RACE AND PUNISHMENTJarel Teo

Zhou Zhennan

Evan Tan

STATISTICS

People of colour

make up half the

American population, but 80%

of the people

stopped were

Blacks and

Latinos

When Whites were stopped, only 8% were

frisked

When Blacks or Latinos are stopped, 85% of them are frisked

In a California

study, Blacks

are three times more

likely to be

stopped than

whitesBlacks and Latinos are

stopped at a higher rate than

whites

STATISTICS

•New York state of Criminal Justice did a review of disparities in processing felony arrests

•Blacks are more likely to remain in prison awaiting trial

•In some parts of New York, Blacks are 33% more likely to be detained awaiting felony trials than Whites.

STATISTICS

When released from Prison

17% of White job applicants

received callbacks

5% of Black job applicants received callbacks

STATISTICSThe longer

the sentence, the more likely it is that non-

white people will be the ones that get it

A report by the

Sentencing Project

found that 2/3 of the people in US with

life sentences are non-white

STATISTICS

African Americans are frequently illegally excluded from criminal jury service.

In Houston County, Alabama, 8 out of 10 African Americans qualified for jury service have been struck by prosecutors from serving on death penalty cases

STATISTICS

Trials are rare. Only 3 percent of

criminal cases go to trial- the rest

are plea bargains

However, most plea bargains

consist of promise of a longer

sentence if a person exercises

their constitutional rights to trial.

As a result, many innocent people

would rather plead guilty.

HARRIS COUNTY EXAMPLE

•Only 18% of the county’s population was black in 1991.

•The incarceration rate in 1991 for black people was 9 times greater than the incarceration rate for white people.

•55% of the people on death row were black, while only 35% were white (compare to population)

•Among criminals who were on death row for crimes committed when they were teenagers, 73.3% were black and only 13.3% were white.

THE SCOTTSBORO TRIALS

Nine young African

Americans

Aged from thirteen to

twenty

Got into a fight with some white boys

Two white girls got involved in

the fight

The girls were afraid of being

arrested

They claimed that the black

men in custody raped them

SCOTTSBORO TRIALSA doctor said that the two women had had sexual relations before the train ride and that there were no bruises of them to show that they were forced.

Both women insisted that they were raped by all 9 men.

Without much evidence, the locals said that the locals should be punished just for the thought of assaulting the women.

No one questioned the girls’ words, except one of the accused, who was struck by a bayonet when he called her a liar.

SCOTTSBORO TRIALS

Out of 9 of them, 8 of them were

sentenced to death.

One was sentenced to

life imprisonment

.

The case was refused by the

Supreme Court.

Case was not dropped even when one of the women

gave in to not being raped.

CONCLUSION

The criminal justice system, is not perfect, and can be subjected to Racism.