The Problem With the Criminal Justice System

by Radhika Patwardhan

Communications and Outreach

On a summer day in 1955, a fourteen year old named Emmett Till was brutally murdered while visiting family in Mississippi. His assailants beat him up, gouged out his eye, tied him to a cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, shot him in the head, and then proceeded to throw his body in the river and continue their lives without a second thought. What did he do to deserve this? He allegedly whistled at a white woman in the corner store.

Many people see this horrific story as irrelevant today simply because the majority of the current population is not openly racist, as they were in the antebellum and pre-civil rights movement period. Nonetheless, the most shocking thing about this anecdote is not the tragic events that happened that day- rather, it is his trial. J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, Emmett’s murderers, were acquitted despite overwhelming evidence: several witness testimonies, identification of the body, as well as their confession to kidnapping. These sadistic men never even spent a day in prison, and consequently never expressed remorse for the life they had taken. The trial of Emmett Till perfectly showcases the institutionalized racism in our criminal justice system and every other aspect of our lives; though decades have passed, the discriminatory mindset of those jurors still continues to be the mindset of many law enforcement officers as well as ordinary citizens today.

Skeptics of the term “systemic bias” assume that it means everyone within a particular system or institution is biased. It happens to mean the opposite: the characteristic tendency of a system (in this case our criminal justice system) to produce biased, and often racially disparate outcomes regardless of the good intentions of some of the people within the system. This insidious form of racism has been shown to us time and time again through a plethora of research studies, anecdotes, and famous historical examples.

A study from the National Academy of Sciences found that African American men were almost three times more likely to be killed by police than white men. Other similar studies show that the misdemeanor conviction rate is much higher for African American men. Furthermore, African Americans are nearly three times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than a white person, regardless of the usage rates being very similar.

The bottom line is that our system is flawed; a criminal justice system built on slavery and Jim Crow Laws cannot be expected to uphold equity, at least not without drastic and efficacious reform. Though many conservatives believe that reform has been made, it is undoubtedly not enough. So what can you do? Educating yourselves and the people around you is the first step. As Americans as well as human beings, we have a responsibility to fight for equality every time we witness an act of injustice. Don’t stop advocating for change until everyone has been made aware of the hardships that people of color currently face and all traces of racism have been eradicated. Don’t stop until everyone can live safely and equally, with liberty and justice for all.

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Cover image: "ODCindustry" by FolsomNatural is licensed under CC BY 2.0