show the world the laws that discriminate against blacks.
show us any law that requires blacks to serve longer sentences
pats CC and KS on nappy heads
Uh, laws don't discriminate against blacks.....prosecutors and judges discriminate against blacks, disproportionately, compared to whites. White judges discriminately hand down harsher sentences to blacks as compared to whites.
did you realize that there are black prosecutors, judges and jurors, or are you going to ignore that fact?
and I want PROOF that white judges hand down harsher sentences. for the exact same crimes and rap sheets
No conjecture allowed
96.01.10: Black Skin, White Justice: Race Matters in the Criminal Justice System
Is the United States Criminal Justice System really racist?
Invariably, every argument must indeed have a counter argument. Despite clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, there are those who believe that, though there may be some evidence of discriminatory practices in the criminal justice system, these instances do not significantly impact the dispensation of jurisprudence. (Diulio, 1994, Langan, 1994). As such, there are those who feel, as Patrick Langan does, that �race is only weakly related to whether a defendant is arrested, convicted, prosecuted or sentenced severely.�38 Diulio argues that once controls for such characteristics as the offender�s criminal history or whether an eyewitness to the crime was present, racial disparities no longer exist.39
Advocates of Law and order, like Diulio and Langan, apparently have naive notions about fairness in American society generally, and in the criminal justice system in particular. To suggest, as he does, that locking up criminals for a long time will lead to a decrease in crime is simply not true. Diulio asserts that �In the 1980�s, rates of imprisonment rose and crime rates fell . . . �40 Had Diulio �compared the crime rates in 1985 with those in 1990, a five year period when the percentage and absolute increases in prison populations were the largest in the nation�s history, he would have found it difficult to claim a cause-and-effect relation between incarceration and crime rates. Crime rates overall rose 12 percent, and violent crime rates climbed more than 32 percent.�41 As James Q. Wilson notes, �Very large increases in the prison population can produce only modest reductions in crime rates.�42 Furthermore, if locking up criminals was a deterrent, there should be no crime at all!
In his article, �No racism in criminal justice system�, Patrick Langan makes several assertions. Among them are the following: 1) 66% of Black defendants were prosecuted for felonies, while 69 percent of whites were prosecuted for felonies; 2) Among Blacks prosecuted in urban courts, 75 percent were convicted of a felony, while 78 percent of Whites were convicted of a felony and 3) The average state prison sentence received by Blacks convicted of a felony was five and one half-years, one month longer than their white counterparts. Yet among Black defendants convicted of a felony, 51 percent received a prison sentence, as opposed to 38 percent of whites.43
One could, however, draw a vastly different conclusion regarding the role of race in the criminal justice system because �Blacks tend to get substantially longer prison terms [unlike the one month asserted by Langan above] than whites convicted of the same crimes, even when the Black person is a first time offender and the White person a second- or third-time offender.�44 Clinton Cox adds that, for murder Blacks serve 91.7 months versus 79.8 months for whites; for rape, 55 months for Blacks versus 43.9 for whites; for kidnapping, 41 months for Blacks to 37 for whites; and for robbery, 37.4 for Blacks to 33.3 for whites.45
Furthermore, Langan appears to invalidate at least part of his theory that there is no racism when he refers to those who receive sentences (they were overwhelming Black). Hence, while Langan suggests that judges did not give longer prison sentences to Blacks (which does not appear to be true), his own research shows racial disparities in sentencing. Despite his attempt to explain away these differences by introducing other factors (i.e. were they repeat offenders?, did they live in jurisdictions where sentencing was tougher [which raises another set of racially charged issues?], etc.), it is clear that race matters in the criminal justice system.
Readings
1. Malign Neglect: Race Crime and Punishment in America. (Introduction). Michael Tonry.
Ask and ye shall receive.
