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182266 Responseshttp://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/02/inequality-class-question-two/Inequality+Class%3A+Question+Two2010-02-20+12%3A23%3A25Sam+Richards to Inequality Class: Question Two
I feel that money has a lot to do with how black people end up in jail much more than white people. Like the girl in this video said white people on average have a lot more money than black people so they are able to basically buy there way out of jail. Whether it is through hiring the best lawyers to defend them or if it is just having connections and being able to get off with a mere slap on the wrist while blacks and other minorities get time in jail for these same or similar crimes.
However I feel that money only helps to a certain point. I honestly feel that judges do take race into account when making their decisions whether it is on purpose or just an subconscious point. I do not feel it is necessarily because they are racist, I feel like they are just naturally going to favor helping the person that looks more like them than the black man or other minority who they can not relate with at all. I feel that Sam said it best when he was saying the judge would compare the criminal to himself in high school or one of his friends or even his child, while the black kid would have nothing at all that would relate to the judge, thus leading the judge to have much less sympathy for the criminal.
Another situation which causes for more black people to end up in jail than white, is that police are much more attentive to crime and the drug war in urban areas than in the suburbs. Black people live more in these urban city areas than the whites so police officers are obviously more attentive to them, than the white kid in the suburban neighborhood who smokes. Then in these situations the rich white kids from the suburbs if they are actually caught obviously have the money to afford a top notch lawyer and since it’s not a serious crime they often get off scotch free while the black man has a lawyer appointed to him who doesn’t really care about the case and is getting paid either way and he just lets his defendant go down.
So all this is to say that I definitely agree that money is a serious part of the reason colored people end up in jail for the same crimes as white people. However I feel that it is not the only reason. I agree with Sam a lot about how the whole “I’m at the top of the mountain so I will help the people similar to me so we stay at the top of the mountain idea.”
I absolutely believe that if you have money and / or are a prestigious figure in society, you can hire a good lawyer for yourself who will represent you well and help get you acquitted from whatever crime you may or may not have committed, regardless of your race. I believe this to be the case because in a law class I am in, we just studied the OJ Simpson trial. OJ Simpson was a black football player (prestigious and had money) who allegedly killed his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman. Preliminary evidence suggested OJ Simpson’s possible guilt. However, the expensive team of accomplished attorneys OJ Simpson hired to defend him, who came to be known as “The Dream Team” because they were the best, helped to undermine the prosecution’s arguments and their witnesses. Ultimately, OJ Simpson was found “not guilty”. Therefore, I strongly believe that the more money one has, the smaller chance one has of being convicted of a crime. If OJ Simpson had not been famous and wealthy, he might have been just another black man in the eyes of the judge and jury. If OJ Simpson had not been wealthy, they might have thought he was guilty due to whatever prejudices they fostered against blacks at the time (one of the prosecution’s witnesses who happened to be a member of the LAPD and was investigating the murder cases was an extremely racist man. The LAPD was facing issues of corruption at the time, and the murders were only a couple of years after the Los Angeles race riots had occurred). When OJ Simpson was found “not guilty”, many people in the black community were more than enthusiastic. However, they said that they weren’t cheering for OJ Simpson’s verdict, but rather they were cheering for all of their relatives or friends that they knew who had been screwed over by a corrupt system – they were cheering because Johnny Cochran had played by the white rule book when OJ Simpson hired him for a lot of money (just like many other white men would have done in his situation) and Johnny Cochran came out victorious for his black client.
I think that the statistics of blacks going to jail more frequently than whites for the same crimes committed comes into play if black people do not have the money to hire a “Dream Team” of attorneys including those like Johnny Cochran. Also, I feel like when people don’t have a lot of money, judges and jurors can believe that the lack of wealth can lead to despair or bad choices (like selling drugs) in order to make money to put food on the table. I don’t know why white judges and jurors have stereotypes and prejudices against black people on trial, because I obviously think it is wrong. However, if the person on trial is black, it would be wise for the attorneys to select a sympathetic jury (or at least a non-prejudicial and more fair jury) consisting of black jurors, who will recognize that although a black man/woman is on trial, not all black people (like themselves) commit crimes.
