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The new science behind our 'unfair' criminal justice system.

"Good people with the best of intentions ... can get things terribly, terribly wrong," says legal scholar Adam Benforado. His book, Unfair , explores the intrinsic flaws of the American justice system.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. We've all heard stories of people who served decades in prison for crimes they didn't commit. We like to think such miscarriages of justice are rare. But our guest, legal scholar Adam Benforado, says many routine procedures in the criminal justice system are bound to lead to mistakes and unfair outcomes because they rest on false assumptions about how our brains work.

In his new book, he cites research which suggests handsome defendants get lighter sentences, that parole boards are tougher when they get tired and that some common police practices encourage false identification of suspects. Benforado says there are ways to improve the system to account for unseen biases and cognitive failures that undermine the search for truth. Adam Benforado was an associate professor of law at Drexel University. He spoke with FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies about his new book, "Unfair: The New Science Of Criminal Injustice."

DAVE DAVIES, BYLINE: Well, Adam Benforado, welcome to FRESH AIR. I'd like to start with a case that you describe in the book, a gentleman named Juan Rivera. Tell us what he was accused of.

ADAM BENFORADO: Juan Rivera was brought in for a brutal rape and murder of a young girl. And I think one of the things that really drew my attention with respect to this case was the fact that we had DNA evidence for the third trial. This man, Juan, ended up getting a third trial. That's very, very rare. And in this third trial, the reason that he got it was they finally tested the DNA evidence from the rape kit.

And what they found was Juan was not a match. And yet they tried him again, and 12 jurors convicted him again. And I thought, how could this possibly happen? And then I read a little bit more, and I saw there was a confession. And one of the things we know from psychology is that juries place great, great weight in confessions. What we also know is that confessions can be a very bad way to convict a person. Sometimes we get it wrong.

DAVIES: Well, let's talk about that. Yeah, I think a lot of jurors would just say logically, how would you possibly confess to such a brutal crime if you didn't do it? What are some of the interrogation techniques that tend to induce false confessions?

BENFORADO: It really comes down to, in my opinion, the most commonly used interrogation procedure in the United States. And this process basically breaks down the interrogation into two parts.

During the first part, the goal is simply to figure out whether this person whom you're talking to is lying. So they bring in the suspect, usually into a small, windowless room, and they ask them some provocative questions meant to reveal deceit. And the problem here is the things that detectives tend to focus on or are told to focus on, which are demeanor elements like jittery limbs or averted gaze, tend to actually be terrible ways to determine whether someone is lying. So quite frequently someone who's committed a horrible crime will look you straight in the eye and tell you that they're innocent.

Now, why this is a problem is that as soon as the detective determines that someone is lying, they shift to the second part of this commonly used approach. And the focus there is simply on gaining an admission of guilt. It's not primarily about collecting more information, revisiting that possibility that maybe this person didn't do it. It's all about getting to that admission that we need. And the techniques that are used here can be roughly summarized as sort of the classic good-cop, bad-cop routine, what's referred to as maximization and minimization. And we know from laboratory experiments that this can be highly coercive. And the people who are particularly vulnerable tend to be people with low IQs, people who are young, teenagers, people with a history of mental health problems. And Juan really was suffering from all of these issues.

And what happens is someone sitting in that interrogation seat may often think to themselves, well, this is really awful. I need to relieve this acute distress, and I need to relieve this now. I'm going to admit that I did this crime because I know that I'm innocent, and very soon after I admit, I'm sure that the police will check out my alibis. I'm sure that they will look up and find other evidence, and then I'll be released. And really this is clearly the best idea. I'll just say I did it.

And what's tragic about situations like this is that as soon as there is a confession, the police stop looking for anyone else. They don't follow up on those other leads. They don't go down these other alleys because they have a confession. We put such faith in confessions that there's no need for finding other evidence or pursuing other avenues.

DAVIES: Do we have any idea how common false confessions are?

BENFORADO: We have a sense of it. When - during the 1980s, we just started to develop the tools to actually test biological evidence and do DNA analyses. And this has allowed us a glimpse of how common these things happen. And we now have enough data that we're beginning to understand the particular factors that can increase the likelihood, things like the length of interrogation time. Juan Rivera was interrogated for hours and hours and hours. In fact, the interrogation went on so long that the detectives interrogating him got tired, and they had to bring in other detectives to continue with the interrogation.

DAVIES: One thing that a lot of people believe would help is videotaping these interrogations and certainly any which lead to a confession. Does it?

BENFORADO: I have mixed feelings about videotape evidence. Now, on the one hand, in the wake of many tragedies around the country in the last several months, there's been a real push to make sure that all officers on the streets are wearing body cameras and that squad cars all have videotapes going at all times. And I think that, in part, that's a good idea. There is good research which suggests that when people believe they are being monitored, that actually changes their behavior for the good.

On the other hand, there is research on something that's called perspective bias that gives me pause. So the particular context where this has been studied quite extensively is in the interrogation room. And the way these experiments work is they put a camera behind the person being interrogated, and they put a camera behind the interrogator. Now, if videotape presented objective reality, as we suppose that it does, that choice wouldn't matter at all. But in fact it mattered a lot in these experiments. When people watched the footage shot from the perspective of the interrogator, they tended to say, well, this looks like a completely fine, voluntary confession. But when they watch the videotape from another perspective, through the eyes essentially of the suspect, suddenly they notice all of these coercive factors. And they tended to think, well, no, actually that confession cannot come into court because it is so badly influenced by the actions of the interrogator. And so that makes me worried about this broad movement right now to switch to videotaping everything.

I think the answer and the solution is to use that videotape for certain purposes, but not for other purposes. So we might use that body camera in order to make identifications of people, but we might not do it to - as a way in an actual trial - present that evidence as a clear and unambiguous representation of what happened in the key moments.

DAVIES: There's a lot of interesting stuff here about how jurors decide who they're going to believe at trial - prosecutors, witnesses. And a lot of people would not be surprised to find that there are studies that suggest people are more likely to believe a person of their own race. There's other fascinating stuff. Are attractive people or thin people more likely to - or confident people - more likely to be believed in court?

BENFORADO: Yeah, there is evidence that a lot of physical features play a big role in whether people treats a particular witness as credible or not credible. And that's worrisome. But I think there's actually a deeper problem with jurors and that is that the things that we think are determining the outcomes of cases - that is the facts and the law - are often not what determines whether someone is convicted or not convicted, how long a sentence is. What matters most are the particular backgrounds and identities of the jurors.

So I teach criminal law. One of the areas that I teach is rape law, and my casebook takes many pages, discussing all of the different nuances across the different states. And there's a lot of emphasis on the casebook on the importance of these nuances. It really matters whether we are in a state that recognizes a defense of a reasonably mistaken belief in consent or we're in a state that doesn't recognize that particular defense. But when researchers looked into how important the law was to outcomes in, say, a date rape case, what they found was the particular legal nuances didn't matter at all. What mattered were the backgrounds and experiences of the jurors. What they refer to as cultural cognition. And these subgroups of citizens didn't break down as expected. It wasn't that men were far more likely to let the man off in a date rape scenario. It was actually within women that the most interesting break occurred. Women who were older, who were more conservative, who adhere to more traditional gender norms, were far more likely to let the man off in this particular case than women who were liberal and younger. That's a worry because a lot of what law professors do is emphasize the importance of legal doctrine. It may not be legal doctrine, though, in the criminal law sphere that's really determining the trajectory of cases.

DAVIES: One of the things we see in court is jurors trying to evaluate whether a witness is testifying truthfully. And they would look for tells, you know, whether the witness appears jittery and whether they shift their eyes a lot or doesn't make eye contact. And you write that these things - research shows these things really tell us nothing about how truthful someone's being. In fact, they can mislead us into thinking someone is being truthful when they are not and vice versa. Do the courts encourage jurors to use these, you know, supposedly common sense evaluations of the mannerisms of both defendants and witnesses?

BENFORADO: They absolutely do. And this is one of the real challenges for reform in this area is that it's not that our legal system just sits back and says nothing about human behavior. It actually weighs in on the side of myth. And so if you've ever been a juror and you are called to jury duty, you know that the starting point is this voir dire process where you're asked a bunch of questions. I was recently called onto jury, although I didn't make it ultimately onto the jury. And I was asked, you know, these questions of do you have any reason why you would be more or less likely to believe the testimony of a police officer? Now, on the jury pool that I was in, a number of people said yeah, they checked that box. The judge then came up and said, all right, well, let me explain to you what objectivity means. It means that, you know, we all have these feelings, but you've just got to put them to the side. Can you do that? Everyone in the jury pool said, yes, of course, judge I can do that. But that's not how biases work. A lot of them are not subject to introspection and control. And so it's not just that our legal system is sitting back on the sidelines. It's actively promoting false notions of human behavior, and that's really, really damaging.

