crimes is due to who the offenders are. Drunk drivers are predominantly white and male, but offenders of crack cocaine are usually black men (Alexander 207). Although the minimum sentencing for crack…

During the booking process an individual completes several mandatory steps in no particular order. The individual is fingerprinted, by hard card or live scan, and referenced against wanted individuals. The most common process is the live scan, because the results are accessible within minutes. The Individual is…

convicted of murder hadn’t received a fair trial. Of those 30 cases, 16 cases were discharged or won acquittals at their retrial. Judge Parker had no sympathy for killers but was also a fair man. He did occasionally grant a retrial that reduced sentencing. During his 21 years of service on the bench, Judge Isaac Parker tried 13, 490 cases, 344 were capital crimes, 9,454 cases were convictions or guilty pleas. He sentenced 160 men to death and sent 79 men to their deaths by hanging which…

also focused on individual rights and the individual being held responsible for the consequences of their actions (White, Haines, & Asquith, 2012). In order to successfully hold the individual responsible, classical theory emphasized clarity in sentencing to ensure the sentence received would…

Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, expresses “Lots of people think that 80 percent of the people who are locked up are there for low-level drug offenses, and that’s not even close to being true.” Every single person who is in the system has committed a crime to put them…

between 1970 and 2000, with state and federal prisons occupied by 1.3 million men by the end of the century (Pettit & Western, 2004). By the 1980s politicians were pushing for a “punitive law-and-order” approach with many sates establishing mandatory minimum sentencing and the three-strike law (Beito,…

As the nation sees what they want to see, we fail to look at the truth. As the United States becomes an increasingly diverse nation, the lack of Black legal professionals is cause for major concern. The complex look into the obstacles facing African Americans reaching the status of judge will be examined. Furthermore, we will examine the process it takes to become a judge, the education as well as social disparities faced amongst African Americans. The lack of African American Judges can be…