The United States criminal justice system has for several years been accused of a racially biased institution where the non-white, especially the African Americans, are maltreated. Many scholars and commentators have alleged that the criminal justice system is an institution anchored on racism which has been known to dishonestly target the people of color and punish them with a severity that is rarely applied to the white population. This paper, therefore, analysis Nichole Griffith’s articles titled “RACISM IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM” and explores some critical facts concerning the racism in the U.S justice system.
According to Nichole Griffith, the racial discrimination cases seen today are not a mistake but a result of a well-orchestrated plan to treat the African Americans a dishonorable way. In an attempt to unearth the genesis of this vice in the criminal justice system, Griffith refers back to 1982 during the Ronald Reagan administration when the government made changes that became the foundation of the problems found in the system today. As Griffith observes, President Reagan’s calling for an increased spending in military and police force and the reduction of expenditures in the social welfare was his first step towards facilitating the arrests of the African American. In 1992, ten years later, more than $30 billion was channeled to war on drugs which ironically targeted African Americans more than any other race. Griffith says despite the studies showing that around 76% of illegal drug users to be the white compared to 14% of African Americans, around 37% of those charged with drug cases where the black people against a surprisingly small percentage of the white people (Griffith, 2012). The writer is justified to suggest that this is unfair especially considering that African American amount to only around 13% of the American population.