DAVIES: Adam Benforado's book is "Unfair: The New Science Of Criminal Injustice." We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and if you're just joining us, our guest is Adam Benforado. He's an associate professor of law at Drexel University. His new book is called "Unfair: The New Science Of Criminal Injustice."

There was a study of parole boards, and it discovered that when they looked at the likelihood that the parole board would grant a petition or parole (laughter), the most important factor seemed to be what time of day his case was heard.

BENFORADO: This is, you know, one of my favorite experiments in the book. This particular study involved looking at Israeli judges, and the question was, well, what are the factors that are most important to whether someone is granted parole? I teach criminal law. I would've said - before reading this study - well, it's got to be how bad a crime the person committed and how they did in prison - did they reform or not? But when the researchers looked at it, the best predictor was simply the time of day when the particular person appeared before the panel. First thing in the morning was the best time to appear before the panel. The worst time? Right before the first break in the day. And that's worrisome if judges, right - the people that we hold out as the most objective, the most able to control their irrational impulses - are being influenced by things outside their awareness.

DAVIES: Because they were just tired.

BENFORADO: Well, we're still trying to figure out the causal mechanism. One theory is that basically to deviate from the status quo requires, essentially, mental energy and that over the course of a day, people become depleted. And the more depleted they are, the more likely they're just to stick with the status quo. And the status quo, when it comes to the parole board, is just leaving someone in prison to finish out their sentence.

DAVIES: You also cite a case of a judge, Frank Barbaro, a New York state court judge, who was tormented by a decision he'd made in a case. He was a trial judge and he found someone guilty, I believe, of manslaughter. He was a white guy who'd killed a black person. And in the end, long after the trial, he looked at it and concluded he had harshly judged the man because he'd assumed he was a white racist killing a black man - attacking a black man. When he looked at the evidence in a different way, he felt differently about it.

It's a fascinating case and it raises the question of, what do you do about judges who carry unconscious biases? I mean, the fact that they are unconscious means that it may be hard to address directly. How do you deal with that?

BENFORADO: I think the starting point is to simply raise awareness about these biases. I think a lot of judges honestly don't know about them, or they know about them but think that they involve other judges, right - that's someone else's problem, I know I'm objective.

I think when you raise awareness, suddenly judges have an incentive to start paying attention to their behavior, actually looking at what they do. I think the second step is that we need to start actually keeping better track of judicial opinions, and do that on an individualized level so that people know, as a judge am I giving black people higher bails than white people? Judges don't know that right now, and it's hard to accept the data until you look at the broad statistics.

Now, the final step, I think, is direct interventions. And we're just starting to learn when it comes to, say, implicit racial biases, ways to disrupt either the effects of these biases or to actually unsettle the underlying stereotypes upon which these biases are based. So some of that interesting research is in exposing people to counter stereotypes. So when people have looked at positive images of African-Americans, say, Martin Luther King, and negative images of white people, say, an image of Charles Manson, that helps disrupt stereotypes that may, say, link blackness with crime or violence. The challenge for researchers right now is how to use these disruptive techniques to make lasting changes to people's behavior.

DAVIES: And is there a concern that you can implant a bias by trying to counter another bias?

BENFORADO: There is some concern with that, but I think that the techniques - certainly the research on implicit racial bias has reached such a level that a lot of those concerns are being actively addressed in the research. Now, to the extent that we want to take a completely different direction - and I think, you know, this is something that we should have on the table - we could say well, you know what, we're never going to get rid of all biases. And so a next-best solution is simply ensuring that our juries and our judicial benches are diverse. The worst possible thing is when everyone is biased and everyone is biased in the same way. If you look at the makeup of our judiciary, it is primarily white, wealthy, Ivy League-educated older men. That's a problem because all of their biases are going to tend to a line. And that's going to be exacerbated by the fact that our legal system and all of our laws under our common law system have been developed by older, white, highly-educated men. I think to the extent that we can focus on term limits efforts to ensure a diverse set of judges, that's another way to get at this problem of bias.

DAVIES: Let's talk about what can be done to improve things. Let's look at interrogations. Are there some law enforcement agencies that are doing better jobs of interrogating suspects, for example?

BENFORADO: Yes, I think there definitely are. And I think the key to positive reform is casting a broad net and looking at not just what different police departments are doing in the United States, but what they're doing internationally. And one of the things that I think is a really positive development, internationally particularly, in Europe, is the development of something called the cognitive interview. And the focus of the cognitive interview - unlike the traditional approach in the United States - the cognitive interview is all about collecting information. It's not about pressuring someone into admitting guilt. It's about extracting as much information, as much data from the person you're talking with as possible. Now, what that does is, it avoids any of the problems that we know happen when we use psychological coercion. We don't really run a risk of a false confession. What we do know though is we collect all of this data which then can be compared to all of the data we have elsewhere and in which we can catch people in lies very effectively.

DAVIES: You're asking cops to forget about their hunches, it sounds like.

BENFORADO: I am asking that we rely much less on hunches, but it's not just cops that I care about. I want judges and jurors and eyewitnesses to all give up this notion that they're infallible, that their memories work the way they think their memories work, that they make good calls based on objective factors. I think we need to control for our human limitations.

GROSS: We're listening to the interview FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies recorded with Adam Benforado, author of the new book, "Unfair: The New Science Of Criminal Injustice." They'll talk about why eyewitness testimony and eyewitness identifications can be inaccurate after we take a short break. I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the interview that FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies recorded with Adam Benforado, author of the new book "Unfair: The New Science Of Criminal Injustice." It's about how many routine procedures in the criminal justice system are bound to lead to mistakes and unfair outcomes because they rest on false assumptions about perception and how our brains work. Benforado is an associate professor of law at Drexel University.

DAVIES: Let's talk about eyewitness testimony and eyewitness identifications. One of the most effective things in a court is for a witness to look in the courtroom and say, yep, that guy did it. I recognize him. How often are eyewitness identifications inaccurate?

BENFORADO: The way a normal identification procedure works is the police have someone in mind, a suspect, and they bring that person in. And then they pull in four or five other people to stand next to that person as the eyewitness looks at the lineup. Now, we know a third of the time in real eyewitness identifications, the eyewitness picks out one of those fillers.

DAVIES: And what are some of the factors that lead to misidentification?

BENFORADO: There are a set of factors that are outside the control of the police departments. So we know, for instance, that cross-race identifications are a lot more likely to be inaccurate. We know that people are a lot less accurate if they have seen someone at dusk rather than at midday. We know that people tend to be less accurate when they physically exerted themselves at that moment of memory encoding.

Now, those are all factors that are out of the control of the police department. But there are a whole host of issues that are raised by how police officers handle eyewitnesses. And one of the things that I think is a very important step for us with respect to eyewitnesses is treating memory more like we treat other types of trace evidence. If you think about a bloodstained handkerchief - how careful we are to preserve that evidence, how careful we are to track sort of how it's handled over time and who has it at any given moment, we don't take any of those similar precautions with memory.

And yet what we know from the psychological evidence is memory is very, very fragile and very malleable, just like blood evidence is. So very simple things could be enacted today which would make a big difference. One of the things is simply ensuring that the person administering the identification procedure doesn't know who the suspect is. It's clear from both laboratory research and real-world evidence that when the police officer who is handling the eyewitness knows who the person is that the police have their eye on, they can vary subtly sway the person, often without even being aware they're doing that. So imagine that the eyewitness starts to pick out one of those fillers. Well, the police officer may just say, now, now, ma'am, take your time. We're in no rush here. The person - the police officer doesn't think, OK, well, I'm tainting this eyewitness identification. After all, that seems a good advice. There's no rush. Make sure you're certain. There's a lot of consequences here. But that kind of subtle behavior actually does have an impact.

DAVIES: What are other ways that a lineup can go wrong?

BENFORADO: Another great example of something that many police departments do, which is very problematic, is using multiple eyewitness identification procedures. So imagine that there's a robbery. They may bring one of the eyewitnesses from the bank, drive them by in the squad car and say, hey, do you see the person who robbed the bank anywhere on that street corner. Well, there's someone with handcuffs sitting there, and the eyewitness may say, yes, that person.

Now, two weeks later, that same eye witness is brought in and shown a lineup. Now, the question is are they remembering the person they saw sitting on the stoop, or are they remembering the person from the bank? We don't know. But imagine that they again point that person out. They choose the same person. This time, they say, I'm a hundred percent certain.

Then, very commonly, that particular eyewitness is then brought into court many months later to do an in-person identification. And at that point, the person says, yes, I am as certain as I have ever been on anything. And juries, we know, find this incredibly compelling. After all, the person has identified the same person three times and is absolutely certain.

DAVIES: So what happens is the memory becomes more reinforced with each successive iteration.

BENFORADO: Absolutely. And that first memory may not be a true memory at all. That was a highly suggestive procedure that was used. After all, there's a person sitting handcuffed on the side of the road. That really suggests that the police must know that this person is guilty.

