Our general discussion of justice, and more specifically Dr. J’s jury selection question during Monday’s symposium made me think of some statistics that I heard a few years ago when we were discussing the death penalty in my high school. My class had a discussion about the flaws in our justice system, which often takes a variant form of Aristotle’s rectificatory system.
The death penalty itself is controversial with its eye-for-an-eye style justice. The statistics surrounding race and the death penalty reveal other, more disturbing, realities about the success of “justice” as executed through capital punishment. I did a little research to see if I could find the study my teacher showed our class, and here’s what I found:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/death-penalty/us-death-penalty-facts/death-penalty-and-race
Amnesty International has a page devoted to race and the death penalty. Essentially, killers of white victims face the death penalty far more often than killers of African-American or other non-white victims. Further, non-white defendants, specifically African-American defendants, receive the death penalty at higher rates for similar crimes.
A similar problem of race surrounds the issue of mandatory minimums for drug possession, use, and distribution. In the 1980s, Congress created mandatory minimums for crack cocaine users that did not apply to powder cocaine users. These minimums have created massive disparities in sentencing for white and African-American drug users because powder and crack, interestingly, tend to appear at different rates in the different communities. Although the two groups use essentially the same drug, African-American users of crack receive harsher punishment.
To relate back to our discussion of Aristotle: We put massive value in the idea of blind justice. Defendants are supposed to be judged impartially and punishment is crafted and doled out to fit the crime. Aristotle puts a lot of stock in a judge’s ability to impartially rectify an injustice, but our own system shows that prejudice runs rampant through our system of rectification. Who, exactly, receives justice when prejudice is allowed to maintain a foothold in the decision making process?
As the quote from Amnesty points out: "We simply cannot say we live in a country that offers equal justice to all Americans when racial disparities plague the system by which our society imposes the ultimate punishment." --Senator Russ Feingold on Civil Rights as a Priority for the 108th Congress, Senate, January 2003
So how do we fix our system? Can justice ever really be as blind or impartial as it should be?
The death penalty itself is controversial with its eye-for-an-eye style justice. The statistics surrounding race and the death penalty reveal other, more disturbing, realities about the success of “justice” as executed through capital punishment. I did a little research to see if I could find the study my teacher showed our class, and here’s what I found:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/death-penalty/us-death-penalty-facts/death-penalty-and-race
Amnesty International has a page devoted to race and the death penalty. Essentially, killers of white victims face the death penalty far more often than killers of African-American or other non-white victims. Further, non-white defendants, specifically African-American defendants, receive the death penalty at higher rates for similar crimes.
A similar problem of race surrounds the issue of mandatory minimums for drug possession, use, and distribution. In the 1980s, Congress created mandatory minimums for crack cocaine users that did not apply to powder cocaine users. These minimums have created massive disparities in sentencing for white and African-American drug users because powder and crack, interestingly, tend to appear at different rates in the different communities. Although the two groups use essentially the same drug, African-American users of crack receive harsher punishment.
To relate back to our discussion of Aristotle: We put massive value in the idea of blind justice. Defendants are supposed to be judged impartially and punishment is crafted and doled out to fit the crime. Aristotle puts a lot of stock in a judge’s ability to impartially rectify an injustice, but our own system shows that prejudice runs rampant through our system of rectification. Who, exactly, receives justice when prejudice is allowed to maintain a foothold in the decision making process?
As the quote from Amnesty points out: "We simply cannot say we live in a country that offers equal justice to all Americans when racial disparities plague the system by which our society imposes the ultimate punishment." --Senator Russ Feingold on Civil Rights as a Priority for the 108th Congress, Senate, January 2003
So how do we fix our system? Can justice ever really be as blind or impartial as it should be?
This blind justice concept applies to more than just our court systems. When The Philharmonic started doing 'blind auditions'(where the people auditioning were behind a curtain, thus unable to be seen by the judges). Since the implementation of these auditions, the orchestra has had more racially and gendered diverse members than ever before.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to the court system, things cannot be so easily fixed. Unfortunately, the defendant can't be put behind a screen, so where does that leave us? With laws enacted about certain drugs, it can be uncertain how much race played a part in the legislation: the laws that seem racist could be targeted towards more dangerous drugs or drugs related to more crime. When it comes to the death penalty, however, the evidence and history is quite damning and can quite possibly not be solved for awhile.
I think about things like race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, legal status, etc. nearly every day in our discussions of justice, impartiality, and the judicial system in this country in general. The system is broken in more ways than one, and the minorities undoubtedly bear the burden. The penal system in this country and around the world undoubtedly targets minorities, often criminalizing individuals who rarely need time behind bars. Rather, many need the education and access to services they have been restricted from due to the income and opportunities into which they were born.
ReplyDeleteThis notion echoes our discussion of rehabilitation versus retribution, a choice that seems clear to me: rehabilitation. Rehabilitation can include retribution, but retribution does not include rehabilitation. Many people who are targeted by our justice system need (and deserve) access to the education and services they have been denied in order to fulfill their own ergon and play a beneficial role in society. We cannot expect people to operate functionally within a dysfunctional system.
I just came across a case in which an African-American man was in his last hours before his execution but the Supreme Court stopped everything because his trial sentencing had been based on a testimony that was racially driven. His lawyers were not arguing that he was innocent of any crime, but that his race played a big part in his sentencing to death row. Despite the US Supreme Court's interference, the man on death row, is technically still on death row and can possibly still be put to death.
ReplyDeleteThis type of interference from the Supreme Court is extremely rare, but I find all of this odd when the man himself is not arguing about his guilt. So I guess this instance poses questions of its own. A man is guilty, but his sentence was based on his race, therefore everything is being reviewed. Is his race that big of a factor that his crime and guilt come second, or is the injustice that has been done to him too big to ignore despite his past actions?
Sarah's original question is can our justice system ever really be blind or impartial as it should be, and my answer to this is no. The justice system we rely on was based on principles that originally applied to one group of people and has gradually been amended to include others that are now accepted into this society we all live in now. With these laws come discrepancies and distinctions being made such as the one Sarah pointed out about cocaine usage and sentencing. When a system is made for a specific group of people and then others are in a way let in, nothing is going to be completely fair or impartial, because the group now included was not originally a part of the making of the system itself.