The United States Criminal Justice System (Essay Sample)

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The United States' Criminal Justice System
Introduction
The United States criminal justice system has been in existence since 1971, and its significant role has been to protect citizens and ensure that they are law-abiding. The components of the system notably include the courts, the police, and the correctional facilities which all serve towards achieving particular goals in society, which in the end are intended to benefit society as a whole. The three subsystems collectively focus on ensuring that they reduce crime in the community and protect society. However, the whole system has not been insufficient in dispensing justice to the people. In this paper, I will argue that the criminal justice system is perfect in providing justice to the citizens and is a partial system that achieves some good to the people but with multiple problems, including unequal racial, ethnic and economic representation of the citizens in dispensing justice making it a completely disorganized system. 
Section 1: Trends in Policing
Police brutality and the propagation of racism, in which the police view blacks to be criminals, are examples of policing tendencies. In terms of police violence, during the last year, 1,025 individuals have been shot and murdered by officers (Langley 4). According to the research, between 900 and 1,100 persons are shot and killed by police in the United States each year. Nearly 98 non-federal law enforcement officers have been arrested for lethal on-duty shootings since 2005. However, just 35 of these officers have been convicted of a crime, usually a lesser offense such as manslaughter or negligent homicide rather than murder (Jonas). During this time, just three of these cops have been convicted of murder. In addition, 22 officers were acquitted following a jury trial, and 9 others were acquitted after a judge-determined bench trial. On one occasion, a judge rejected 10 more cases, and to make matters worse, no real bill was received from a grand jury. There are now 21 non-federal police enforcement employees facing criminal charges in connection with lethal shootings.
The public's perception of deadly confrontations between police and African Americans is also another trend. According to a 2019 study on police-community relations, 84% of black adults believe that the police treat white people better than they treat black people (Criminal justice fact sheet; McManus et al., 1040). In the United States most black adults believe that the criminal justice system is more unfair to black people than to white people. Just 61 % of white adults agree to this. Police have slain more white people, but blacks and Hispanics have been disproportionately affected. Over 60 % of the population is white, while white officers commit only around 41 per cent of fatal police shootings as seen from the report. The number of fatal police shootings involving black people is 22%, even though they make up only 13.4% of the population (Criminal Justice fact sheet).
The policing system in the United States has also contributed to sexism by segregating people based on their sexes. These concerns about sex discrimination have primarily made women victims of circumstance. Notably, the policing system has lacked gender representation in recruiting constables. These female officers have also encountered sexual discrimination while providing services to the public. This discrimination at work frequently lowers employees' motivation to provide high-quality services to citizens. The policing system has also been undermined in its performance by various corporate control measures. Hence, it is worth noting that the policing sector as a subsystem in the criminal justice system has been tampered with, and it no longer serves the interests of the citizens.
Section 2: Trends in Courts/Sentencing
The judicial system in the United States is an institution under the criminal justice system that provides justifications as to whether a suspected offender is guilty or not. This subsystem also depends more on policing strategies. Hence, when there is an irregularity in justice provision whose source is the police; it is highly likely to be upheld in the judicial system. The trends in the judicial system have evoked various emotional reactions from the people as to whether there are meant to fairly serve all the people, including those from ethnic minority groups or not. The trends in this system, which has negatively affected how it provides its services to U.S. citizens, include corruption, racial and gender disparities, and the disproportionate representation of color and ethnicity in the employment in the system. Hence, this has contributed to neoliberalism and the denial of social welfare to the people. 
It is the essential function of the judicial system to deliver a fair judgement and determine the appropriate sentence for each individual. In the court of law, individual rights are safeguarded by the constitution, and some of these rights include the right to face their accuser in court, a person's right not to be a witness against themselves, an individual's right to counsel and the right to be tried in front of an impartial panel. The jury is insufficient in meeting these individual rights. It is not just a fair representation of the community because it is made up of only one particular race and gender. For example, in “Batson v. Kentucky”, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a prosecution may not remove any jurors because of race by using a prosecutor's peremptory challenge in a criminal case (DeCamp and Elise 3). In a Batson challenge, a party in a lawsuit challenges the opposing side's use of peremptory challenges to remove possible jurors from the jury based on such factors like color, gender, religious affiliation or ethnicity.
There are additionally multiple cases which depict disparities in sentencing process because of the irregularities in the court's due process, which is the focus of sentencing reform. For instance, the Senate Bill 47 was passed in Delaware to abolish "drug-free" school zones, which have been shown to worsen in regard to racial disparities in sentencing results for people who live notably, reside in metropolitan areas. In recent years also, legislation passed by New Jersey, Indiana, and Utah has gone forth to reduce drug zone sentencing penalties.
California lawmakers repealed a One-year sentence increase for previous prison or county jail felony term in Senate Bill (136). California's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has estimated that 10,000 inmates are now serving sentences that include an additional one-year period (Criminal Justice Fact sheet). Additionally, although African Americans and whites use drugs at equal rates, the rate at African-Americans are imprisoned for drug-related offences is roughly six times higher than that of the white population. About 2000 people falsely accused have been forgiven, and about half of this population was African Americans. The exoneration rate for African American defendants is established to be 22% higher than the rate for white defendants.
Section 3: Trends in Corrections
The correction branch of the criminal justice system encompasses a network of organizations that run prisons and programs like probation and parole boards in a specific jurisdiction. As seen in a report, there are 3 million individuals in jail in the U.S. today, significantly surpassing population growth and crime. Between 1980 and 2015, the number of individuals who have been detained increased from half a million to 2.2 million (Criminal Justice Fact sheet). The U.S. alone has approximately 25 % of the world's jail population. African Americans and Hispanics make up 56 % of the jailed population in the United States. As of 2014, African Americans made up 2.3 million of the overall 6.8 million incarcerated populations. Additionally, African Americans are imprisoned at more than five times the rate of whites. The jail rate for African American women is twice that of white women.
The African American children constitute 32 % of children arrested, 42 % of these children are detained, and 52% of them have their cases being judicially w