DAVIES: You write a lot that jurors often make decisions and trials which are influenced by things that shouldn't matter, like how confident a lawyer is or by an expert witness who really might not have anything that meaningful to say but which can impress the jury or in some cases, you know, thinking that they can tell when someone's telling the truth. And you have a rather radical idea to overcome all of this - eliminating live trials. Explain.

BENFORADO: I think that we need to always have our eye on what's our legal system going to look like 10 years, 50 years, 100 years out. And one of the things that I think we ought to be thinking about is better controlling of how trials run. And one of the ideas that I suggest in the book is the possibility of virtual trials in which a lot of the things that we know lead to wrongful convictions and incorrect outcomes could actually be controlled.

So it shouldn't matter how attractive the witness is. It shouldn't matter whether the attorney is wearing a particular tie or gesturing in a certain way. The bombastic exchanges which occur in many trials - those shouldn't determine the outcome at all. That makes for good television but terrible justice. Now, if we controlled the situation of the courtroom, if we used, say, avatars and used a time delay, we could remove a lot of these biasing factors and ensure that jurors were focused on what we purport is the most important thing to the outcomes of trial.

DAVIES: Avatars meaning that - would be an avatar for every witness, an avatar for the attorneys, an avatar for the judge so that the words would come out in some sort of neutral way that the juror could evaluate. And you said a time delay? What about a - why a time delay?

BENFORADO: So one of the things we know about evidence is frequently, evidence which is actually not admissible that is misleading or that is irrelevant actually appears before jurors. And the way that we deal with it currently is the judge then instruct the jury, disregard what you just heard. And we treat that as if that's effective. Research suggests that's terribly ineffective. In fact, judges themselves are unable to prevent themselves from being influenced by such evidence. So the idea of a time delay would ensure that the decision-makers never ever hear about that objectionable evidence.

DAVIES: You know, I can hear a police detective listening to this or a prosecutor or an attorney or a judge saying, yeah, this is some egghead law professor who's read a bunch of studies. But the reality is that everybody is doing their best. And the system does get a lot right and that you don't have - you don't know what it's really like out there on the street, in the interrogation rooms, in the courts and that if you had more practical experience, you would see that it's not as bad as you think and that there are reasons for the way people behave as they do. Do you feel like you've got enough of a feel for the system to be judging it?

BENFORADO: I think absolutely. And I think there are going to be some people who are deeply skeptical. Obviously, we've been doing this in these ways that I suggested leading to deep problems for a very long time. There are a lot of vested interests - not just economic interests - in keeping things the way they are. Now, I will tell you this book is been out less than a week. I am not a famous person. I have been receiving e-mails from judges, from police officers telling me in particular after I wrote a New York Times op-ed, yes, this is what people need to hear.

I just heard about two days ago from an officer in New Jersey who said, you know what? I have been focused on evidence -based policing for a very long time. It's been an uphill battle. But with the amazing Internet, I have recently connected with a whole bunch of other police officers who are very interested in collecting data, in running experiments to figure out what's effective when it comes to interrogating people. What's effective when it comes to handling eyewitnesses? And I just want you to know we have started a new society focused on evidence-based policing, and we are committed to reaching across the United States.

I know that there are prosecutors out there who are starting programs based on making sure that the role in their office of the prosecutors is not just gaining convictions but looking for mistakes, ensuring justice, making sure that innocent people are never put away. Now, are there other prosecutors' offices who are going to listen to this program and say, you don't know anything, the adversarial process works? Yes. But I want to convince people that the innovators out there, the jurisdictions that are trying new things have it right. And they are going to be more successful. And they are going to be delivering justice to the communities in which they inhabit.

DAVIES: Well, Adam Benforado, thanks so much for spending some time with us.

BENFORADO: It was an absolute pleasure.

GROSS: Adam Benforado spoke with FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies. Benforado's new book is called "Unfair: The New Science Of Criminal Injustice." Our book critic Maureen Corrigan has four suspense novels to recommend for summer reading after we take a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Systemic Injustice in the Criminal Justice System

The criminal justice system is a highly debated topic because of the racial motivations that occur so often throughout it. Today we can truly see how much systemic injustice occurs and how much racial injustice is a serious issue. I read an article recently that talked about the racial discrimination that persists today in the criminal legal system. In the article by Project Innocence it states “Innocent Black people spend an average of 13.8 years wrongly imprisoned before being exonerated — about 45% longer than innocent white people. This racial disparity in time spent wrongfully incarcerated holds true across different types of convictions. Black people tend to receive harsher sentences when accused of sexual assault, and have a harder time being exonerated from a wrongful conviction. On average, they spend 4.5 more years in prison than their white counterparts before being exonerated.” (PI) These issues are seen everywhere in the US and make minority groups considered to be lower than those that are the majority. It puts people in a position where they have no power to do anything about saving themselves. They are portrayed as being of lesser value than others solely based on their skin color. This relates heavily to Simone deBeauvoir’s One and the Other concept. Her concept deals with the other being less than the one in situations and how the one is to be dominant over the other. This intertwines well with the theory that the criminal justice system sees white people as dominant over black people. The justice system has created traditions and patterns of this that makes the whole system a systemic injustice.The previous quote shows that throughout the justice system there is less care and conciseness towards African Americans when being sentenced. The system ultimately puts less effort into making sure that trials are ran fairly and the African Americans that are being prosecuted are given adequate treatment. One example in particular of mistreatment and cruelty in the system comes from an article that states “In Illinois, for example, under former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, police psychologically abused and physically tortured more than 100 Black men and women until many falsely confessed to crimes they did not commit. Several people wrongly convicted by Mr. Burge and his officers, including Innocence Project client Kevin Bailey, have since been exonerated.” (PI) This exemplifies the brutal treatment that African American receive when going through the criminal justice system and it shows how there is a large power inequity at play. Those higher up in the system have a large amount of power over those down below, this is a great example of the one and the other concept being applied. They have no way to fend for themselves when they may be stuck in a jail for a substantially longer period of time then a white person may be. The problem is there is no way to prove that if there is no one advocating for them to be treated fairly. The system itself has let African Americans down and will not allow anyone to fight for them the way they should be fought for. This issue is so prevalent in many different justice systems and affects African Americans more than any other race, preventing them from being able to succeed the way everyone else does or to live a normal life.

Innocence Project: https://innocenceproject.org/facts-racial-discrimination-justice-system-wrongful-conviction-black-history-month/

2 thoughts on “ Systemic Injustice in the Criminal Justice System ”

I really enjoyed reading your diary systemic injustice and the insight it gave me into our justice system. For one of my diaries, I almost choose to do this topic. I think this is an important topic that is very prevalent today. I watched the YouTube video attached to your post by Professor Daniel J. D’Amico and loved the additional information he gave me on this topic and think it connect well to your post. I think this is a very important topic that more people need to be informed on. What stood out to me from your post the most was that on average, African Americans spend 4.5 more years in prison than their white counterparts before being exonerated. This is a statistic I was not aware of and think is outrageous and needs to be addressed.

I really enjoyed reading your post and the points you provided. I totally agree our criminal system is corrupt and lots of African American are being affected. Our justice system should be there to help and protect us not accuse and conflict us. As an African American I get scared just being pulled over for a speeding because you don’t know what it will lead to. Others are wrongfully accused for crimes they didn’t which is totally not accepted because you stripping the life of a innocent person and causing mental trauma to both their parents and the individual. The justice system should do more and to avoid injustice like this.

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An overhaul for justice

But how do you translate an appetite for change into reality?

Ana Billingsley

To anyone reading the headlines, it’s clear there are serious problems with our criminal justice system, but to people trapped within it, the harms run deeper than the headlines can convey.

I saw this every day when I worked for the New York City Department of Correction on Rikers Island, creating employment and reentry programming for young adults. From the overly wide net law enforcement casts in Black and Latinx neighborhoods to the lack of comprehensive support available to people upon release, every stage of the criminal justice system is more harmful to people of color and those without access to wealth. Watching the students in my programs cycle in and out of the jails, I witnessed the incredibly high cost paid by the justice-involved, their families, and their communities for these systemic failings.

We know what some of the solutions are: connect people to resources that address their underlying needs instead of locking them up; allow those who can’t afford bail to return to their families and jobs instead of awaiting trial in jail; dispatch trained professionals like social workers to appropriate 911 calls instead of police officers. But what’s not always clear is the how . How can under-resourced governments shift to these new systems — and how can they demonstrate that reforms are resulting in better and more just outcomes?

I wanted to understand not only what changes we needed to make, but how we were going to make those changes a reality. That’s what led me to the Harvard Kennedy School’s Government Performance Lab (GPL). Our goal is to speed up progress against problems by innovating around the how . To do this, we embed teams with local governments to provide technical assistance, collaborating closely to test solutions that allow governments to transform their social service systems.

I’m leading a team in Harris County, Texas, that was formed after county leaders reached out to the GPL requesting support for their criminal justice reform projects, including helping manage the response to the ODonnell federal consent decree mandating an overhaul of its bail practices.

