I always knew that there was a misrepresentation of our population in the jail system, but I didn’t know how bad it was until we covered it in class. As we began the class readings and discussions I came to realize that the US seems to consider some crimes “more criminal” than others.
White-collar crime is widespread and very costly. According to “ . . . and the Poor get Prison,” it takes far more dollars from our pockets than all the FBI index crimes combined. If these crimes are costing us more money than the “poor crimes” of America, why don’t American’s care? In a country that is so set on lowering taxes and gaining money, why would we not care about these people who are cheating the US out of money? Why do we consider someone that steals a TV more worthy of punishment than someone that embezzles thousands, or more, of dollars?
As stated in “No Equal Justice: The Color of Punishment,” “When the effects of a criminal law reach the sons and daughters of the white majority, our response is not to get tough, but rather to get lenient.” When I read this I began to wonder why this is so, but as I contemplated, it began to make sense. When the majority white children are affected, the parents are going to start to complain and put up a fight. And when they are loud enough, something will be changed to make them stop. This reminded me of elementary school and when some children from the majority white families were assigned to a teacher that their parents had heard were inadequate it only took one call to the principal’s office to get them switched out. This left some classrooms disproportionately full of minority children. In our culture it seems that until the middle class is affected by something, no one seems to take notice or care.
As discussed in lecture the idea of physiognomy may seem absurd, but if people continue to make comments like “Oh it’s no surprise he committed a crime because he’s black,” then clearly some must believe in it. I feel like is a thought that many people vocalize, or seem to suggest as the watch or discuss the news. It’s not entirely their fault though, when you are constantly watching the news, which is constantly telling you of some crime that some African American committed you eventually begin to believe that it is the Black population that are committing all of the crimes. But one thing that the news does not stress is that blacks are also the most likely race to be a victim of these violent crimes that we consider “black crimes.” According to “An Overview of Trends in Social and Economic Well-being” in our textbook, “Blacks are far more likely to be homicide victims than is any other group.” If this is so, why are they always portrayed as criminals on the news?
One last thing that really shocked me when I was reading was something I read in “The Mark of a Criminal Record.” The studies in this article seemed to show that a white offender was more likely to be called back for a job that black non-offender. Perhaps it’s because we have a racial stereotype that a black men are criminals, or because we view crimes that the poor commit as worse crimes than those the rich commit and that the face of the prison system are the poor minorities (mostly blacks). Either way, this seemed wrong to me. I don’t understand why a company would rather hire someone that they know has committed a crime over someone that to the best of their knowledge is a law abiding citizen with no previous criminal history.
As pointed out in “ . . . and the Poor get Prison” people who are equally or more dangerous, equally or more criminal are not getting the same punishments as the poor. In my personal opinion a criminal is a criminal, and they should be treated as so. The whole point of our criminal justice system is to keep criminals off the street. They are not doing their job if some guilty people are let free while others, who are equally or less criminal are punished.
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