The United States boasts of the most extensive criminal justice system globally, with over 2.4 million people serving time in the penitentiary system (Oxford Analytica, 2017). While it may appear as a society bound by rules and justice, the U.S criminal justice system is deeply embedded in institutional racialism against minority communities. Minority women have a higher risk of receiving harsher sentences because they tend to commit more serious crimes as they struggle to survive in already marginalized communities.
Schultz (2017) asserts that female judges are more lenient when it comes to handing down sentences to female defendants .one of the reasons is that female judges have lived the defendant’s experiences. Thus they are empathetic in making judgments. Additionally, female judges are much more aware of the consequences stemming from their deliberations and give less harsh sentences to women. According to Schultz (2017), judges from minority communities could alter the current situation as they would be more fair and lenient in sentencing minority females.
Minority males are the worst affected by racial disparities in the U.S criminal system. According to Franklin & Henry (2020), .minority males (especially blacks) are more likely to attract severe sentences than their white counterparts. Additionally, most studies establish racial discrimination as the most significant reason behind the disparities in sentencing.
In the United States, federal sentencing guidelines were meant to increase uniformity. However, as Franklin & Henry (2020) state, the recent sentencing guidelines have increased racial disparities in sentencing by increasing the certainty and severity of sentences. Since people from minority communities are often arrested and incarcerated, they are highly disadvantaged by the federal sentencing guidelines, which rely heavily on past criminal records to arrive at a sentence.
Presentence reports play a vital role in determining the weight of the sentences to be deliberated. Typically, the report contains the defendant’s educational and criminal history and other crucial aspects. Equally, I think judges should consider exceptional circumstances before handing out judgment. Such action would ensure fairness and justice to the defendant and their families.
The cocaine sentencing laws denote the 18: 1 sentencing ratio for cocaine possession compared to crack. In this case, a person found with 18 grams of cocaine and another found with only a gram of crack would serve a similar sentence (Riopka, 2014). The cocaine sentencing law is discriminatory in that it overlooks the sameness of cocaine and crack. Undoubtedly, this law was made bearing in mind that black people were the most users of crack cocaine compared to whites and hence, would serve longer sentences.
As proposed by Stanley Cohen, moral panic occurs when an event, an aspect, or even a specific group of people is identified as a societal threat. In this situation, the media and other entities sensationalize the issue until it spirals out of control. Arguably, the cocaine sentencing laws resulted from a moral panic created by subsequent governments in the United States. In fighting against crack cocaine and the escalating drug problem, regimes employed propaganda to enact stringent laws targeting minority communities (Eversman & Bird, 2016).
Reference
Eversman, M. H., & Bird, J. D. (2016). Moral panic and social justice: A guide for analyzing social problems. Social work, 1-8.
Franklin, T. W., & Henry, T. K. S. (2020). Racial disparities in federal sentencing outcomes: Clarifying the role of criminal history. Crime & Delinquency, 66(1), 3-32.
Oxford Analytica. (2017). US prison population will increase under Trump. Emerald Expert Briefings, (oxan-db).
Riopka, A. (2014). Equal Protection Falling Through the Crack: A Critique of the Crack-to-Powder Sentencing Disparity. Ala. CR & CLL Rev., 6, 121.
Schultz, U. (2017). Do female judges judge differently? Empirical realities of a theoretical debate. In Women Judges in the Muslim World (pp. 23-50). Brill.