“There’s no system too big to reimagine — not even the criminal justice system.”

In 2016, Maranda ODonnell was arrested in Harris County for driving with an invalid license and held in jail pretrial because she couldn’t afford her $2,500 bail. Like thousands of other people in the country, arrest swept ODonnell through the front doors of the system and into wealth-based incarceration. The impact of being jailed before trial can be lasting and severe: in addition to job loss, disruption in benefits like health insurance, and debt creation from being unable to work, it also increases your chances of pleading guilty and receiving a harsher sentence. Because low-income people and people of color are arrested and jailed at disproportionate rates, the consequences are felt even more deeply in these communities.

My team and I are supporting Harris County government leaders as they take bold steps to make changes to their pretrial justice system: improving bail practices, enhancing early diversion and pretrial supervision, and exploring new ways to approach crisis response and alternatives to policing. Today, the majority of people in Harris County arrested on a misdemeanor charge are set free with a reminder to come back to court — no cash bail is required to get out — and people working in the criminal justice system are trained on both the impact of cash bail and how to identify supports for people who need help getting back to court.

While there is more work to be done, these reforms are working : the system is decreasing the wealth-based detention of poor people and shrinking the racial disparities in who gets released, all without a subsequent increase in crime.

But our work in Harris County and with other jurisdictions across the country is not just about implementing changes to improve the criminal justice system in that particular city, county, or state. It’s about testing and capturing innovations to shift from automatic punishment, which we know can magnify economic inequities and compound the effects of systemic racism, to community-based solutions that enable people to thrive. It’s about creating a roadmap that other governments can use to make their own systems more just. It’s about realizing there’s no system too big to reimagine — not even the criminal justice system.

About the author Ana Billingsley is an assistant director with the Government Performance Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School. Learn more about GPL’s work at https://govlab.hks.harvard.edu/

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Criminal Injustice

Welcome to Harvard
Earth Science

The ideas, research, and actions from across Harvard University for creating a more equitable criminal justice system.

Solving racial disparities in policing

Experts say that the approach must be comprehensive because the roots of injustice are embedded in our culture.

“There’s no system too big to reimagine—not even the criminal justice system.”

Ana Billingsley, assistant director with the Government Performance Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School, on translating an appetite for change into reality.

Read Ana’s essay

The flaws in our data

Harvard professor and computer scientist Latanya Sweeney discusses issues surrounding the increased use of data and algorithms in policing and sentencing.

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JASON NEWTON Data, and the algorithms that interpret data, are everywhere. From predicting which advertisements to send to your social media feeds, to using your location data to track which stores you frequent, society constantly leverages data to make decisions – even in the criminal justice system. Data and algorithms are being used in policing to predict where crimes might take place, and during sentencing to predict whether or not someone convicted of a crime is likely to reoffend. But with the long history of systemic racism within the United States criminal justice system, does that mean the algorithm itself will be flawed by racist and prejudicial assumptions? JN I’m Jason Newton… RACHEL TRAUGHBER …and I’m Rachel Traughber, and this is Unequal: a Harvard University series exploring race and inequality across the United States. RT To answer this question and shed light on how our data and algorithms are being used more broadly, we’re joined today by computer scientist Latanya Sweeney, Professor of the Practice of Government and Technology at the Harvard Kennedy School and in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She is an expert on data privacy, director of the data privacy laboratory at Harvard, and is widely regarded as one of the most preeminent voices in the field. She joins us now with more. JN Professor Sweeney, give us a brief description of what these data algorithms are, what they tell us and how is it they are now used in our criminal justice system. LATANYA SWEENEY Sure, thank you. Society has definitely experienced exponential growth in the amount of information collected on individuals. The idea now is not only do you have the collected data, but how do we use that data to make decisions. And that’s where these data algorithms come in. They analyze the data, they look for models, they make predictions, and they can be used to help humans make decisions. One of the places they can do that is in the criminal justice system. There are all types of decisions that are made there and lots of historical data on which an algorithm can learn. One of those examples is recidivism: This is the place where you try to decide whether or not a person will be allowed to go out on bail. So just because someone’s arrested doesn’t mean they’re guilty, that’s where the trial to decide. But whether or not they’ll be allowed to go out on bail is a decision that has to be made, usually by a judge, and a recidivism algorithm can use historical data to make that recommendation. JN Okay, but could you tell us what some of the drawbacks are to using this technology, as it tries to predict human behavior? LS Definitely, there are two major areas in which these drawbacks can happen. One is the date on which the algorithm has to learn or it’s going to learn these models to make its predictions, and the other one is when the algorithm uses a feedback from the person who is giving the information. And they say, Yes, I like that it gives me more like that, or give me less like that. So the bias in the algorithm example, is in the recidivism algorithm that I talked about, if judges before had been making biased decisions about who was allowed to go out on bail and who wasn’t, the algorithm will pick up that bias, and will then continue to perpetuate those decisions. If the algorithm has a feedback system, and it makes a recommendation, and a judge doesn’t like it says, I don’t really agree with that one, then over time, the algorithm will adjust to the preferences or biases that the judge may have. The example I think that most people really understand is when people are being recommended for a job. So there are many algorithms now that will take a bank of resumes and when there’s a job opening, or recommend people based on their resume to the potential employer. The potential employer then says yes, this one comes for an interview, not those. But if that employer has a bias against older people, then in fact, only young people will come be offered to offered to that person for interview. And on the next time that employee use it, it will only recommend younger people. So now the bias is even trapped in even further. RT I would like to unpack a little bit about these data algorithms applied to search results. I know that you’ve done some particular research on this and had some interesting discoveries. And I wonder if you would share a little bit about that with us? LS: In fact, that’s what started this area of research on algorithmic fairness, I had just become a professor here at Harvard. And I was in my office, when I was being interviewed by a reporter. I wanted to show him a particular paper. So I typed My name into the search bar onto the Google search bar, and up pop the paper I was looking for, but also a popped an ad implying I had an arrest record. And so the reporter said, I forget that paper, tell me about when you’re arrested. And I said, Well, I haven’t been arrested. But eventually I had to click on the link, pay the money, and show him that not only did it not have an arrest record for me, but with my unusual name, there was no one else who had an arrest record with that name, either. But that started me on the question of why did that happen. And so I spent hours and then a couple of months, and what I came to learn was that those ads came up, implying you had an arrest record, if you search the name of a real person, their first and last name, and if their first name was given more often to a black baby than a white baby, and they were 80% likely to have an arrest record show up. And and the opposite. If the baby the first name was given more often to white babies. Discrimination in the United States is not illegal. But [for] certain people in certain situations, discrimination is illegal. One of those…one of those groups of people are Blacks, and one of those situations is employment. And so if two people were applying for a job, and a search implies that one of them has an arrest record and the other one doesn’t, they’re put at a disadvantage. So this was the first time an algorithm, in this case, Google Search, was found to be in violation of the Civil Rights Act. JN That’s a really good point. So from the bias in the in the courtroom to out in the community, brings me to my next question, how have aggressive police tactics, and the over policing of black and minority neighborhoods over the past several decades affected this type of algorithm? LS Right, this is a fantastic question. We don’t we can’t even say we know the exact answer because we have to be able to say “this is exactly its impact on the data.” As we look at studies who show its impact on the data, then the question is, can we account for that when the algorithms are learning? So if the data is biased, the result from the algorithm is going to be biased? I’ll give you a Harvard example. Many years ago, when I was at Harvard, you know, pretty much it was primarily young white men, or certainly we can imagine a time even earlier than that, where was young white men. If we wanted to make an admissions algorithm for Harvard at that time, we would have used the admissions data that had that had been used. The algorithm would learn things and the population that we would get would be young white guys. So the data we provide to the algorithm has a lot to determine about what the algorithm will put out. Often I speak to students, and it really brings that home to them. Harvard’s campus right now is so diverse. When you look at in the classroom, it’s just an amazing, these are the best minds in the world. And they come from all different walks of life, all different countries. When they say wait a second, this room would look – look how different it would look, and not based on the same criteria. RT We’ve spoken a lot about how these algorithms can be used nefariously or unwisely, I’m wondering if you can suggest some opportunities that they could be adjusted for good and what that future might look like. LS Well, I’m a computer scientist, I want society to enjoy the benefits of these new technologies! I want society to enjoy the benefits, but without sacrificing these important historical protections. There’s no reason that that can’t be done. In every example that I’ve talked about today, we can imagine and envision ways two different things that can be done. One is an analysis of the data and the algorithm that can provide a guarantee of what it won’t do, of what kind of bias it doesn’t exhibit. The second kind of thing we can imagine is actually changing the algorithm so that it itself does it offsets a racial bias result. So the advertising algorithm would be an example of that. RT And last, I just wonder if you might give us any insight into you know, what kind of oversight goes into algorithms in general? I mean, it sounds like based on the conversation we’ve had here today that people are sort of, this is new technology, people are just applying it as they see fit, because they think it might make their jobs easier, or their lives easier. And instead, it’s…it’s exacerbating some of the inequalities that we’re seeing. Is there any oversight of these from a governmental perspective from a nonprofit perspective? Like, how, what is the next step in terms of policy creation? LS Yeah, this is a fantastic question. You know, it’s part of a larger arc. It’s not just these algorithms, it’s technology design, and designers are the new policymakers. We don’t elect them, we don’t vote for them, but the arbitrary decisions they make, and the technology products they produce dictate how we live our lives. And that’s everything from free speech, to…to privacy, to things like these decision-making algorithms that we’ve been talking about today. And so there’s a bigger arc around, how do we address technology itself and its impact on society. Our historical protections are intact, but they don’t seem to know how to apply or adapt themselves to the current technology. So one big answer we need is a new kind of technologist, one who works in the public interest, working in all of these places, and [with] all these stakeholders, working in technology design and technology companies working in agencies that regulate for these rules, so that they can understand them, working in Congress, and so forth. RT Yeah, I think we’ve definitely seen what happens when we don’t have people doing that work. But the you know, the events of January 6, in particular, and how a lot of that liaising to make that experience happen happened online happened through technology not being regulated. So it would be interesting to see what the next step would be to prevent something like that, and how technology could be used productively and positively to help. LS Yeah, and I would just say, you know, Twitter provides a great example, as well. Twitter has its own definition of free speech. And it’s a private company, so it can have this other definition of free speech. But Americans want to talk about Americans definition, America’s definition of free speech, and somehow be upset if Twitter doesn’t quite satisfy it. And and the other thing I’ve heard is Americans interpreting Twitter’s version as if it is America’s version. It just shows you how pervasive the technology is, and how the design of Twitter as an example, is really dictating what we think our free speech rights are. RT If you liked what you heard today and are anxious to learn more from Harvard’s Unequal project, visit us online at the “in focus” section of harvard.edu.

