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Stereotyping and poor legal representation. Faulty eye witness identification when the victim is another race. Jailhouse "confessions" for other's sentencing breaks.
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Originally Posted by rogead
Institutionalized racism
I agree with both of these.
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Originally Posted by NorthGAbound12
No I don't know it's true that such a thing happens but that's not "institutionalized racism" anyways. That might be racist but racism is different from "institutionalized racism." Institutionalized racism speaks to our American institutions, law enforcement, the courts, etc. being racist as a whole. One scared and racist couple does not equate with institutionalized racism.
The idea that American institutions are systematically oppressing and discriminating against minorities is destructive to American unity, racist in itself, and patently absurd.
From your definition, institutional racism does exist. Just because one ignores the plethora of published data and studies on this subject, that do prove that institutionally, black people are stereotyped and are given harsher punishments and sentences versus whites and hispanics and even that darker skinned blacks face more repercussions in the justice system than lighter skinned blacks, does not mean that it doesn't happen.
In fact, the only institution that I feel where "institutional racism" exists is in our justice system and it can be seen from the streets, in regards to police harrassment and arrests, to the court systems, especially in regards to sentencing and pleas, like PPs mentioned.
That said, poor people in general usually face harsher sentences versus middle and upper class individuals, I would bet that all the whites exonerated via DNA evidence were poor and many were probably not first time offenders. Once someone commits a crime, the justice system, even if they are keeping out of trouble, will always label them indignant and their prior record makes it easier to convict them of crimes they didn't even commit.
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Originally Posted by Motion
Then out of the people who have been exonerated through DNA testing what is the accurate numbers for those who have been black?
The OP had a quote where it said that 64% of those exonerated were black, which proves the institutional racism since 46% of inmates are black, that means that blacks on a whole are more likely to be sent to jail when they did not commit any crime at all. This is one of the reasons why I am against the death penalty.
For all of those who like to speak in percentages in regards to black people and negative statistics, I would hope you would speak on this one as well since blacks are disproportionately jailed when they are innocent when compared to their prison population and whites are underrepresented meaning more whites who actually commit crimes are rightfully in jail. This is evidence of institutional racism and an example of the prevailing stereotypes in our country of black men being criminals, a stereotype which continues to grow even as crime rates decrease across the country for black males.
I would hazard the guess that it is due to the fact that more blacks are arrested for committing crimes.
Prison system is big money. They insource dirt cheap labor and plenty of money to be made not just w/ the war on drugs. However, according to the BOP stats about 50% of offenses are drug related. Then about 60% of inmates are "white" iirc this would also include the 30%+ "hispanics" ) Asians and Native Americans together are less than 4%. The recent BOP stats do not seem to show 46% black inmates. Maybe I am misunderstanding something.
According to this "blacks" are about 37%. BOP: Quick Facts Notice the number in privately managed vs other facilities.
Prison system is big money. They insource dirt cheap labor and plenty of money to be made not just w/ the war on drugs. However, according to the BOP stats about 50% of offenses are drug related. Then about 60% of inmates are "white" iirc this would also include the 30%+ "hispanics" ) Asians and Native Americans together are less than 4%. The recent BOP stats do not seem to show 46% black inmates. Maybe I am misunderstanding something.
According to this "blacks" are about 37%. BOP: Quick Facts
Notice the number in privately managed vs other facilities.
That only covers federal prisons, most inmates are in county jails and state prisons. Only 140,000 out of nearly 2,000,000 are in federal prisons.
Once I knew a young black guy who had been arrested for cocaine possession. He claimed that it had been planted on him by police, and he actually was able to persuade a jury of this and thus beat the rap.
I knew him to be a very hard worker who didn't seem like the type to be involved with coke, but still I was skeptical. I asked him why cops might have planted coke on him. His response was that blacks do commit lots of crime, hence many cops harbor animosity towards blacks. Seems like a pretty reasonable perspective, and probably true.
It explains why a lot of blacks cheered when OJ Simpson got off. Many of them had been, or knew of someone who had been on the receiving end of an attempted frame job by police. Someone said that in the Simpson case, LAPD tried to frame a guilty man, and in the process blew the case. Perhaps what also happened was that the methods that had worked for LAPD so many times before fell apart when confronted with OJ's legal 'dream team.'
In total, about 850,000 out of 2,000,000 inmates are black.
About 70% of people in jails haven't been convicted. I am not sure how that would affect that statistics.
So where are you getting those numbers?
Seems both links I posted show a smaller number. Though I haven't looked again for the totals.
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