I feel like the reason that black people are more likely to be convicted of a crime or put into a jail system that is harsher (such as younger black than white kids being put into adult systems) than white people is due to a combination of both money and some level of racism. Although they may not openly admit that they are racist, I find it very difficult to believe that all people today do not have at least some stereotypes that have carried through from the past about people of color, especially black people. What I mean by this is that, either because it is what is rooted into their genetics or because of the rough past that they have had to face, black people are in general more violent than white people are. I do not believe they are at fault for it, I believe that it is either something that they were born with or perhaps it is a personality trait that they were taught in some respects for safety reasons due to the happenings of their past. For this reason, I do understand why a judge (of either black or white race) would be more inclined to convict a black person versus a white person for the same exact crime, or why they would more likely put a black minor into the adult system as opposed to a white minor for the exact same crime. On another note, in terms of wealth being a deciding factor for all of this as well, I believe that it definitely does play a part. Money may not be able to buy you happiness but I truly believe that it can definitely buy you the resources to allow you to lead a happier life. In terms of the issue at hand, what I mean to say is that although money may not incline the judge's decision in any way, it is very likely to be able to buy you a better lawyer who can do so. In addition to that, if you have money and can afford it, you are much more likely to be able to get out on bail. Do I think the system is fair? Of course not. Should bail be based on your wealth? No way. As mentioned by this video, I do believe the system has many glitches but I also believe that money and race are both a big reason as to why there are more black than white people in jail. It is unfair and it is unfortunate but a person can never truly be unbiased, therefore I think that there is little that can be done to make the system any better than it is now.
If you were to try and argue that there is no racism in court rooms, you might as well be trying to argue that racism, as a whole, does not exist. Racism is unavoidable and i am sure it has been a contributor to many court sentences but i do not believe it is the major aspect Sam's statistics were trying to show in class. If you are looking at the sentencing percentages you need to take into consideration a wider range of variables that would influence a judge's decision, other than blindly assuming it was a result of racism. Income is certainly one the most major aspect to the sentence someone would face in a court room. Income establishes a strong social identity, one which a judge could quickly use to profile the type of person someone is. Let's say a judge has two men in front of him, one wearing a nice tailored suit along side his family lawyer, the other dressed in an old suit which looks like it was made for someone else, along with their court appointed lawyer, and they were both changed with possession/intent to sell narcotics. A judge could quickly pick up on the well better off man a deduce that since he comes from a good amount of money is less reliant on the sale of drugs so he is a lot less likely to recommit the crime, whereas the poorer man probably relies on the sale of narcotics as his primary source of income so he is more prone to a criminal path.
Its easy to mistake racism as the leading persuasion in court sentencing, but if you think about the wealth per capita of different races then it becomes clear that income is much more influential. For example, African Americans make up a large population of urban areas where crime is very familiar in the everyday. People in these areas are not born into families with lots of money so committing crimes becomes a necessity to survive. Judges from urban areas such as Brooklyn or Queens understand that once someone is released from prison there is very little stopping them from resuming their life of crime. So its clear that geography also plays a significant role, but geography can also be derived back to a families income. A wealthier family would not be found in an apartment in downtown Newark or South Philly.
Once in a courtroom the greatest influence on your fate is the person sitting next to you, your lawyer. If you can afford a good lawyer you can turn a 6 year sentence into 60 hours of community service. The cost of a lawyer is often a reflection of how much you can get away with. If your paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a lawyer you will find yourself getting away with a lot more, like in Johnny Cochran's case you could even get away with murder. its a messed up system where the rich never have to worry about seeing the inside of a prison cell where the poorer are all too familiar.