A history that can’t be suppressed

Bryan Stevenson discusses the legacy of slavery and the vision behind creating the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and The Legacy Museum in Montgomery Alabama.

Undoing injustice

Omavi Shukur went into law because he felt it was “the most effective route to go on that [would] allow me to help change people’s material reality for the better.”

Read Omavi’s story

Where we’re focused

These are just a few of the initiatives Harvard Schools have created to take on these important issues.

Harvard initiatives

Harvard Kennedy School’s Government Performance Lab
The Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management
Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project

Making progress

The Harvard Divinity Bulletin is a place where critical reflection can take place and meaningful ideas can be exchanged.

Let my people go

The Carr Center’s Justice Matters Podcast investigates a wide array of human rights issues at home and abroad.

Imagining radical solutions

Learn more about the Weatherhead Center’s blog .

Fighting the enemy within

The Kennedy School’s PolicyCast features leading experts in public policy, media, and international affairs, and explores their experiences confronting the world’s most pressing public problems.

A historic crossroads for systemic racism and policing in America

Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Policy Program brings you a series of in-depth conversations with the people on the front lines reforming the criminal legal system.

Restorative justice with Fania Davis

Slavery’s legacy and the racial awakening of 2020

“Policing in America” is a Harvard Law School lecture series on American policing in the current moment, what brought us here, and opportunities for improvement.

Diagnosing the American penal system

Police, prosecutors, and qualified immunity, police unions and politics, the costs of inequality: a goal of justice, a reality of unfairness — harvard gazette, the costs of inequality: when a fair shake isn’t — harvard gazette, the costs of inequality: across harvard, efforts to improve lives — harvard gazette.

Harvard offers myriad programs to alleviate the inequality gap within the University, from neighboring communities to overseas.

Black people are still seeking racial justice – why and what to do about it

Subscribe to how we rise, kwadwo frimpong kwadwo frimpong research associate.

November 12, 2020

On July 9 th 2020, in the wake of nation-wide protests over George Floyd and other Black victims of police violence, David M. Rubenstein Fellow in Governance Studies Rashawn Ray joined actor and producer Boris Kodjoe to talk about policy solutions to address systemic racism and police brutality. Below are highlights from their conversation for the Instagram podcast series #19for20 , which aims to inspire public dialogue about difficult topics in social justice. You can watch the full interview here .

What is different about today’s climate compared to prior national uprisings around race?

Ray highlighted how both the visceral public display of George Floyd’s murder and COVID-19 had engulfed the nation in a manner markedly distinct from Ferguson, Black Lives Matter (BLM) and other previous nation-wide racial justice movements.

“George Floyd is the twenty first century Emmett Till, a moment similar to [his] murder in 1955 [and] by his mother having the foresight and also the bravery to show his decomposed body in that casket”, he said.

The gruesome imagery of witnessing another human being lose their life , with their neck buried under the knee of a police officer for roughly 8 minutes and 46 seconds languishes us psychologically, emotionally and physically. At the same time, with the globe and mainstream media gripped in the sweeping standstill of the pandemic, BLM took to social media, unleashing raw footage of Floyd and other Black victims to signify that they were not isolated, but were the remnants of a larger scourge of racially charged police violence rippling across the country.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CCcTIIUIu1K/?igshid=ri56lt8dfddf

Why do Black Lives continue to be devalued and over-criminalized?

Ray remarked on how the nation’s historical legacy of slavery continues to be the foundational epicenter of racial discrimination against Blacks and other minorities. “Bad apples often times come from a rotten tree. And that tree in the United States of America is rooted in systemic racism, particularly when it comes to law enforcement that has roots back to slavery”, he explained. What’s more, according to recent research , disturbing levels of white nationalism and domestic extremist groups have been shown to have infiltrated law enforcement.

Kodjoe described a personal encounter he had had with a white businessman in his own neighborhood while dressed in a hoodie and flip flops to illustrate what he referred to as “ the magic pause ”: how Black individuals continually internalize and deflect a series of micro-aggressions and discriminatory behavior from white individuals. The man was initially disdainful towards Kodjoe but after noticing that he owned one of the most opulent houses in the community, he sharply reversed his tone, adopting a more friendly and positive demeanor. “And that criminalization of Black people is the direct result of the lack of those muscles and the lack of consideration for the fact that I’m a father, I’m a husband, I’m a professional, I have family, I have a job,” Kodjoe emphasized.

Ray concurred, remarking that “ the magic pause ” also reflects the collective memory of traumatic experiences that Blacks have undergone in the past, triggering fresh waves of encounters that either did or could have ended fatally, but also revealing how a white person will attempt to code-switch according to the perceived social class of a Black person. “And I think fundamentally it highlights that we can’t outclass racism. It doesn’t matter if you’re Boris Kodjoe [and] that you have the biggest house on the street….all that matters is that in that moment, he’s seen your skin tone and his skin tone, [which gives] him the script for how to make sense of what was going on,” he added. In essence, these racial attitudes undergird and perpetuate the over-policing and dehumanization of Black people and the long-standing perceptions that they are not only one-dimensional but are more likely to engage in crime. Conversely, crime is inherently racial but there is a tendency to zero in on Black related violence. “ 94% of Black people kill other Blacks, 86% of white people kill other whites. But we never say white-on-white crime. It’s only talking about Black-on-Black crime,” Ray underscored.

What remedies can help shape the path forward?

1. Re-allocate and re-invest in police departments

Simply assigning more police officers to these crises will not solve the underlying issues. Further, not only is crime hovering at historic lows but existing law enforcement funds are not being utilized efficiently: Roughly 40% of homicides and 70% of robberies go unresolved and 9 out of 10 response calls handled by law enforcement stem from non-violent issues, ranging from mental health to homelessness. Defunding the police or re-assigning non-violent crimes to entities better equipped to handle these societal challenges will help to boost efficiency and augment the clearance rate for resolving violent crimes.

2. Implement accountability & transparency in law enforcement

Not only does the status quo reward police officers who ratchet up the highest quotas of tickets and arrests but taxpayers routinely foot the bill for civil payouts involving victims of police brutality and even then, the culpable officers are rarely held financially or criminally liable.

Institute police department liability insurance: By shifting the source of funds for civilian payouts from taxpayers to police budgets , police departments will not only have a greater incentive to hold police officers accountable for misconduct but the aggrieved families will receive more just recompense for the loss of their loved ones, through the parties that are directly responsible as opposed to through their own hard-earned tax dollars.
Create a national registry : This will allow police officers to be terminated for misconduct or if they resigned under trial for misconduct as outlined in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act .
Remove qualified immunity : This is a legal safeguard currently upheld by the Supreme Court which shields police officers from criminal liability and being sued financially, however, recently enacted state led reforms such as in Colorado can serve as a promising model.

3. Active civic engagement, particularly down ballot

Activism across the electoral spectrum is paramount but local politics largely determines the policies and outcomes within one’s immediate community. Rallying and electing local officials such as state representatives and attorney generals who can impact the judicial system can yield concrete pathways towards significant results.

