Racial Impact Statements Considering The Consequences Of...

In Jessica Erickson’s article I reviewed titled, Racial Impact Statements: Considering the Consequences of Racial Disproportionalities in the Criminal Justice System, the article addresses how the American Criminal justice system has been suffering from the dramatic increase in mass incarceration and the uneven rates of racial disproportionalities and disparities. These disproportionate impacts with minorities within the criminal justice system are all impacted from neutral laws, policies and practices. Statements made with racial impact provide potential methods of addressing these disproportionalities. There are different measures that have been taken with the new criminal justice laws and policies that may affect minorities, they provide certain information to legislatures before they go on with deciding whether to enact the law. Out of fifty states, there are only four states that actually conduct racial impact statements while the rest are still continuing to consider adopting their own ways to conduct racial impact statements. More than half of the United States prison population is made up of African Americans and Latinos, this is nearly twice as their accumulated representation within thirty percent of the general population. As these minorities continue to be put in jail, the rates of racial disproportionality in the criminal justice system also continue to stagger. Crime commission, arrests, convictions, and sentencing are all apart of the many stages withinShow MoreRelatedZero Tolerance Policies And School Discipline10009 Words   |  41 PagesResearch suggests that policies and practices have created a dilemma that has plagued our education system, as well as our society as a whole, that funnels millions of students from school into the juvenile justice system (Robinson, 2013). This dilemma, known as the school-to-prison pipeline is garnering much attention in Virginia due to the states continued issues in overcoming the phenomenon. This study explores zero tolerance policies and school discipline to better understand its effect in to