It could go both ways; not everybody in the court system is racist, however, there are those who discriminate against the stereotypes against blacks. There are also other blacks in the system that sentence those blacks for harsher crimes and punishments because they also have a stereotype of their own race. The fact that people don't want to understand exactly what is still going on with the legal system is ignorant. They refuse to understand that minorities are the main targets of crimes and therefore they will be the so called "example" to others. For years I have witness and have heard of minorities getting a harsher treatment for the crime that they committed that whites has also committed. Minorities are targets, "point blank period," and to no understand that means that a person wants to continue on believing that everybody is getting a fair shake when that is not the case.
Another problem is that minorities bring it on themselves. They feel as though they have to prove everything to everybody and when they decided to give up they take the wrong path and then get themselves into more trouble. The fact that these stereotypes remain is because of the images that minorities put out to society. Not to mention they let people think less of them and thus it goes to their heads. The black judges types who are involved in another black's case is a prime example of them getting tired of the stereotypes and the bashing from everybody so the only thing they can do is get rid of all of the problems. Especially if they gave the same person a chance before and they just decided to do wrong with the chance they received.
The fact that money could be a major factor could also be a huge problem; there are not that many wealthy minorities who are able to hire high quality lawyers to back up their cases. And when they don't have that money the state is liable to give them one and nine out of ten it is a very cheap lawyer who doesn't have that much credibility.
So it could go both ways and for both races. The fact that money could be an issue, racism in the system, stereotypes, the so called "black on black crime, i:e black judges not giving other blacks another chance because of their beliefs," all of these could play a part in the reason why most minorities are sentenced much harsher than whites. So it's not only about being black and most people in the system are racist, it's only because most people are basing everything off of their views, or the views of society. So if society say that a person is bad, if the majority agrees than that is how that person is viewed. And in all honesty none of these factors that I have stated is benefiting blacks or any other minorities in any other way. So somebody please explain to me how this is not true.
Let me first start off my saying that this is a very interesting question and one that produces a lot of different ideas for me. I think it needs to be said first that not ALL judges are racist. I'm not going to sit here and say that by no means are no judges in the criminal justice system racist because although it's unfortunate some people just are racist and it may happen that they do become judges. However, being a criminal justice major I know a lot about the system and know that while certain aspects of the system may seem racist there really may be underlying factors that are the real reasons why some people get sentenced for a longer period of time. I know firsthand that not all judges are racist, not only do I know this from being a criminal justice major but also because I have some personal experience. For the past four years during the summer I work at a courthouse back at home. I literally work for the judge and get to handle all the paperwork and cases that she deals with everyday. I've seen the ratios of white people that she sentences to jail compared to black people that she sentences to jail and there really wasn't that much of a difference. There was somewhat of a difference which maybe people would want to argue over however, I keep in mind that I work at a courthouse in the center city which that city and its surrounding areas are mostly made up of people that are black and hispanic. However, I know not all courts are centered in areas that are predominantly black. Obviously, like we have learned in class there is a difference in the number of black people and amount of time they have to serve in prison compared to the number of whites and the amount of time they must serve. Although the court that I work in may not seem to show the racial bias in sentencing, I know that other courts do. This brings me to my next idea that was asked in the blog about the amount of money a person has affecting the sentencing process. Overall, I do think that it helps when going through the criminal justice process to have a lot of money. If a person (whether black or white) has a good amount of money then they will most likely get one of the best lawyers they can find. Many people these days do not have the option of getting the best lawyers they can find. However, I do not think that means that just because a person can't afford one of the best lawyers out there that they still can't attain an exceptional lawyer. There are numerous lawyers out there, that although they might not charge the most money for their services, they are still amazing at advocating for their clients. For example, I think that public defenders often get a bad reputation since they are paid through the government to represent clients that cannot afford to pay them directly themselves. Through my job I have had to talk to several public defenders and I know that most of them are very qualified and do everything in their power to advocate for their clients and if their clients do happen to get sentenced they try to fight to get them the lesser punishment. Keeping all of this in mind, it leads me to believe that money doesn't ALWAYS matter in regards to the criminal justice system but I would probably be naive if I thought money NEVER helped in any of the circumstances.
