Criminal Justice: Racial Disparity and Discrimination in the US

This assignment explores the issue of racial disparity and discrimination within the criminal justice system. It differentiates between legal factors, such as the seriousness of the offense and prior criminal records, and extralegal factors, including race, gender, and class. The assignment highlights two types of racial disparity: the first type involves a significant difference between the racial groups' percentage in the general population and their representation in the justice process, with examples from African-American statistics. The second type highlights how a significantly higher percentage of racial minorities are involved in criminal justice compared to whites. References to relevant literature are also included.

Running head: CRIMINAL JUSTICE
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Note

Relation between disparity and discrimination in criminal justice system
The term racial disparity can be seen as referring to difference that might or might not
relate to racial discrimination (Burch, 2015). The distinction between legal factors and extralegal
factor are made by the criminal justice experts for explaining the racial disparities that are
present in the criminal justice system. The legal factors can be seen to be including the
seriousness of the offence and prior criminal records. The extralegal factors are seen as to
include race, gender and class. There are two types of racial disparity present. The first type of
disparity occurs in case of a significant difference that is present between the racial groups
percentage represented in general population and the percentage of the group that is represented
in the justice process, for example the African-Americans consist of 12% of the total population
however they account to almost 40% of all arrests, 50% of prison population and 50% inmates
on death row. Another type of racial disparity is when a significantly higher percentage of racial
minorities are involved in criminal justice more than the whites (Stolzenberg, D’Alessio and
Eitle, 2013).

Reference
Burch, T., 2015. Skin color and the criminal justice system: Beyond black‐white disparities in
sentencing. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 12(3), pp.395-420.
Stolzenberg, L., D’Alessio, S.J. and Eitle, D., 2013. Race and cumulative discrimination in the
prosecution of criminal defendants. Race and Justice, 3(4), pp.275-299.