How Just Is Our Justice System? A Look Inside Racism, Corruption, And Fiscal Abuse

Many problems continue to plague the American justice system such as racism, corruption, and fiscal abuse. According to reports from the University Of Dayton, “America must stop feeding the prison monster.”

If you had to eat a piece of the pie of tainted justice, two specific areas would need to be addressed or dissected. First, how the minority populations fail to receive fair representation in the court system before they become part of the prison system population, and second, how many feel the prison system is a “cash cow.”

The correct terminology for minorities not receiving proper representation is disproportionate minority contact, or DMC. In the current standards, the minority groups that fall under the DMC category include Hispanics, Native Americans, and African-Americans. Reports from the Relative Rate Index show that:

• Hispanics are imprisoned more often than other populations


• African-Americans have a higher rate of probation than other populations


• Individual states report a higher rate of overrepresentation for African-Americans


• Residential placement for Hispanics, Native Americans, and African-Americans is greater than for any other population.

The idea of the DMC first occurred within the juvenile court system, where reported instances of minority populations not receiving the proper representation when a juvenile entered the criminal processing phase occurred. Because of the reports from the Index, individual states had to begin enforcing the same policies when processing all juveniles regardless of their racial background.

A California-based organization, the Burns Institute, works to create policies and procedures to help juvenile prison systems ensure there is equal judicial treatment for minority populations. In its report, the Burns Institute supports the effectiveness of the programs instituted in Maryland, Virginia, and Arizona, and strives to raise awareness about the DMC in other states.

In Maryland, the Institute worked with the Baltimore Juvenile Prison Systems to create policies and procedures to deter the delinquency of minority populations in meeting court dates. These new regulations helped reduced the rate of court report failures by more than 50 percent. In Illinois, the Institute raised the bar to a “zero tolerance for fighting” policy in schools so that minority populations were not considered offenders in the juvenile system. Before the policy, individuals caught fighting in schools were processed as juvenile offenders.

This new policy helped reduce the number of charges for fighting and sentencing in the juvenile system by almost 40 percent. In Arizona, the Institute helped implement new ways to counsel youth on how they can avoid becoming part of the juvenile court system. Through the implementation of these new ideas for avoiding detention in the prison system, the number of criminal charges in Pima County, Arizona, dropped over the past five years.

To date, there is no DMC for the adult prisons, and due to different reporting systems, no definitive areas for DMC involvement exist. Index researchers try to work with “the nature of offenses, differential policing policies and practices, sentencing laws or racial bias, which are just some of the possible contributors to disparities in the system.” One of the biggest reasons for the racial disparities is a potential language barrier. When a police officer detains an individual, said person may not understand his or her rights because of a language barrier, which in turn means they do not understand what is happening.

With inaccurate data on reporting Asian populations, the recommendation from the Index indicates there should be a further breakdown of other races such as Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian, and Japanese.

Like the juvenile system, reports indicated there should be state and federal mandates for the Adult inmates as mentioned above. The Index study data shows that “Failing to separate ethnicity from race hides the disparity among races.”

The state of Texas has come under fire with the DMC because most of their detainees come from the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Currently, the INS houses prisoners throughout 70 Texas county prisons, and most are not jailed because of crimes they committed, but because they are in the country illegally and do not understand how to defend themselves.

The second problem with the American justice system is that many think of it in the terms of a “cash cow,” based on recent cases involving judges and other officials that illustrated the severe mismanagement of funding. For example, in 2009, two Pennsylvania judges pled guilty to receiving kickbacks in excess of 2.6 million when they used their gavels to send over 5,000 juveniles (mostly first time offenders) to posh private prisons.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is also accused of feeding the prison “cash cow” by placing INS detainees, which is the fastest growing population of inmates in the prison system. According to the report, “Locked Away: Immigration Detainees in Local Jails in the United States,” the INS pays hundreds of millions each year for detaining immigrants at local facilities, and even though its involvement may raise concerns about the flow of money to cash strapped prisons, some advocates want to keep the contracts between INS and the prison system.

In the report, J. Allen Clemson, of Dallas County, Texas, said, “It’s more like recovering costs.” He added, “The building boom in the late 80s and early 90s resulted in the creation of more prison beds without the funding to pay the salaries and costs of running the prison. With the advent of the agreements between the county and the INS, the prison system is now self sustainable, and does not cause any additional financial burden on county and state taxpayers.”

“It’s an excellent relationship for the federal government and the counties,” Clemson said.

While the idea of having a prison system used as a hotel instead of a correctional facility raises the brows of many people, it strikes those who are impassioned about human rights a lot harder. Allyson Collins of Human Rights Watch says, “We are asking for humane public policy.”

Another side effect of the bankrupt prison system is the expenses inmates now incur for medical and dental services, normally provided by the prison system. Individual states now charge fees ranging from $1.25 to $60 per night for incidental expenses. “In abstract it sounds good, user fees for prisons, but it’s a ridiculous notion. Really, it is a poor person’s tax. Some counties are lukewarm to it and others have rejected it because they know they are never going to get it. You cannot get blood from a turnip,” said Sean O’Brien, former Chief Public Defender in Kansas City during an interview with the Human Rights Watch group.

Sources:
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/03justice/crime15.htm
http://academic.udayton.edu/03justice/crime18.htm
http://www.burnsinstitute.org/
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/vol18/issue16/pols.INS.cash.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2009/0515/p25s10-usgn.html
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/02/13/pennsylvania-judges-plead-guilty-in-juvenile-center-kickbackscheme/