Contemporary Cultural Diversity Issues Presentation

¶ … Cultural Diversity Issues Presentation Criminal justice system and racial and ethnic minority groups The criminal justice system has been for long associated with discriminatory practices and decisions that are informed by race bias and other forms of discriminatory practices. It has for long been a subject of discussion and how this can be avoided particularly in the justice system.

The rot has gone so deep in the society until discriminatory phrases have come up along the same line and the society has helped stereotype some races perpetually using these negative phrases. There are, however, arguments propagated for and against the notions that the American justice system is not colorblind. To show the discriminative nature of the system, there are interesting statistics that have been floated from time to time.

Statistics presented by the Bureau of Justice in 2006, it was found out that for every 100,000 black males in America, there were 3,042 of them in prison. This was relatively high as compared to 1,261 Hispanic males in prison for every 100,000 Hispanic males, or even against whites whom for every 100,000 there were 487 male whites in prison (United States Department of Justice, 2011). It is estimated that the chances of a black person going to prison in their lifetime is 16% as compared to 2% of a white person going to prison.

This disparity begins right from the economic level and the predisposition to jobs. It is estimated that on average, a white man has 34% more chances of getting a job than the 14% of the black person despite holding the same qualifications. This is further exacerbated by the fact that blacks have lesser chances of getting jobs after serving their time than the white counterparts and hence blacks stand a higher chance of going back to prison, and this is how discrimination begets unfair justice system.

The statistics behind the issuance of bonds is as mind boggling as the reasons themselves. It is noted in varying researches that the percentage of bond release and even the set amounts could vary depending on the race of the criminal. For instance, the black defendants are more likely to get lower bail rates than the white defendants.

It is also estimated that at the federal level that non-Hispanics are likely to be accorded bail in 66% of the cases as opposed to the Hispanics who are likely to get bail in 26% of the cases only (Byrne, M.J., 2009). The same research by Byrne places the proportion of defendants on bail at the state levels in the 75 of the largest counties at 60%.

This means therefore that the majority of the defendants at the state level just like in the federal cases are not in the custody of the authorities before their cases are concluded in court. There is also the conviction process and the death penalty that seems to lie on one side that is mainly handed the death sentence. According to Stephan and Abigail (2011), there are 48% of victims of the death penalty being blacks as compared to 29% of them being Hispanics and 20% being whites.

This is another trend that is worrying since the crimes committed that warrant death penalty are equally spread out and the pattern should be indicative in terms of the ratio of death sentences. However, there are other approaches that tend to discredit the racial approach to convictions. It attempts to prove that the convictions are rightfully done and its the social background that is responsible for the disproportionate crime trends within the minority communities hence the justice system is not to blame.

One of them is the Social-Psychological theory; this involves the scientific study of how people's thoughts, behaviors and feelings are influenced by implied, imagined or even actual presence of others (Social Psychology Network, 2011). It is more of an interaction between the social and the psychological theory and tries to show how we can comprehend why people belong to some cults and antisocial movements (like racism and sexism and criminal gangs) through looking at their perceptions and motives. It involves studying people's feelings and thoughts.

It also involves the study of how individuals process, store and retrieve the available information in the society and apply the varying knowledge to the different.