In 2020, protests erupted across the country related to police brutality against people of color. The Black Lives Matter movement was in the news every day—and even painted on the streets of cities nationwide.
Those events focused the public criminal-justice-reform dialogue on avoiding violent first interactions between officers and individuals of color. However, those first interactions are not the only ones that are unjust. The criminal justice system’s pervasive problems with racism start before the first contact and continue through pleas, conviction, incarceration, release, and beyond.
Differential Treatment and Injustice in the “Justice” System
The net effects of history’s injustices are staggering. According to statistics the NAACP examined, although Black people make up 13.4 percent of the population, they make up:
- 22 percent of fatal police shootings,
- 47 percent of wrongful conviction exonerations, and
- 35 percent of individuals executed by the death penalty.