American Crime Season Two Essay

Although society is responsible for accepting the historical master narratives that connect African Americans to criminality, more individuals are beginning to realize the issue that internal racism causes. Documentaries, like 13th, are increasing in popularity, causing vast audiences to notice that many of the historical master narratives regarding race and criminality are imprecise. This specific documentary exposes how the media inaccurately depicts African Americans as criminals, and therefore, society should not always trust the media’s representation of individuals. By portraying how African Americans are criminalized, this documentary also offers solutions as to how the problem of mass incarceration can be solved; through not only educating police officials and training them to approach situations in a colorblind manner, but also adjusting structural components, such as laws that require extremely long sentences for committing petty crimes, the amount of minorities jailed for committing petty crimes will decrease drastically, thus allowing federal and state spending to be directed toward more important

An innocent person is described as “free from guilt of a specific crime or charge" (Dictionary.com). Jospeh Abbitt is an African American Male that was convicted for a crime he did not commit in 1995, he was thirty-one years of age at the time. “The biggest crime in the U.S. criminal justice system is that it is a race-based institution where African-Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people”( Bill Quigley). There is a proven fact that African Americans in the United States are easily targeted when it comes to crimes. Why is this the case? The answer is simple African Americans have always been looked down on, never looked as a human, or never looked as if they have any worth in this nation so of course it is easy to make them a target.

In the film “American Violet”, it showcases Dee Roberts, an African-American single mother of four, getting unlawfully accused of drug dealing crack cocaine during a drug raid ordered by the district attorney. Roberts thereafter pursued a lawsuit against the district attorney, Calvin Beckett. The film “American Violet” was based on the true story of the civil rights lawsuit Regina Kelly v. John Paschall (Weigant, 2009). The film exhibits several themes of how the criminal justice system targets low-income individuals of color such as offering plea bargains, having elected judges and district attorneys. One of the main techniques that the criminal justice system uses to disproportionately target low-income individuals of color is through mass incarceration. The disparity of mass incarceration within minority groups is due random drug raids in low-income neighbors, campaigns that aimed to be “Tough Against Crime” and unfair sentences.

It has been brought up that certain race and ethic affects a person’s sentencing. Many studies have addressed the question are African Americans treated more severely than similarly situated whites? (Mitchell, 2005). Observers had indeed noted that black defendants get more severe sentencing than white defendants do (Spohn, 1981). For many years’ social scientist has examined this theory and came up with three explanations, racial discrimination, Wealth discrimination, and legal factors (Sellin, 1928). These three explanations all direct back to blacks because blacks are more likely to be poor, so they are wealth discriminated. Also, legal factors point to blacks because black defendants are more likely to have a serious charge or criminal record than whites do. Some researchers examine whether race has an impact on juveniles being convicted in the adult system (Howell, 2012) as well.

Can racial bias have an effect on the verdict of being guilty or innocent? The American judicial courtroom has been comprised of the nation’s many greatest racial discriminatory cases over the past century, but the most racially upstanding case, when referring to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird includes The Scottsboro Trials. Both stories uprise in the 1930s, displaying a white supremacist mindset, which two cases fall into the conviction of rape. The Scottsboro case started on a train to northern Alabama to southern Tennessee, when nine African American boys, ranging in ages from 13-19, allegedly raped two “innocent” Caucasian women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. Racial discrimination uprises in American judicial system when shown in To Kill a Mockingbird and The Scottsboro Trials through the racial prejudice within the jury in the courtroom, easy accessibility to target African Americans, biased accusations, as well as the social pressure to serve in one’s defense.

The people of a minority group who are at a greater risk of being subjected to the criminal justice system are the African Americans and Hispanics. It is not surprising these two groups are more prone, yet throughout the remainder of this paper, certain concepts/themes will be further analyzed from a chosen film to portray the reality minorities face with and in the criminal justice system and society.

