Masters Thesis

The American criminal justice system and its impacts on the African American community: arrests and sentencing

African Americans, prior to having the title of Americans, were Africans that were captured, shackled and shipped away from everything they knew. During this passage from to America, Africans were forced on ships that removed them from their tribal lands. They were broken, beaten and confused. During a lot of horrifying acts and mistreatment during the transport to America many died along the way. The ones that made it to this new-found land had no idea what was in store for their arrival. The mistreatment of African Americans began with slavery, and continued throughout our history. Even though historians have noted that the presence of the KKK had died down by 1965; however, we have seen the presence of the KKK is currently resurfacing back on black college campuses and all over the United States. The underlining common theme they carry today (as they did before) is to perpetuate fear in the black community, along with any other community they deem as a target. The fear that the black community faces now is either being wrongful detained, arrested or killed by law enforcement. In this thesis I argue that the criminal justice system has played an important role in the present state of the black community. There are many knowledgeable scholars that have begun to examine the relationship between the Jim Crow era and the current era of mass incarceration. The deep racial disparities found in the criminal justice system have gone undetected for many of years, and since 2000 the term mass incarceration has been ringing throughout the media and in the academic scene. Being African American in this country is a difficult thing to be on an everyday basis. Recognizing that all minorities (as a whole) are at a disadvantage, this thesis argues that the unique history of blacks that is tied to white, first through slavery and later through disparities in the penal system. This speaks volumes about the hardship that black people had to go through. African American leaders fought and stood for such a long time to simply be placed in the same sentence as white people. America has progressed since its beginning once separated from Great Britain. However, even though the image of America had progressed, the individual groups within America have experienced a great deal of brokenness, heartache and death. Having a clear understanding of the past, it is important that we do not allow history to repeat itself. We must continue to push toward what this country was founded on the notion; that all men are created equal. The War on Drugs had dreadful repercussions for the African American family in the United States. Looking over the past decades of blacks in America, there is a repetition of history. In some respects the social and economic status has changed little for blacks since slavery, except for the fact that they are not physically owned on plantations any longer. The criminal justice system is very broad, there is a number of major roles that plays in the functionality of how our system works. This thesis will only focus on two aspects of the criminal justice system; arrest and sentencing. With focus on the war on Drugs, I perform first hand research in gathering arrest data from all 58 counties in the state of California, during the War on Drugs. The results of this analysis suggest that African Americans were arrested a much higher rate in comparison the white population. Looking at sentencing, I specifically focused on how mandatory sentencing produced more of a racial disparity in the judicial system. The results of the sentencing analysis suggests that African American were sentenced longer for drug offenses than white offenders.

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