4. Corporate America needs to embrace meaningful action, not just slogans and words

Black assets and intellectual property have been systematically disenfranchised and under-invested in and members of the C-suite and other large conglomerates have a significant role to play in not only reshaping the narrative and incentive structure around business but by also leveraging the existing resources within the Black community to drive sustainable and meaningful change. ”[We] don’t need handouts, we need real partnerships and corporate allies that are ready to invest in us,” Kodjoe reiterated.

Invest in minority-owned small businesses . Roughly 40% of black small businesses went under because 90% didn’t receive relief funds, however, large corporates can leverage their existing sub-contracts to combat this area.
Diversity upper management; there is a rich pool of untapped talent to be capitalized upon.
Compensate individuals for doing the emotional work of anti-racism; they are not there to do it for free.
Institute bi-annual surveys for minorities to capture their experiences in the workplace and promote greater equity.
Implement reparations to close the racial wealth gap.

In essence, Black people don’t want a seat at the table, they want their own table, apportioned with equal weight and size to be acknowledged, seen, and heard across all spectrums of society. W.E.B Dubois encapsulated this enduring plight of Black individuals over a century ago as “ double consciousness ”, a longing to be both Black and American without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in one’s face. And yet Blacks are still clamoring for that promise of equal justice and opportunity to be recognized as fully equal citizens in America.

Report Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal Justice System

A montage of faces close up, both men and women.

Easily browse the critical components of this report…

Introduction

Throughout the nation, people of color are far more likely to enter the nation’s justice system than the general population. State and federal governments are aware of this disparity, and researchers and policymakers are studying the drivers behind the statistics and what strategies might be employed to address the disparities, ensuring evenhanded processes at all points in the criminal justice system. This primer highlights data, reports, state laws, innovations, commissions, approaches and other resources addressing racial and ethnic disparities within our country’s justice systems, to provide information for the nation’s decision-makers, state legislators.

Examining the Data and Innovative Justice Responses to Address Disparities

For states to have a clear understanding of the extent of racial and ethnic disparities in the states, they need to have data from all stages of the criminal justice system.

1. Law Enforcement

Disparities within traffic stops.

Contact with law enforcement, particularly at traffic stops, is often the most common interaction people have with the criminal legal system.

According to a large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States , “police stop and search decisions suffer from persistent racial bias.” The study, the largest to date, analyzed data on approximately 95 million stops from 21 state patrol agencies and 35 municipal police departments across the country. The authors found Black drivers were less likely to be stopped after sunset, when it is more difficult to determine a driver’s race, suggesting bias in stop decisions. Furthermore, by examining the rate at which stopped drivers were searched and turned up contraband, the study found that the bar for searching Black and Hispanic drivers was lower than that for searching white drivers.

The study also investigated the effects of legalization of recreational cannabis on racial disparities in stop outcomes—specifically examining Colorado and Washington, two of the first states to legalize the substance. It found that following the legalization of cannabis, the number of total searches fell substantially. The authors theorized this may have been due to legalization removing a common reason officers cite for conducting searches. Nevertheless, Black and Hispanic drivers were still more likely to be searched than white drivers were post-legalization.

Data Collection Requirements in Statute

At least 23 states and the District of Columbia have laws related to or requiring collection of data when an individual is stopped by law enforcement. Some of these laws specifically prohibit racial profiling or require departments to adopt a policy to the same effect. Collection of demographic data can serve as a means of ensuring compliance with those provisions or informing officials on current practices so they can respond accordingly.

States have employed many reporting or other requirements for evaluation of the data collected under these laws. For example, Montana requires agencies to adopt a policy that provides for periodic reviews to “determine whether any peace officers of the law enforcement agency have a pattern of stopping members of minority groups for violations of vehicle laws in a number disproportionate to the population of minority groups residing or traveling within the jurisdiction…”

Maryland’s law requires local agencies to report their data to the Maryland Statistical Analysis Center. The center is then tasked with analyzing the annual reports from local agencies and posting the data in an online display that is filtered by jurisdiction and by each data point collected by officers.

The amount and kind of data collected also varies state by state. Some states leave the specifics to local jurisdictions or require the creation of a form based on statutory guidance, but most require the collection of demographic data including race, ethnicity, color, age, gender, minority group or state of residence. Notably, Missouri’s law requires collection of the following 10 data points:

The age, gender and race or minority group of the individual stopped.
The reasons for the stop.
Whether a search was conducted because of the stop.
If a search was conducted, whether the individual consented to the search, the probable cause for the search, whether the person was searched, whether the person’s property was searched, and the duration of the search.
Whether any contraband was discovered during the search and the type of any contraband discovered.
Whether any warning or citation was issued because of the stop.
If a warning or citation was issued, the violation charged or warning provided.
Whether an arrest was made because of either the stop or the search.
If an arrest was made, the crime charged.
The location of the stop.

State laws differ as to what kind of stop triggers a data reporting requirement. For example, Florida’s law applies to stops where citations are issued for violations of the state’s safety belt law. While Virginia’s law is broader, requiring all law enforcement to collect data pertaining to all investigatory motor vehicle stops, all stop-and-frisks of a person and all other investigatory detentions that do not result in arrest or the issuance of a summons.

Cultural Competency and Bias Reduction Training for Law Enforcement

At least 48 states and the District of Columbia have statutory training requirements for law enforcement. These laws require law enforcement personnel statewide to be trained on specific topics during their initial training and/or at recurring intervals, such as in-service training or continuing education.

In most states, the law simply requires training on a subject, leaving the specifics to be determined by state training boards or other local authorities designated by law. However, some states, such as Iowa and West Virginia, have very detailed requirements and even specify how many hours are required, the subject of the training, required content, whether the training must be received in person and who is approved to provide the training.

Overall, at least 26 states mandate some form of bias reduction training. Find out more about these laws on NCSL’s Law Enforcement Training webpage.

Law Enforcement Employment and Labor Policies

States have also addressed equity and accountability in policing through certification and accountability measures and hiring practices.

For example, a 2020 California law ( AB 846 ) changed state certification requirements by expanding current officer evaluations to screen for various kinds of bias in addition to physical, emotional or mental conditions that might adversely affect an officer’s exercise of peace officer powers. The law also requires the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training to study, review and update regulations and screening materials to identify explicit and implicit bias against race or ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion, disability or sexual orientation related to emotional and mental condition evaluations.

In addition to screening, the California law requires every department or agency that employs peace officers to review the job descriptions used in recruitment and hiring and to make changes that deemphasize the paramilitary aspects of the job. The intent is to place more emphasis on community interaction and collaborative problem-solving.

Nevada ( AB 409 ), in 2021, added to statutory certification requirements mandating evaluation of officer recruits to identify implicit bias on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation or gender identity expression. That same year, Nevada also enacted legislation ( SB 236 ) that requires law enforcement agencies to establish early warning systems to identify officers who display bias indicators or demonstrate other problematic behavior. It also requires increased supervision, training and, if appropriate, counseling to officers identified by the system. If an officer is repeatedly identified by the early warning system, the law requires the employing agency to consider consequences, including transfer from high-profile assignments or other means of discipline.

Another area of interest for states has been hiring a more diverse workforce in law enforcement and support agencies. For example, New Jersey SB 2767 (2020) required the state Civil Service Commission to conduct a statewide diversity analysis of the ethnic and racial makeup of all law enforcement agencies in the state.

Finally, at least one state addressed bias in policing through a state civil rights act. Massachusetts ( SB 2963 ) established a state right to bias-free professional policing. Conduct against an aggrieved person resulting in decertification by the Police Office Standards and Training Commission constitute a prima-facie violation of the right to bias-free professional policing. The law also specifies that no officer is immune from civil liability for violating a person’s right to bias-free professional policing if the conduct results in officer decertification.

Disproportionality of Native Americans in the Justice System According to the U.S. Department of Justice, from 2015 to 2019, the number of American Indian or Alaska Native justice-involved individuals housed in local jails for federal correctional authorities, state prison authorities or tribal governments increased by 3.6% . Though American Indian and Alaska Natives make up a small proportion of the national incarcerated population relative to other ethnicities, some jurisdictions are finding they are disproportionately represented in the justice system. For example, in Pennington County , S.D., it is estimated that 10% to 25% of the county’s residents are Native American, but they account for 55% of the county’s jail population. Similarly, Montana’s Commission on Sentencing found that while Native Americans represent 7% of the state’s general population, they comprised 17% of those incarcerated in correctional facilities in 2014 and 19% of the state’s total arrests in 2015.

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2. pretrial release and prosecution, risk assessments.

Recently, state laws have authorized or required courts to use pretrial risk assessment tools. There are about two dozen pretrial risk assessment tools in use across the states.

Laws in Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, New Jersey and Vermont require courts to adopt or consider risk assessments in at least some, if not all, cases on a statewide basis. While laws in Colorado, Illinois, Montana, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and West Virginia authorize or encourage, but do not require, adopting a risk assessment tool on a statewide basis.