I feel that money has a lot to do with how black people end up in jail much more than white people. Like the girl in this video said white people on average have a lot more money than black people so they are able to basically buy there way out of jail. Whether it is through hiring the best lawyers to defend them or if it is just having connections and being able to get off with a mere slap on the wrist while blacks and other minorities get time in jail for these same or similar crimes.
However I feel that money only helps to a certain point. I honestly feel that judges do take race into account when making their decisions whether it is on purpose or just an subconscious point. I do not feel it is necessarily because they are racist, I feel like they are just naturally going to favor helping the person that looks more like them than the black man or other minority who they can not relate with at all. I feel that Sam said it best when he was saying the judge would compare the criminal to himself in high school or one of his friends or even his child, while the black kid would have nothing at all that would relate to the judge, thus leading the judge to have much less sympathy for the criminal.
Another situation which causes for more black people to end up in jail than white, is that police are much more attentive to crime and the drug war in urban areas than in the suburbs. Black people live more in these urban city areas than the whites so police officers are obviously more attentive to them, than the white kid in the suburban neighborhood who smokes. Then in these situations the rich white kids from the suburbs if they are actually caught obviously have the money to afford a top notch lawyer and since it’s not a serious crime they often get off scotch free while the black man has a lawyer appointed to him who doesn’t really care about the case and is getting paid either way and he just lets his defendant go down.
So all this is to say that I definitely agree that money is a serious part of the reason colored people end up in jail for the same crimes as white people. However I feel that it is not the only reason. I agree with Sam a lot about how the whole “I’m at the top of the mountain so I will help the people similar to me so we stay at the top of the mountain idea.”
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I absolutely believe that if you have money and / or are a prestigious figure in society, you can hire a good lawyer for yourself who will represent you well and help get you acquitted from whatever crime you may or may not have committed, regardless of your race. I believe this to be the case because in a law class I am in, we just studied the OJ Simpson trial. OJ Simpson was a black football player (prestigious and had money) who allegedly killed his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman. Preliminary evidence suggested OJ Simpson’s possible guilt. However, the expensive team of accomplished attorneys OJ Simpson hired to defend him, who came to be known as “The Dream Team” because they were the best, helped to undermine the prosecution’s arguments and their witnesses. Ultimately, OJ Simpson was found “not guilty”. Therefore, I strongly believe that the more money one has, the smaller chance one has of being convicted of a crime. If OJ Simpson had not been famous and wealthy, he might have been just another black man in the eyes of the judge and jury. If OJ Simpson had not been wealthy, they might have thought he was guilty due to whatever prejudices they fostered against blacks at the time (one of the prosecution’s witnesses who happened to be a member of the LAPD and was investigating the murder cases was an extremely racist man. The LAPD was facing issues of corruption at the time, and the murders were only a couple of years after the Los Angeles race riots had occurred). When OJ Simpson was found “not guilty”, many people in the black community were more than enthusiastic. However, they said that they weren’t cheering for OJ Simpson’s verdict, but rather they were cheering for all of their relatives or friends that they knew who had been screwed over by a corrupt system – they were cheering because Johnny Cochran had played by the white rule book when OJ Simpson hired him for a lot of money (just like many other white men would have done in his situation) and Johnny Cochran came out victorious for his black client.
I think that the statistics of blacks going to jail more frequently than whites for the same crimes committed comes into play if black people do not have the money to hire a “Dream Team” of attorneys including those like Johnny Cochran. Also, I feel like when people don’t have a lot of money, judges and jurors can believe that the lack of wealth can lead to despair or bad choices (like selling drugs) in order to make money to put food on the table. I don’t know why white judges and jurors have stereotypes and prejudices against black people on trial, because I obviously think it is wrong. However, if the person on trial is black, it would be wise for the attorneys to select a sympathetic jury (or at least a non-prejudicial and more fair jury) consisting of black jurors, who will recognize that although a black man/woman is on trial, not all black people (like themselves) commit crimes.
