Discrimination Towards Minorities within the United StatsJudicial Research Paper

Discrimination Towards Minorities within the United StatsJudicial System - Research Paper Example This paper will discuss the practice of discrimination towards minorities, discrimination which lead towards unlawful criminal procedures. It shall particularly discuss the civil liberties which are violated due to race and or class status. This paper is being carried out in order to establish a clear and comprehensive picture of the criminal justice system and its actual applications in the United States. Body Discrimination in the application of criminal justice is sometimes apparent in the legal practice, and in most instances, ethnic, racial, or economic considerations are the reasons why such discriminations exist. Various suggestions from different sources seem to point to the presence of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system. In the aftermath of the Rodney King case, an independent commission of the Los Angeles Police Department established that the LAPD used force excessively, and this unnecessary force was largely attributed to the officer’s racial prej udice (Banks, 2004). A review of police officers in the Los Angeles area revealed that about a quarter of them were racists towards the minorities, and that their racial bias has sometimes led to the inappropriate use of force in their arrests and apprehension of these criminals. In assessing radio communications among LAPD police officers, the content of their remarks reflected a significant number of racially discriminatory remarks and attitudes against minorities (Banks, 2004). Witnesses also claim that police officers often tolerated discriminatory actions against minorities; they also claim that these officers often verbally harassed these minorities for as long as they fit their usual suspects – the blacks and the Latin men (Banks, 2004). Police officers who also belonged to the minority ethnic groups were also discriminated against, and they were treated to biased comments and subjected to racial slurs. A report from New York established that there are double standards which are being applied – one for the whites and another one for the minorities and the poor (New York State Judicial Commission on Minorities, 1991). This report was able to establish the presence of biased treatment as well as injustice in the criminal justice system. The report also pointed out that various minorities were subjected to basement justice with their cases being relegated to facilities which were infested with rats and cockroaches (Banks, 2004). These minorities were also disrespected and not given the proper personnel to handle their complaints and court processes. In some instances, the cases involving minorities were often quickly dispensed, with atleast four or five minutes in court (Banks, 2004). This represents an assembly line in the dispensation of justice. Moreover, black defendants were often made to face their fate in the justice system before a purely white jury. This hardly represents the defendant’s peers. In order to establish whether or not racial discrimination is seen in the criminal justice system, various criminal theorists have carried out research assessing the major decision points in the criminal justice system in the US (Wilbanks, 1987). Most of these reports pointed out that even as racial discrimination exists in the criminal system, the system is not wholly defined by racial discrimination; in effect, discrimination is not extensive (Russell, 1998). However, there are

Difference between Systems Design and Systems Improvement Term Paper

Difference between Systems Design and Systems Improvement - Term Paper Example The renaissance paradigm tried to account for the shortcomings of the scholastic paradigm by acknowledging scientific principles (Skyttner, 2006). This paradigm introduced the notion of careful observation of the universe, with inferences and conclusions drawn from observation. This era saw the introduction of scientific methods of considering the factors that affected humankind. For example, Skyttner (2006), states that the emergence of knowledge about astronomy greatly increased understanding of humankind as is now known. The beginning of the 18th century saw the firm establishment of the scientific world view, which was done during the mechanistic paradigm and determinism. In this era, the traditional superstitions were replaced by careful analysis of the factors in the environment, and often, the rational analysis led to scientific conclusions. The overwhelming conclusion from this age was that all factors could be rationally explained, thus the mechanistic tendency. This era was followed by the hegemony of determinism, where it was believed that all factors in the universe followed a supposed pattern. According to Skyttner (2006), this age was characterized by a belief that all events followed a specific pattern, that all factors could be explained by the principle of causality. However, the principle of determinism was disproved by Einstein, who introduced the concept of relativism. Instead of a causality principle, the relativity principle served to disprove the notions of the deterministic era. Finally, the general system theory was introduced in the 1950’s to explain the failure of previous paradigms, where the universe is interconnected by way of different systems. The interaction of these systems cannot be explained by one single factor, thus the introduction of the general systems theory (Skyttner, 2006). In this chapter Skyttner (2006) explains the different factors in the general systems theory, for example, the author defined the system as the collection of different entities that interrelate to give a whole factor.