This broad state adoption of risk assessment tools raises concern that systemic bias may impact their use. In 2014, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said pretrial risk assessment tools “may exacerbate unwarranted and unjust disparities that are already far too common in our criminal justice system and our society.”

More than 100 civil rights organizations expressed similar concerns in a statement following a 2017 convening. The dependance of pretrial risk assessment tools on data that reflect systemic bias is the crux of the issue. The statement highlights that police officers disproportionately arrest people of color, which impacts risk assessment tools that rely on arrest data. The statement then set out key principles mitigating harm that may be caused by risk assessments, recognizing their broad use across the country.

The conversation about bias in pretrial risk assessments is ongoing. In 2021, the Urban Institute published the report “ Racial Equity and Criminal Justice Risk Assessment .” In the report, the authors discuss and make recommendations for policymakers to balance the use of risk assessment as a component of evidence-based practice with pursuing goals of reducing racial and ethnic disparities. The authors state that “carefully constructed and properly used risk assessment instruments that account for fairness can help limit racial bias in criminal justice decision-making.”

Academic studies show varied results related to the use of risk assessments and their effect on racial and ethnic disparities in the justice system. One study, “ Racist Algorithms or Systemic Problems ,” concludes “there is currently no valid evidence that instruments in general are biased against individuals of color,” and, “Where bias has been found, it appears to have more to do with the specific risk instrument.” In another study, “ Employing Standardized Risk Assessment in Pretrial Release Decisions ,” the authors, without making causal conclusions, find that “despite comparable risk scores, African American participants were detained significantly longer than Caucasian participants … and were less likely to receive diversion opportunity.”

In a recent report titled “ Civil Rights and Pretrial Risk Assessment Instruments ,” the authors recommend steps to protect civil rights when risk assessment tools are used. The report underscores the importance of expansive transparency throughout design and implementation of these tools. It also suggests more community oversight and governance that promotes reduced incarceration and racially equitable outcomes. Finally, the report suggests decisions made by judges to detain should be rare, deliberate and not dependent solely on pretrial risk assessment instruments.

States are starting to regulate the use of risk assessments and promote best practices by requiring the tool to be validated on a regular basis, be free from racial or gender bias and that documents, data and records related to the tool be publicly available.

For example, California (2019 SB 36 ) requires a pretrial services agency validate pretrial risk assessment tools on a regular basis and to make specified information regarding the tool, including validation studies, publicly available. The law also requires the judicial council to maintain a list of pretrial services agencies that have satisfied the validation requirements and complied with the transparency requirements. California published its most recent validation report in June 2021.

Similarly, Idaho (2019 HB 118 ) now requires all documents, data, records and information used to build and validate a risk assessment tool to be publicly available for inspection, auditing and testing. The law requires public availability of ongoing documents, data, records and written policies on usage and validation of a tool. It also authorizes defendants to have access to calculations and data related to their own risk score and prohibits the use of proprietary tools.

Pretrial Release

A recent report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights evaluates the civil rights implications of pretrial release systems across the country.

Notable findings from the report include stark racial and gender disparities in pretrial populations with higher detention rates and financial conditions of release imposed on minority populations. The report also finds that more than 60% of defendants are detained pretrial because of an inability to pay financial conditions of release.

States have recently enacted legislation to address defendants’ ability to pay financial conditions of release, with at least 11 states requiring courts to conduct ability-to-pay considerations when setting release conditions. NCSL’s Statutory Framework of Pretrial Release report has additional information about state approaches to pretrial release.

Prosecutorial Discretion

Prosecutorial discretion is a term used to describe the power of prosecutors to decide whether to charge a person for a crime, which criminal charges to file and whether to enter into a plea agreement. Some argue this discretion can be a source of disparities within the criminal justice system.

The Prosecutorial Performance Indicators (PPI), developed by Florida International University and Loyola University Chicago, is an example of an effort to address this. PPI provides prosecutors’ offices with a method to measure their performance through several indicators, including racial and ethnic disparities. As part of their work to bring accountability and oversight to prosecutorial discretion, PPI has created six measures specifically related to racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system. The PPI measures include the following:

Victimization of Racial/Ethnic Minorities.
Case Dismissal Differences by Victim Race/Ethnicity.
Case Filing Differences by Defendant Race/Ethnicity.
Pretrial Detention Differences by Defendant Race/Ethnicity.
Diversion Differences by Defendant Race/Ethnicity.
Charging and Plea Offer Differences by Defendant Race/Ethnicity.

Below is a table highlighting disparity data discovered through the use of PPI measures , gathered from specific jurisdictions.

Young People in the Justice System

As is the case in the adult system, compared to young white people, youth of color are disproportionately represented at every stage in the nation’s juvenile justice system. Overall juvenile placements fell by 54% between 2001 and 2015, but the placement rate for Black youth was 433 per 100,000, compared to a white youth placement rate of 86 per 100,000. According to a report from the Prison Policy Initiative, an advocacy organization, titled “ Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie 2019 ,” 14% of all those younger than 18 in the U.S. are Black, but they make up 42% of the boys and 35% of the girls in juvenile facilities. Additionally, Native American and Hispanic girls and boys are also overrepresented in the juvenile justice system relative to their share of the total youth population. Information from California reveals that prosecutors send Hispanic youth to adult court via “direct file” at over three times the rate of white youth.

At the federal level, the 2018 reauthorized Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act requires states to identify and analyze data on race and ethnicity in state, local and tribal juvenile justice systems. States must identify disparities and develop and implement work plans to address them. States are required to document how they are addressing racial and ethnic disparities and establish a coordinating body composed of juvenile justice stakeholders to advise states, units of local government and Native American tribes. If a state fails to meet the act’s requirements, it will result in a 20% reduction of formula grant funding.

An example of a coordinating council that has examined extensive data is the Equity and Justice for All Youth Subcommittee of the Georgia Juvenile Justice State Advisory Group . The group conducted a county-by-county assessment and analysis of disproportionality in Georgia and found one of the most effective ways to reduce disproportionate treatment of youth is to reduce harsh disciplinary measures in schools. This in turn helps reduce disproportionate referrals to the system.

3. Incarceration

Incarceration statistics help paint a picture of the disparities in the criminal justice system. Significant racial and ethnic disparities can be seen in both jails and prisons. According to the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge website , “While Black and Latinx people make up 30% of the U.S. population, they account for 51% of the jail population.”

An October 2021 report from The Sentencing Project, an organization advocating for criminal justice reform, found that “Black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons across the country at nearly five times the rate of whites, and Latinx people are 1.3 times as likely to be incarcerated than non-Latinx whites.” At the time of the report, there were 12 states where more than half of the prison population is Black and seven states with a disparity between the Black and white imprisonment rate of more than 9 to 1.

To have a clearer sense of the racial makeup of who is incarcerated at any given time, some systems developed data dashboards to provide information on their jail populations. In Allegheny County, Pa., for instance, the jail data dashboard is publicly available and provides a range of information on who is incarcerated in the jail. The dashboard provides an up-to-the-day look at the race, gender and age of the jail population. According to the dashboard, on average from Jan. 1, 2019, to mid-November 2021, 65% of individuals in the jail were Black.

Dashboards may also be established by the individual state, though these generally look back over a specified time, rather than providing a close-to-live look at the jail population. Colorado passed a law in 2019 ( HB 1297 ) requiring county jails to collect certain data and report it to the state Division of Criminal Justice on a quarterly basis. That data is compiled in a publicly available Jail Data Dashboard . The dashboard includes information on the racial and ethnic makeup of jail populations in the state. In the second quarter of 2021, 88% of people incarcerated in jails in the state were white, 16% were Black, 2% were Native American and 1% were classified as “other race.” In the same quarter, ethnicity data for incarcerated people showed 67% were non-Hispanic, 33% were Hispanic and 9% were classified with “unknown ethnicity.”

Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections has an online dashboard providing similar information for the state prison population. The dashboard shows Black people make up 12% of the state’s overall population but 44% of the population in state correctional institutions, while white people make up 74% of the state population and 45% of the state prison population. While dashboards themselves don’t reduce disparities, they help create a clearer understanding of them.

4. Sentencing

Racial and ethnic disparities can also be seen in the sentencing of individuals following a criminal conviction. The use of sentencing enhancements and federal drug sentencing both provide examples of the disparities in sentencing.

Sentencing enhancements in California have been found to be applied disproportionately to people of color and individuals with mental illness according to the state’s Committee on Revision of the Penal Code . More than 92% of the people sentenced for a gang enhancement in the state, for instance, are Black or Hispanic. The state has more than 150 different sentence enhancements and more than 80% of people incarcerated in the state are subject to a sentence enhancement.

In response to recommendations from the committee, AB 333 was enacted in 2021 to modify the state’s gang enhancement statutes by reducing the list of crimes under which use of the current charge alone creates proof of a “pattern” of criminal gang activity and separates gang allegations from underlying charges at trial.

Impact Statements and Legislative Task Forces

Racial impact statements and data.