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I feel like the reason that black people are more likely to be convicted of a crime or put into a jail system that is harsher (such as younger black than white kids being put into adult systems) than white people is due to a combination of both money and some level of racism. Although they may not openly admit that they are racist, I find it very difficult to believe that all people today do not have at least some stereotypes that have carried through from the past about people of color, especially black people. What I mean by this is that, either because it is what is rooted into their genetics or because of the rough past that they have had to face, black people are in general more violent than white people are. I do not believe they are at fault for it, I believe that it is either something that they were born with or perhaps it is a personality trait that they were taught in some respects for safety reasons due to the happenings of their past. For this reason, I do understand why a judge (of either black or white race) would be more inclined to convict a black person versus a white person for the same exact crime, or why they would more likely put a black minor into the adult system as opposed to a white minor for the exact same crime. On another note, in terms of wealth being a deciding factor for all of this as well, I believe that it definitely does play a part. Money may not be able to buy you happiness but I truly believe that it can definitely buy you the resources to allow you to lead a happier life. In terms of the issue at hand, what I mean to say is that although money may not incline the judge's decision in any way, it is very likely to be able to buy you a better lawyer who can do so. In addition to that, if you have money and can afford it, you are much more likely to be able to get out on bail. Do I think the system is fair? Of course not. Should bail be based on your wealth? No way. As mentioned by this video, I do believe the system has many glitches but I also believe that money and race are both a big reason as to why there are more black than white people in jail. It is unfair and it is unfortunate but a person can never truly be unbiased, therefore I think that there is little that can be done to make the system any better than it is now.
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If you were to try and argue that there is no racism in court rooms, you might as well be trying to argue that racism, as a whole, does not exist. Racism is unavoidable and i am sure it has been a contributor to many court sentences but i do not believe it is the major aspect Sam's statistics were trying to show in class. If you are looking at the sentencing percentages you need to take into consideration a wider range of variables that would influence a judge's decision, other than blindly assuming it was a result of racism. Income is certainly one the most major aspect to the sentence someone would face in a court room. Income establishes a strong social identity, one which a judge could quickly use to profile the type of person someone is. Let's say a judge has two men in front of him, one wearing a nice tailored suit along side his family lawyer, the other dressed in an old suit which looks like it was made for someone else, along with their court appointed lawyer, and they were both changed with possession/intent to sell narcotics. A judge could quickly pick up on the well better off man a deduce that since he comes from a good amount of money is less reliant on the sale of drugs so he is a lot less likely to recommit the crime, whereas the poorer man probably relies on the sale of narcotics as his primary source of income so he is more prone to a criminal path.
Its easy to mistake racism as the leading persuasion in court sentencing, but if you think about the wealth per capita of different races then it becomes clear that income is much more influential. For example, African Americans make up a large population of urban areas where crime is very familiar in the everyday. People in these areas are not born into families with lots of money so committing crimes becomes a necessity to survive. Judges from urban areas such as Brooklyn or Queens understand that once someone is released from prison there is very little stopping them from resuming their life of crime. So its clear that geography also plays a significant role, but geography can also be derived back to a families income. A wealthier family would not be found in an apartment in downtown Newark or South Philly.
Once in a courtroom the greatest influence on your fate is the person sitting next to you, your lawyer. If you can afford a good lawyer you can turn a 6 year sentence into 60 hours of community service. The cost of a lawyer is often a reflection of how much you can get away with. If your paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a lawyer you will find yourself getting away with a lot more, like in Johnny Cochran's case you could even get away with murder. its a messed up system where the rich never have to worry about seeing the inside of a prison cell where the poorer are all too familiar.
