The Injustice System
By Reetesh Sudhakar and Dakota Benjamin, 10/7/2020
The Gears of Injustice
DNA evidence, dusted fingerprints, and eyewitness testimony. These are all factors that the courts believe to be infallible against a defendant. However, every piece of evidence can be contaminated or falsified throughout the judicial process, unjustly harming defendants. The American justice system often makes arbitrary decisions, spending taxpayer dollars to maintain the largest prison population in the world, shattering countless lives and families, while the connection between harsh sentencing and actual deterrence remains unknown.
Once convicted, individuals are ignored by the justice system. In Alabama, one prisoner lay dead with a flattened face. Another was tortured for two days while other inmates continually screamed for help from unbearable cells. No one noticed. Prisoners in various state systems face high rates of homicide and assault, according to the Justice Department, while guards and officials show disregard for prisoners’ right to be free from cruel and excessive punishment.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) pursued investigations for the expressed purpose of prison reform across several states to ensure public safety. However, these prisons claim that they need billions of dollars to build newer facilities. Simply relocating prisoners, however, will not change the harsh conditions that they face.
In Mississippi, prisoners are kept in inhumane conditions. Facilities have been shut down by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), but have later been able to reopen.. One such building, known as “Unit 32”, houses hundreds of men in abysmal conditions, including in permanent solitary confinement. No running water, overflowing toilets, concrete sleeping quarters, and little food are among the many health and human rights violations plaguing the system. Severe staff shortages further harm prisoners, with one shortage across three prisons in Mississippi leaving prisoners in lockdown for an entire year. Although Mississippi has the third-highest incarceration rate in the country, its spending is scarce, as the prison staff are paid the lowest salaries in the US. While fiscal problems dominate the justice system, prisons also simultaneously fuel capitalistic and corporate culture.
Today, elites and corporations receive financial and political gains from imprisoning individuals. The government retaliated to crises of unemployment and the resulting protests by expanding prison capacity and rationale for incarceration, while monetary factors like debt compounded punishments. Politically, ‘wars’ explained the causes of imprisonment: the war on drugs, crime, gangs, guns, to name a few. As law enforcement responded to labor crises with mass incarceration, prison systems fueled joblessness. Rehabilitation always existed in flux with incarceration, but as rebellions erupted, the concept disappeared. Removing work opportunities was part of a mission to increase prison severity. A majority of prisons provide inmates with few opportunities to constructively work throughout their sentences – those that did exist served to provide little to no gratification for prisoners while providing significant financial benefits to the industries prisoners worked in. This carceral power perpetuates unemployment among communities while fueling economic and political repression.
What’s more, any single legal event can overturn and bankrupt an individual; regardless of a guilty or innocent verdict, their life will never be the same. Those who are locked within prisons face inhumane living conditions while private corporations profit off of their struggles through intensive labor and numerous fees.
The prison industrial complex has expanded significantly while enabling the brutal management of prisoners and destroying their fundamental purpose of societal improvement and rehabilitation. As long as the system continues to repress prisoners and fuel incarceration, individuals will continue to face the consequences and prison populations will continue to rise.
Once convicted, individuals are ignored by the justice system. In Alabama, one prisoner lay dead with a flattened face. Another was tortured for two days while other inmates continually screamed for help from unbearable cells. No one noticed. Prisoners in various state systems face high rates of homicide and assault, according to the Justice Department, while guards and officials show disregard for prisoners’ right to be free from cruel and excessive punishment.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) pursued investigations for the expressed purpose of prison reform across several states to ensure public safety. However, these prisons claim that they need billions of dollars to build newer facilities. Simply relocating prisoners, however, will not change the harsh conditions that they face.
In Mississippi, prisoners are kept in inhumane conditions. Facilities have been shut down by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), but have later been able to reopen.. One such building, known as “Unit 32”, houses hundreds of men in abysmal conditions, including in permanent solitary confinement. No running water, overflowing toilets, concrete sleeping quarters, and little food are among the many health and human rights violations plaguing the system. Severe staff shortages further harm prisoners, with one shortage across three prisons in Mississippi leaving prisoners in lockdown for an entire year. Although Mississippi has the third-highest incarceration rate in the country, its spending is scarce, as the prison staff are paid the lowest salaries in the US. While fiscal problems dominate the justice system, prisons also simultaneously fuel capitalistic and corporate culture.
Today, elites and corporations receive financial and political gains from imprisoning individuals. The government retaliated to crises of unemployment and the resulting protests by expanding prison capacity and rationale for incarceration, while monetary factors like debt compounded punishments. Politically, ‘wars’ explained the causes of imprisonment: the war on drugs, crime, gangs, guns, to name a few. As law enforcement responded to labor crises with mass incarceration, prison systems fueled joblessness. Rehabilitation always existed in flux with incarceration, but as rebellions erupted, the concept disappeared. Removing work opportunities was part of a mission to increase prison severity. A majority of prisons provide inmates with few opportunities to constructively work throughout their sentences – those that did exist served to provide little to no gratification for prisoners while providing significant financial benefits to the industries prisoners worked in. This carceral power perpetuates unemployment among communities while fueling economic and political repression.
What’s more, any single legal event can overturn and bankrupt an individual; regardless of a guilty or innocent verdict, their life will never be the same. Those who are locked within prisons face inhumane living conditions while private corporations profit off of their struggles through intensive labor and numerous fees.
The prison industrial complex has expanded significantly while enabling the brutal management of prisoners and destroying their fundamental purpose of societal improvement and rehabilitation. As long as the system continues to repress prisoners and fuel incarceration, individuals will continue to face the consequences and prison populations will continue to rise.
