A criminal justice system is an organization that exists to enforce a legal code. There are three branches of the U.S. criminal justice system: the police, the courts, and the corrections system.

Police are a civil force in charge of enforcing laws and public order at a federal, state, or community level. No unified national police force exists in the United States, although there are federal law enforcement officers. Once a crime has been committed and a violator has been identified by the police, the case goes to court. A court is a system that has the authority to make decisions based on law. The U.S. judicial system is divided into federal courts and state courts. The corrections system is charged with supervising individuals who have been arrested, convicted, and sentenced for a criminal offense, plus people detained while awaiting hearings, trials, or other procedures.

While the criminal justice system, like other institutions in the United States, is supposed to treat all people equally, there are significant inequalities in how this system treats different groups. Criminal justice inequalities are a serious social problem because of the life-altering impact of the criminal justice system on a person’s life. For instance, once an individual has been convicted of a felony, they can no longer access public benefits, such as food stamps or public housing. In addition, they often struggle to find employment and can be legally denied housing. In some states, they are denied the right to vote.

Racial inequality is incredibly prevalent throughout the criminal justice system (figure 7.8, figure 7.9). Black and Latinx Americans are overrepresented at every stage of the legal process (from policing to parole and probation) and regularly face harsher consequences than White Americans for similar offenses.

These inequalities did not arise by accident. Instead, scholars have outlined how the war on drugs and other “tough on crime policies” are simply the latest iteration of racialized institutional practices designed to control, disenfranchise, and marginalize Black and Latinx Americans by further perpetuating racial inequality. You can read more about the war on drugs [Website] if you would like to.

Racial disparities are not the only concerning trends and inequalities in this system. More recently, women’s incarceration rates have been increasing, despite broader trends to reduce prison populations. There is also considerable evidence that individuals marginalized by their sexuality or gender identity are disproportionately funneled into the criminal justice system and lack basic civil rights protections if incarcerated.

Finally, there are significant issues with how the system addresses mental health issues. The criminal justice system disproportionately impacts people with mental health issues. They are more likely to be killed by police officers than those without mental health issues and are more likely to be arrested and incarcerated. Many jails and prisons incarcerate individuals who require mental health services that are absent or inadequate within these facilities.

As we’ve mentioned, it is important to take an intersectional approach to understand how people’s experiences vary. It is not just one aspect of an individual’s identity that determines their experience with the criminal justice system. Instead, we need to look at how these group memberships (race, sexuality, gender identity, or ability) interact and influence individuals’ treatment and patterns of inequality.

Policing and Race

People of color, Black and Latinx Americans along with Indigenous people, are disproportionately surveilled and killed by the police. Between 1980 and 2018, police killed an estimated 30,800 people. Black and Latinx Americans were significantly more likely to be killed than White Americans (Sharara et al. 2021). Public opinion studies from the Pew Research Center show that Black Americans are more likely to report having been stopped unfairly by police. It is obvious that Black Americans have very different interactions with police than White Americans, which is reflected in their differences in opinion about the police. They are also less likely to have a positive view of how officers treat different racial and ethnic groups, and they see fatal police shootings as signs of broader issues with the criminal justice system (Desilver, Lipka, and Fahmy 2020).

What is causing the disproportionate impact? There are a few factors that contribute to these trends. The first explanation for racial disparities in policing is the role of spatial profiling. Compared to low-crime, middle and upper-class neighborhoods, high-crime, low-income neighborhoods are more heavily surveilled by the police. It is in these neighborhoods that Black and Latinx Americans are more likely to live, exposing them to more significant contact with the police.

Police training may also play a significant role. For example, only a few training hours are dedicated to topics such as ethics, de-escalation tactics, and providing social services. Instead, using firearms, defensive tactics, and police procedures comprise most of the training. Consequently, it is not surprising that police are more adept at using their weapons when a situation escalates rather than turning to nonviolent options.

The next explanation is bias—both explicit and implicit. Explicit bias is still an issue with at least some proportion of law enforcement officers. A recent study analyzing 40 years of General Social Survey data has shown that police, unlike most Americans, believe that they should receive more funding and have the right to use physical force against citizens (Roscigno and Preito-Hodge 2021). They also found that White male officers were, in particular, more racist than the general population or those in similar occupations (Roscigno and Preito-Hodge 2021). Implicit bias is also an issue among law enforcement, as it is in the broader American population. Studies have found that implicit bias plays a role in decisions about whether officers will use deadly force (Fridell and Lim 2016).

Racism and discrimination have a direct role in creating explicit and implicit biases, which is evident when looking at the history of the institution of policing. Historically, in both the North and the South, police have been used as a tool of social control to manage “unruly” populations. In the North, police intended to control the growing poor European immigrant population and quell labor protests. In the South, the earliest manifestations of police were slave patrols. While these institutions became more bureaucratic over time and looked more like northern police agencies, they still enforced Jim Crow laws and were not afraid to beat and arrest anyone who dared protest these racially discriminatory laws and practices. Given this history, it is not surprising that there is distrust between Black communities and police departments. In this next section, we’ll examine the role of institutional racism in the criminal justice system by examining mass incarceration.

Licenses and Attributions for Race, Identity, and the Criminal Justice System

Open Content, Original

“Race, Identity, and Crime” by Alexandra Olsen is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Open Content, Shared Previously

First paragraph on criminal justice system in “Race, Identity, and the Criminal Justice System” modified from “7.3 Crime and the Law” by Tonja R. Conerly, Kathleen Holmes, Asha Lal Tamang in Introduction to Sociology 3e, OpenStax, which is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

All Rights Reserved Content

Figure 7.8. “Incarcerated in State & Federal Prison” by the Prison Policy Initiative is included with permission.

Figure 7.9. “Among individuals who have any contact with the police, people of color disproportionately experience the use of force” by the Prison Policy Initiative is included with permission.