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It could go both ways; not everybody in the court system is racist, however, there are those who discriminate against the stereotypes against blacks. There are also other blacks in the system that sentence those blacks for harsher crimes and punishments because they also have a stereotype of their own race. The fact that people don't want to understand exactly what is still going on with the legal system is ignorant. They refuse to understand that minorities are the main targets of crimes and therefore they will be the so called "example" to others. For years I have witness and have heard of minorities getting a harsher treatment for the crime that they committed that whites has also committed. Minorities are targets, "point blank period," and to no understand that means that a person wants to continue on believing that everybody is getting a fair shake when that is not the case.
Another problem is that minorities bring it on themselves. They feel as though they have to prove everything to everybody and when they decided to give up they take the wrong path and then get themselves into more trouble. The fact that these stereotypes remain is because of the images that minorities put out to society. Not to mention they let people think less of them and thus it goes to their heads. The black judges types who are involved in another black's case is a prime example of them getting tired of the stereotypes and the bashing from everybody so the only thing they can do is get rid of all of the problems. Especially if they gave the same person a chance before and they just decided to do wrong with the chance they received.
The fact that money could be a major factor could also be a huge problem; there are not that many wealthy minorities who are able to hire high quality lawyers to back up their cases. And when they don't have that money the state is liable to give them one and nine out of ten it is a very cheap lawyer who doesn't have that much credibility.
So it could go both ways and for both races. The fact that money could be an issue, racism in the system, stereotypes, the so called "black on black crime, i:e black judges not giving other blacks another chance because of their beliefs," all of these could play a part in the reason why most minorities are sentenced much harsher than whites. So it's not only about being black and most people in the system are racist, it's only because most people are basing everything off of their views, or the views of society. So if society say that a person is bad, if the majority agrees than that is how that person is viewed. And in all honesty none of these factors that I have stated is benefiting blacks or any other minorities in any other way. So somebody please explain to me how this is not true.
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Let me first start off my saying that this is a very interesting question and one that produces a lot of different ideas for me. I think it needs to be said first that not ALL judges are racist. I'm not going to sit here and say that by no means are no judges in the criminal justice system racist because although it's unfortunate some people just are racist and it may happen that they do become judges. However, being a criminal justice major I know a lot about the system and know that while certain aspects of the system may seem racist there really may be underlying factors that are the real reasons why some people get sentenced for a longer period of time. I know firsthand that not all judges are racist, not only do I know this from being a criminal justice major but also because I have some personal experience. For the past four years during the summer I work at a courthouse back at home. I literally work for the judge and get to handle all the paperwork and cases that she deals with everyday. I've seen the ratios of white people that she sentences to jail compared to black people that she sentences to jail and there really wasn't that much of a difference. There was somewhat of a difference which maybe people would want to argue over however, I keep in mind that I work at a courthouse in the center city which that city and its surrounding areas are mostly made up of people that are black and hispanic. However, I know not all courts are centered in areas that are predominantly black. Obviously, like we have learned in class there is a difference in the number of black people and amount of time they have to serve in prison compared to the number of whites and the amount of time they must serve. Although the court that I work in may not seem to show the racial bias in sentencing, I know that other courts do. This brings me to my next idea that was asked in the blog about the amount of money a person has affecting the sentencing process. Overall, I do think that it helps when going through the criminal justice process to have a lot of money. If a person (whether black or white) has a good amount of money then they will most likely get one of the best lawyers they can find. Many people these days do not have the option of getting the best lawyers they can find. However, I do not think that means that just because a person can't afford one of the best lawyers out there that they still can't attain an exceptional lawyer. There are numerous lawyers out there, that although they might not charge the most money for their services, they are still amazing at advocating for their clients. For example, I think that public defenders often get a bad reputation since they are paid through the government to represent clients that cannot afford to pay them directly themselves. Through my job I have had to talk to several public defenders and I know that most of them are very qualified and do everything in their power to advocate for their clients and if their clients do happen to get sentenced they try to fight to get them the lesser punishment. Keeping all of this in mind, it leads me to believe that money doesn't ALWAYS matter in regards to the criminal justice system but I would probably be naive if I thought money NEVER helped in any of the circumstances.
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