Is America's criminal justice system 'racist'?

Curtice (No)

Since humans have walked the earth, there have always been racists—those who view their tribe/group/ethnicity/race as superior to others. Racist individuals, however, do not equate to systemic or institutional racism that targets people or otherwise applies laws unjustly based on skin color. If one looks back to slavery or even Jim Crow laws in the South, it's apparent justice was not always dispensed equally or fairly in the United States. This is not the case now. Today, it is irrefutably illegal to discriminate based on race.

Those who call America's criminal justice system 'racist' often point to incarceration rates. While it's true that Black Americans are incarcerated in higher numbers than Whites or Hispanics, it is also true that Black Americans, while comprising only around 13% of the total population, 'commit more than double the amount of interracial homicides on White Americans, who make up 60.4% of the American population.' These crimes include violent Black-on-Black crime that occurs at rates much higher than other ethnic groups. 

In 2021, the US Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics released a study that addressed the issue of the race and ethnicity of perpetrators of violent crimes in 2018. The report concluded that 'there were no statistically significant differences' by race between offenders. This was specific to non-fatal violent crime (NVC), which includes rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and other assaults and persons arrested, per the Uniform Crime Report. Further, White and Black Americans were arrested proportionate to their involvement in serious non-fatal violent crimes (SNVC), including rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. There are no doubt many underlying reasons for the crime rate among the Black population in America, but the criminal justice system being racist is not one of them.

Chad (Yes)

Unfortunately, the American justice system is, and always has been, racist. 

Our Declaration of Independence states, 'all men are created equal,' but in 1793, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, allowing enslavers to retrieve their 'property.' It was passed again in 1850. The following century saw dozens more racist laws passed, such as the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the 'Greaser' Act of 1855, the Anti-Coolie Act of 1862, and too many more, leading up to the Jim Crow Era between 1876 and 1965.

While we often think that the passage of Title IX and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended injustice and racism, this was not the case. Instead, racist laws became less overt and morphed into the racism-based war on drugs, primarily targeting communities of color. For example, in the 80s, the government passed a law that made crack penalties 100 times more severe than cocaine. The latter was more popular with black people despite being nearly the same. These were forced by a police force and court system that was overwhelmingly white. 

Despite White people using drugs at the same rate or more than black people (49% of whites compared to 42.9% of blacks), from 1991-1993, Blacks made up 40% of drug arrests. By 2011, Black people were 5-7 times more likely to be incarcerated for drugs than white offenders. This is also shown in sentencing times. Today while making up only 32% of the population, Blacks and Hispanics are 56% of the prison population. In 2018, the US Department of Justice even admitted that Whites are underrepresented and people of color are overrepresented regarding incarceration for the same crimes. If this is not indicative of systemic racism, then nothing is.