The dilemmas which the justice system faces when addressing disparities based on the social class stem from the economic gap

The dilemmas which the justice system faces when addressing disparities based on the social class stem from the economic gap

Response  (100-150words)

The dilemmas which the justice system faces when addressing disparities based on the social class stem from the economic gap, racial discrepancies, and also an educational disparity. The number of arrests made by police officers clearly shows a gap between the arrests of the lower class versus the arrest of the upper class. These numbers, however, are also not taking into account the mass amount of lower and middle-class people who are typically grouped together while the upper class stands on its own. Although this disparity exists, it becomes easier to correlate arrest records with the lower classes due to the large disparity amongst the lower and higher classes. The overall population shows the average American belonging towards the lower classes which makes it easier for the justice system to convey arrest numbers with drastic differentials.

Racially, the justice system historically discriminates. This has been shown to be a large contributor to the justice system struggles of control based on equally treating the people of a community. Racial discrimination and racial profiling are always being talked about throughout social media and in recent events have cause large debates within legislation in terms of addressing discrimination throughout the criminal justice system. The system has been considered to be corrupt and with society continuing to separate people into groups the system will continue to have negative impacts at every community with a form of diversity.

Education also seems to have faltered the justice system with those who do not seem to fully grasp the importance of understanding civil rights and liberties. The importance of understanding these two would allow an individual to gain a sense of security when confronted with individuals of the law. The lack of education in society is seen in areas where poverty is present. Individuals must learn the importance of this at a young age and not be mandated by law to learn of these liberties and rights through a semester of college.

Dilemmas within the justices system when addressing disparities based on the social class stem from the economic gap between the classes, and also the disparity between education and racial discrimination.

response 2 (100-150words)

I think with all of the recent tumult around the protests and calls to defund the police, I’ve seen a lot of discussion around what defunding the police actually means. To an ordinary person, we might think it means to remove funding from police districts so they can no longer hire as many police and will have less resources to do their job. In actuality, there is quite a lot of talk about how overburdened the criminal justice system currently is, especially local police organizations, and how this disproportionately affects people based on skin color and social class.

To defund the police means to take the burden off of the police’s shoulders and spread it around to various organizations. I think, in actuality, this would mean more funding overall for local government organizations that handle various matters, than what we have now, which is the police handling everything, with some varying degrees of success. When 9 out of 10 police calls are nonviolent, there can be ways to direct the system to deal with these matters in a way that will have more success rather than ending with a police shooting (Ray, 2020).

Currently, Police are called any time there is a mental health concern and we’ve seen quite a lot of high-profile cases that end with a police shooting because either they are not properly trained to handle mentally ill people, or they are inclined to violence due to what they deal with regarding street crimes on a day-to-day basis. Mental health in this country is woefully underfunded and to take this burden out of the hands of the police would be wonderful. Yes, they might still need to have a role if someone needs to be restrained, but funding mental health experts and people who can intervene in society would help the police focus on other matters.

The same goes for the prison systems. We can focus on lowering recidivism by funding higher education initiatives that have shown to have a lot of success.

When the brunt of the cases in the criminal justice system happen to people of color and of a lower social class, these initiatives would help steer policing away from violence and victimization of underprivileged people.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/06/19/what-does-defund-the-police-mean-and-does-it-have-merit (Links to an external site.)