Justice Blind? Ideals and Realities of American Criminal Justice (Paperback)

by Matthew Barnett Robinson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover
Justice Blind? Ideals and Realities of American Criminal Justice probes problems of injustice within our criminal laws, law enforcement agencies, courts, and correctional facilities. Posing important questions, showing different viewpoints, and offering fair solutions, author Matthew B. Robinson gives students a new and thought-provoking critique of the criminal justice system.

Justice Bind? Ideas and Realities of American Criminal Justice is ideally suited for courses such as Introduction to Criminal Justice, CJ Ethics, Issues in CJ, Alternative Approaches to CJ, Introduction to Political Science, Criminology, Social Problems, and other courses where a more factual, honest interpretation of the system is required.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

PREFACE

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
— MARTIN LUTHER KING, "A Letter from the Birmingham Jail"

As eloquently written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his letter from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, when an injustice occurs anywhere, justice everywhere is threatened. King wrote this letter on April 16, 1963, after being jailed for "civil disobedience," a peaceful, nonviolent form of resistance. The letter was his response to criticisms that, as an "outsider" from Atlanta, he had no business in Birmingham.

King countered: "I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham .... We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial 'outside agitator' idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."

So, injustice anywhere in America is a threat to all persons living in the United States. And injustice in America is every American's business. The injustices of American criminal justice are the motivation for this book.

As children, we grow up reciting Francis Bellamy's Pledge of Allegiance, written in 1892. It originally stated: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation (under God), indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

"With liberty and justice for all"—this is the ideal we all pledge to assure. But what are "liberty" and "justice"? And does "for all" really include all of us?

When I began my college experience as a criminology and criminal justice major, I had some ideas in my head about what the U.S. criminal justice system was supposed to achieve. I thought that the criminal justice system was supposed to protect us from harmful acts committed intentionally by other people. In my first semester, however, I learned that the system of justice in the United States is focused on only a small portion of all harmful acts. Many other behaviors that are committed intentionally, acts that kill and injure people and result in loss of property, nevertheless are not "crimes" or are not vigorously pursued by agencies of social control.

Later, in graduate school, I learned about the massive criminal justice expansion of the last thirty years of the twentieth century, an expansion driven not by facts about crime or increasing crime rates but by politics, fear, and the desire to be punitive (and at times downright hateful) toward certain segments of the population. To me, this incongruence between the ideals of American criminal justice and the realities of the U.S. criminal justice system didn't seem right.

How can the United States spend so much money and direct so much effort toward punishing a relatively small portion of harmful behaviors while virtually ignoring so many others? Why would we disinvest in the nation's future by overrelying on methods of crime control that we know are ineffective, while failing even to try methods that seem more promising? None of this seems "just" to me.

If justice really meant what I had always thought it meant, how could a system of criminal justice in the United States, of all places, be so unjust? This is the question addressed in this book. Justice Blind? Ideals and Realities of American Criminal justice attempts to demonstrate how and why the U.S. system of criminal justice fails to live up to its ideals, and thus is unjust.

This book grew out of my experiences with teaching an introductory criminal justice course more than thirty times. Through my teaching, I realized that no introductory criminal justice text on the market exposed readers to the realities of criminal justice in the United States. This book strives to do that.

THE MAIN ASSERTION OF JUSTICE BLIND?

The book proceeds from the following assertions:

• Myths and stereotypes about crime, criminals, and criminal justice are created when acts are defined as crimes by the criminal law.
• These myths and stereotypes are reinforced as the mass media broadcast stories about crime, criminals, and criminal justice.
• These myths and stereotypes are also reinforced as police, courts, and corrections enforce the criminal law.
• Because U.S. criminal law is inherently biased against certain groups (e.g., the poor, people of color, and women), the activities of police, courts, and corrections are also biased.

This does not suggest that the U.S. media, police, courts, and corrections are intentionally biased. Rather, by focusing on those acts that come to be defined as "serious" in the criminal law, each of these institutions becomes biased in an "innocent" way. The figure on page xv illustrates how this "innocent" bias is created in the United States. The arrows suggest that each step of the process affects all other stages—that is, that myths and stereotypes about crime, criminals, and criminal justice created by the criminal law are strengthened as the criminal justice system and the media operate. Throughout this book, I elaborate on this process and provide evidence for the main assertions listed here.

Chapter One introduces the American criminal justice system and outlines its ideal goals: doing justice and reducing crime. The chapter demonstrates two conflicting views of justice, one based on assuring fairness and equality as required by the United States Constitution (due process), the other based on holding the, guilty accountable for the harms they inflict on others (crime control). I argue that, since about 1970, American criminal justice has taken a path more consistent with a crime control model than with a due process model. The result has been an erosion of U.S. Constitutional protections, with little crime reduction in return. In fact, American criminal justice now devotes a larger proportion of its resources to police and corrections than to courts, providing more evidence that we are following a crime control model of criminal justice. Using a critical interpretation, I suggest that the criminal justice system in the United States is in fact pursuing some alternative goals, including serving limited political interests and controlling certain segments of the population. By examining how crime has increasingly become a political issue, the reader learns how the U.S. system of criminal justice may be serving functions other than those it ideally should serve.