Everyday, people are arrested for crimes they have committed. However, the justice system, in some cases, has failed to convict and arrest the right person. Innocent people have been sent to jail based upon the deliberate misidentification of suspects. Throughout U.S history, there have been several famous wrongful convictions such as the Scottsboro Boys and Ed Johnson (Grimsley). Their convictions were based on race due to the racial strife from the Jim Crow era. Base on David Love’s article, many convictions after the Jim Crow era were still being caused by misleading identification from eyewitness claims of the suspects being African Americans. Due to the advancement of forensic and DNA technology, lack of evidence from previous convictions

"When someone fabricates a crime and blames it on another person because of his race OR when an actual crime has been committed and the perpetrator falsely blames someone because of his race." (Russel 70) The negative image of African-Americans has become so bad that "imaginary" Black people are invented as criminals. In some cases Black individuals were even chosen out of a line

In both the case of Tom Robinson and the real life version of the Scottsboro boys, we see that justice is denied to African Americans because the jury consists of only white. The day of the Scottsboro trial, when the jury was discussing the final verdict, the sheriff had a talk with the doctor who examined the girls and the jury didn’t do much investigation. Klarman states, “It later came out that Sheriff Wann had warned Norris that he would be killed if he did not admit that the girls had been raped”(Klarman 160). This quote demonstrates that the trial wasn’t the best since it later came out that the doctor lied which meant that the jury didn’t do much to investigate. This shows that the jury didn’t want the boys to win the trial

It is widely broadcasted that African Americans are stereotyped as criminals, a partial blame is to be put on the media. The public’s inaccurate image of the

Race is a very important factor with these two stories because you’re easily able to depict what the race of the criminal is and that narrows down to the actual target, but in these cases, race can lead to accusing the wrong person with a crime that they didn’t do. For example, in both Monster and Murder on a Sunday Morning, they were both accused of a crime that they didn’t do because they were both black. Steve Harmon was accused of being the look out during a robbery, which ended with a man being shot and Brenton Butler was accused of shooting the wife of a tourist. Furthermore, the only difference between the two stories is that Steve wasn’t accused of shooting the victim, Brenten was.

In “To Kill a Mockingbird” Tom Robinson (African American) was accused of raping Mayella Ewell (Caucasian female) and was sentenced guilty. “No I don’t recollect if he hit me. I mean yes I do, he hit me.” (Harper pg. 248) Mayella was testifying that Tom was guilty when she stumbled and said the truth by accident and giving Atticus (Tom’s lawyer for the case) evidence to prove that Tom was not guilty. Sadly the jury had decided not to take any of the evidence into consideration and sentencing Tom Robinson to jail. This is because Tom is African American and at the time people were very racist and think that all African Americans are all bad. This happened in the “Scottsboro Trial” as well. There were 9 guys “Scottsboro Boys”(African American) on a train

The reason we perceive the word people to refer to African Americans is due to tactics used by the media when reporting on crime. Rather than report on crimes committed by blacks as well as by whites, “news stories regarding virtually all street crime have disproportionally featured African American offenders” (Alexander 106). As a result of the media’s inaccurate coverage of crime, our “racial schemas operate not only as part of conscious, rational deliberations, but also-automatically-without conscious awareness or intent” (Alexander 106). We have become conditioned to view African Americans as more likely to engage in criminal activities even though, for example, “African Americans constituted only 15 percent of current drug users in 1995, and they constitute roughly the same percentage today” (Alexander 106). Although this evidence proves that African Americans are not more likely to be drug users, people are hesitant in addressing this misconception for discussing issues about “race makes people uncomfortable” (Alexander 238). In particular, “police and prosecutors-like most

Within media and society there are seemingly different representations of race and crime. They are different in how they are constructed for their perceived audience in the majority and the opinion that is supposed to be evoked by the event. Within the public perception of crime in reality there is abundant racism that has been socially constructed over many generations. Whereas media crime is gentrified and critiqued in such a way as to support fears and intrigue into crime through violence from what could rarely happen to the viewer. When both of these are combined the social construction of race is reinforced. Through crime television shows the allure of feeling a crime through draws an audience.

the stress of having a large family on a low income may lead to less