The (In)justice System
What many United States citizens view as a fair criminal justice system governed by a blind Justice and her scales is, on the contrary, filled with numerous fissures and historical acts of injustice. Arguably, the primary source of the system's failure to achieve true justice is the systematic racism built into its foundation that produces mass statistics that point towards undeniable evidence of racial disparity. To illustrate, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, "one in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime." Furthermore, as recorded by the ACLU in 2011, one in every 106 white males age 18 or older is incarcerated. In contrast, one in every 36 hispanic males age 18 or older is incarcerated, and lastly, one in every 15 black males ages 18 or older is incarcerated. Altogether, although White people make up over 70% of the U.S. population, people of color account for approximately 60% of the "criminals" imprisoned in the justice system.
While implicit bias and racial disparity exemplify one of the issues within the U.S criminal justice system, it is essential to acknowledge that the system has flaws that extend beyond the premise of race. For example, wrongful incarceration. As stated by the Innocence Project, which is the largest non-profit organization and network in the U.S. dedicated to exonerating the wrongfully convicted through DNA evidence and justice reforms, it is estimated that 1% of the U.S. prison population, meaning around 20,000 individuals, sit behind bars for crimes they did not commit. Indisputably, the menace of wrongful incarceration disproportionately affects people of color, as African-Americans are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than white people are. The fact still stands that, in general, the U.S. criminal justice system does not always get it right.
Amanda Marie Knox, a white American woman, and exoneree who spent almost four years in an Italian prison, famously said in the Netflix documentary of her story, "If I'm innocent, it means that everyone is vulnerable. And that's everyone's nightmare." Knox's quote ultimately speaks to the general desperation for a sensation of security and safety that defendants and lawmakers occasionally succumb to, blinding them to the genuine reality and portfolio of legal facts and processes, leading to wrongful incarcerations. Causes for wrongful incarceration include: eyewitness misidentification, junk science, false confessions, government misconduct, snitches (otherwise known as incentivized informants, and lastly, defective lawyering /legal representation
Alongside the wrongful incarceration and systematic racism ingrained into the fabrication of the U.S. criminal justice system, the privatization of prisons has also played a substantial role in corruption. In fact, "the United States has the world's largest private prison population." According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), for-profit companies, or private prisons, were responsible for housing 7% of state prisoners and 18% of federal prisoners in 2015. Furthermore, in general, private prisons often undergo more safety problems than public prisons. According to The Sentencing Project, "studies have found that assaults in private prisons can occur at double the rate found in public facilities." As aforementioned, people of color are disproportionately affected by the many flaws of the U.S. criminal justice system; therefore, prisons' privatization merely amplifies their struggle. From 2012 to 2016, the United States Sentencing Commission reported that "Black male offenders received sentences on average 19.1% longer than similarly situated White male offenders."
Some key conclusions can be drawn from these sets of facts, including the incorrect nature of the conjecture that the U.S. criminal justice system is one that upholds the utmost moral execution of the law. With the current events unfolding in the United States, including the elevated fervor in the Black Lives Matter movement after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, citizens are more than ever, focused on the many injustices within the U.S., the very country that is charged with the upholding peoples' fundamental rights.
While implicit bias and racial disparity exemplify one of the issues within the U.S criminal justice system, it is essential to acknowledge that the system has flaws that extend beyond the premise of race. For example, wrongful incarceration. As stated by the Innocence Project, which is the largest non-profit organization and network in the U.S. dedicated to exonerating the wrongfully convicted through DNA evidence and justice reforms, it is estimated that 1% of the U.S. prison population, meaning around 20,000 individuals, sit behind bars for crimes they did not commit. Indisputably, the menace of wrongful incarceration disproportionately affects people of color, as African-Americans are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than white people are. The fact still stands that, in general, the U.S. criminal justice system does not always get it right.
Amanda Marie Knox, a white American woman, and exoneree who spent almost four years in an Italian prison, famously said in the Netflix documentary of her story, "If I'm innocent, it means that everyone is vulnerable. And that's everyone's nightmare." Knox's quote ultimately speaks to the general desperation for a sensation of security and safety that defendants and lawmakers occasionally succumb to, blinding them to the genuine reality and portfolio of legal facts and processes, leading to wrongful incarcerations. Causes for wrongful incarceration include: eyewitness misidentification, junk science, false confessions, government misconduct, snitches (otherwise known as incentivized informants, and lastly, defective lawyering /legal representation
Alongside the wrongful incarceration and systematic racism ingrained into the fabrication of the U.S. criminal justice system, the privatization of prisons has also played a substantial role in corruption. In fact, "the United States has the world's largest private prison population." According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), for-profit companies, or private prisons, were responsible for housing 7% of state prisoners and 18% of federal prisoners in 2015. Furthermore, in general, private prisons often undergo more safety problems than public prisons. According to The Sentencing Project, "studies have found that assaults in private prisons can occur at double the rate found in public facilities." As aforementioned, people of color are disproportionately affected by the many flaws of the U.S. criminal justice system; therefore, prisons' privatization merely amplifies their struggle. From 2012 to 2016, the United States Sentencing Commission reported that "Black male offenders received sentences on average 19.1% longer than similarly situated White male offenders."
Some key conclusions can be drawn from these sets of facts, including the incorrect nature of the conjecture that the U.S. criminal justice system is one that upholds the utmost moral execution of the law. With the current events unfolding in the United States, including the elevated fervor in the Black Lives Matter movement after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, citizens are more than ever, focused on the many injustices within the U.S., the very country that is charged with the upholding peoples' fundamental rights.