Chapter One identifies the ideals of criminal justice in the United States and introduces several important issues that students need to understand to gain a complete understanding of the reality of criminal justice in America. Once these have been established, I turn to the process of innocent bias outlined in the figure at the top of this page. Because the process begins with the passage of laws, Chapter Two examines what the law is, where the law comes from, and the different types of law in the United States. This critical examination of who makes the law illustrates how the criminal law creates innocent bias.

The passage of criminal laws leads to the establishment of some behaviors as crimes. Chapter Three begins by defining the term crime and goes on to show that the label "crime" is not appropriately used to characterize the most harmful acts against individuals and society. Harms caused by street crimes are compared with those caused by white-collar deviance, which includes harmful acts not considered "serious" by the government. Chapter Three also discusses how crime is measured in the United States and introduces the topics of U.S, crime rates and crime trends.

Chapter Four discusses how crime is portrayed in the American mass media: what the media cover and what they ignore. I demonstrate that the mass media tend to overemphasize street crime while underemphasizing white-collar deviance. Why does this occur? This chapter introduces and discusses various explanations of media inaccuracy about crime and criminal justice. Throughout the chapter, I explain how media inaccuracy contributes to innocent biases in American criminal justice.

Given the biases of U.S. criminal law, which focuses on street crimes while virtually ignoring the most harmful acts against people and property, and given the biases of media coverage, Chapter Five examines whether the criminal justice system as a whole is biased against particular groups of people in the United States. Following a detailed discussion of whether the "war on crime" is really a war on poor people and people of color, the chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of gender in criminal justice.

In Chapter Six, I provide one example of a war on crime (the "war on drugs") that is clearly aimed at these relatively powerless groups. Historically, the U.S. criminal justice system has focused on those drugs perceived to be used by poor people and people of color, while the most harmful drugs, tobacco and alcohol, have most often been legal, even though they cause far more damage than all illegal drugs combined. I critically assess the logic of the American drug war and conclude that decriminalization of drugs is a viable alternative.

The remaining chapters follow the other stages of the model shown in the figure on page xv. In Chapter Seven, I explain why the organization of policing in the United States creates biases against poor people and people of color. I argue that it is not that police officers are biased but, rather, that American policing is organized in a way that creates innocent bias in the criminal justice system.

Chapter Eight concerns pretrial procedures and trials, and Chapter Nine deals with issues related to sentencing. In these chapters, I point out major sources of criminal justice bias in the courts. Chapters Ten and Eleven, respectively, concern incarceration and the death penalty, two of the most destructive penalties available within American criminal justice. These chapters question the logic of these crime reduction policies, particularly given that each is demonstrably biased in its application.

Finally, Chapter Twelve summarizes the main points of the earlier chapters and then offers a number of specific proposals for overcoming significant biases in American criminal justice. I believe that nothing less than justice itself depends on accepting those recommendations.

FEATURES

Justice Blind? contains several useful features for students of criminology, criminal justice, sociology, social problems, political science, and related disciplines. Each chapter contains an "Issue in Depth" section that explores one issue raised in the chapter. Throughout the book, highlighted "main points" appear, which summarize important points to remember. Finally, each chapter concludes with a series of Discussion Questions that deal with the important material discussed.

TO THE READER

Unlike many introductory criminal justice texts, Justice Blind? contains a careful analysis of the role that race, class, and gender play in crime and criminal justice. The critical approach of Justice Blind? is also unique. Most introductory criminal justice texts start with the perspective that the U.S. criminal justice system meets its ideal goals. They introduce and discuss main concepts and terms without offering critical assessments. I want you, the reader, to learn not only about the ideals of criminal justice in America, but also about the realities. Whereas other texts emphasize the way things are supposed to operate, this book places greater emphasis on the way the criminal justice system really operates.

This book focuses on injustice in the justice system, an important topic for students and citizens alike to understand. Of course, people who study criminal justice and who work in the criminal justice system need to gain an understanding of basic, introductory-level concepts and issues in order to become more knowledgeable and to become better employees. Many fine texts are on the market to meet this need. But this book takes a different approach: it begins with injustice as a problem.

In fact, I suggest that injustice is a social problem that plagues the United States. Lauer and Lauer (2000), in their book Troubled Times, write that social problems begin "as a sense of something wrong in society—of suffering and deprivation growing out of a situation of injustice." I hope this book convinces you that something is very wrong with criminal justice in America. I hope that, because of this work, injustice within the U.S. criminal justice system will be viewed as a significant social problem. This is why several of the topics addressed in this book (e.g., drug use, as well as race, class, and gender) also may be appropriate for social problems classes.

As you read this book, I challenge you to keep an open mind. Do not allow your deeply entrenched beliefs, about crime, criminal justice, or politics interfere with your understanding of the main argument of the book. If this reading has been assigned to you, remember that you do not have to agree with the arguments I put forth in this book, but you do need to understand them. In fact, I challenge you to read the book from a critical perspective, not automatically believing everything you read. Read the book from a perspective that will allow you to discover your own truth. Your own truth, after all, is the only truth that will matter to you.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is the product of many years of thought and study, both formal and informal. I would like to thank the faculty and staff of the Florida State University School of Criminology and Criminal justice for the wonderful education I received there. Much of what I learned there inspired this book. Also, I want to thank my colleagues and friends at Appalachian State University who made th