Legislatures are currently taking many steps to increase their understanding of racial and ethnic disparities in the justice system. In some states, this has taken the form of racial and ethnic impact statements or corrections impact statements.

At least 18 states require corrections impact statements for legislation that would make changes to criminal offenses and penalties. These look at the fiscal impact of policy changes on correctional populations and criminal justice resources. A few states have required the inclusion of information on the impacts of policy changes on certain racial and ethnic groups.

Colorado has taken this approach. The state enacted legislation in 2013 (SB 229) requiring corrections fiscal notes to include information on gender and minority data. In 2019, the state passed legislation (HB 1184) requiring the staff of the legislative council to prepare demographic notes for certain bills. These notes use “available data to outline the potential effects of a legislative measure on disparities within the state, including a statement of whether the measure is likely to increase or decrease disparities to the extent the data is available.”

Other states with laws requiring racial and ethnic impact statements include Connecticut , Iowa , Maine , New Hampshire , New Jersey , Oregon and Virginia . Additionally, Florida announced a partnership in July 2019 “between the Florida Senate and Florida State University’s College of Criminology & Criminal Justice to analyze racial and ethnic impacts of proposed legislation.” Minnesota’s Sentencing Commission has compiled racial impact statements for the legislature since 2006, though this is not required in law.

Legislative Studies and Task Forces

States are also taking a closer look at racial disparities within criminal justice systems by creating legislative studies or judicial task forces. These bodies examined disproportionalities in the criminal justice system, investigated possible causes and recommended solutions.

In 2018, Vermont legislatively established the state’s Racial Disparities in the Criminal and Juvenile Justice System Advisory Panel . The panel submitted its report to the General Assembly in 2019. Part of the report recommended instituting a public complaint process with the state’s Human Rights Commission to address perceived implicit bias across all state government systems. It also recommended training first responders to identify mental health needs, educating all law enforcement officers on bias and racial disparities and adopting a community policing paradigm. Finally, the panel agreed that increased and improved data collection was important to combat racial and ethnic disparities in the justice system. The panel recommended “developing laws and rules that will require data collection that captures high-impact, high-discretion decision points that occur during the judicial processes.”

State lawmakers are well positioned to make policy changes to address the racial and ethnic disparities that research has shown are present throughout the criminal justice system. As they continue to develop a greater understanding of these disparities, state legislatures have an opportunity to make their systems fairer for all individuals who encounter the justice system, with the goal of reducing or eliminating racial and ethnic disparities.

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Racism in U.S. Criminal Justice System Essay

Introduction, racism in u.s. criminal justice system, clinton and incarnation, race discrimination in courts, recommendation, works cited.

In ensuring that people interact and live in harmony there are rules and regulations that are usually stipulated. This is usually the case for all countries around the world.

The police are the ones who are mostly entitled to arrest the offenders before taking them to courts. In most countries, parliament is the ones mandated to formulate the laws. The laws are usually approved by the president of a country. Once one has been arrested by the police and taken to court, he or she can be released on bond or remanded before their case is over depending on the type of crime they have committed.

In administering their duties, the courts are supposed not to discriminate people according to their race, religion or economic wellbeing. This is not usually the case and discrimination is usually evident in many cases. This paper seeks to examine racism and racial disparity in the criminal justice system with special reference to the United States of America justice system.

Racism, which has been persistent in the United States of America, dates from the time of slavery. African American and Native Americans among others were highly discriminated against by the whites (Love, 2004). Racism has been found to be evident in all aspects from schooling to the administering of justice by the courts.

There has been continuous fight against racism in the US but it has not yet been totally eradicated. This is mainly because it is deep rooted in the administration structure and thus requires total cooperation from all parties involved in the success of its eradication (Cronkhite, 2007). The election of Obama as the US president irrespective of his roots in Africa is a good indicator of the good progress achieved so far although much more has to be done.

A country administration is mainly mandated in maintain law and order in all aspects of human interaction. In the United States of America, Clinton was the only president who passed very strict law on drug trade. These laws led to the arrest of more people who were charged at courts and imprisoned.

During his term, more tough penalties were formulated and more prisons constructed. This led to more African American being on the increase in comparison the whites. This raised query on the possible cause of the difference despite them being the minority in population.

The treatment given to blacks in the United States is different from that offered to the whites. This is evident in the administering of justice. Despite the small number of African American in comparison to the whites in the United States, the number of blacks imprisoned is very high.

It is said that the number of blacks and white men participating in drug trade is almost equal. The number of blacks arrested and charged for drugs is higher than that of the whites raising questions about the way justice is administered in courts. In courts, the blacks and Latinos usually do not get fair trial. The drug policy in US is biased so that it does not favor small groups of people such as the blacks and Latinos.

The problem of racism gets its roots from the policy makers whose minds are filled with the notion that the minority are the ones who usually commit crimes. This has brought failure in the fight against drugs. To ensure that justice prevails, there must be appropriate changes in the judicial system. The provision of proper education on drugs could give positive results in drug fight. Fair award of punishment should be done irrespective of one’s skin color or financial status.

In the recent years the number of people in jails or undergoing correction measures has been increasing. Out of this large number, the blacks form the majority despite them forming the minority in the population. There have been questions on how this can be a possibility which has led to a general feeling that double standards are being applied on some races.

In the courts, the suspects are supposed to be well informed about their rights. The availability of public defenders is found to be mainly influenced by race with the African American and the Latinos being discriminated. According to Gerhard Falk (2004):

The bureau of justice statistics reported in 2008 that in 2007 there were 4618 black males sentenced to prison for violent crimes for every 100,000 black male citizens. This number compares to 1,747 Hispanic males and 773 Euro-American males per 100,000 in the population. Since the African American population is only 13 percent of all Americans and the Hispanic population is just 12 percent of all Americans, there is indeed a great overrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics in our prisons. (Falk 2)

The issue of racism in the US criminal justice system is evident in all its levels. This stems down from the judges offering at the courts to the way the police interact with the citizen (Young, Greene and Gabbidon 153). It has been shown that the police interact with the whites better than with the blacks.

This is evident through the large number of blacks and Latinos being stopped and frisked in comparison to the whites. Over the years it has been observed that the probability of a black man being stopped and frisked is much higher than that of the white. In all these cases, the male is usually at higher chances of being harassed by the police than the females.

The judges depend on the law in administering justice. In courts, there are groups of people who are usually mandated by the court to argue a case from facts. In the US, there has been discrimination in the administration of jury services to the African Americans. This indicates a big failure in the judicial system in administering justice to all.

According to the law, any person is entitled to undergo a trial before they are sentenced by the court. A large number of African Americans usually do not get tried in accordance with the constitution in fear of being given heavier penalties on the crimes committed.

Generally speaking it is possible that most of the colored and black people get involved in committing crimes due to their financials status. Most of them might not have some means of livelihood and therefore as a means of sustaining themselves they resort to criminal and criminal related activities. The government should find a solution to empower these people instead of passing strict laws on drugs. By empowering this population, the problem of drug trafficking would have been solved automatically.

The racial discrimination in the US is observed as a way of social control. The issue of overlooking the African American and the Latinos as criminals has been used as a great weapon in the discrimination. This could be viewed as an internal war on the marginalized. The main reason behind all these is dominance by the whites in almost all the organs of justice.

The best way of overcoming this problem is through intensive revolution of values. This thus requires looking into the root cause of the problem and finding the best way to handle the situation. Increasing the number of prisoners in our jail does not ensure our security but a better approach should be undertaken.

Cronkhite, Clyde. Criminal justice administration: strategies for the 21st century . Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2007. Print.

Falk, Gerhard. The American criminal justice system: how it works, how it doesn’t, and how to fix it. California: ABC-CLIO, 2010. Print.

Love, Eric. Race over empire: racism and U.S. imperialism, 1865-1900 . North Carolina: UNC Press Books, 2004. Print.

Young, Vercetta., Greene, Helen and Gabbidon, Shaun. African American classics in criminology & criminal justice . California: SAGE, 2002. Print.

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IvyPanda. (2019, September 15). Racism in U.S. Criminal Justice System. https://ivypanda.com/essays/racism-in-u-s-criminal-justice-system/

"Racism in U.S. Criminal Justice System." IvyPanda , 15 Sept. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/racism-in-u-s-criminal-justice-system/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Racism in U.S. Criminal Justice System'. 15 September.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Racism in U.S. Criminal Justice System." September 15, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/racism-in-u-s-criminal-justice-system/.

1. IvyPanda . "Racism in U.S. Criminal Justice System." September 15, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/racism-in-u-s-criminal-justice-system/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Racism in U.S. Criminal Justice System." September 15, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/racism-in-u-s-criminal-justice-system/.

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Georgia State University Law Review

Home > COLPUB > GSULR > Vol. 33 > Iss. 3 (2017)

Injustice Under Law: Perpetuating And Criminalizing Poverty Through The Courts

Judge Lisa Foster

Document Type

Money matters in the justice system. If you can afford to purchase your freedom pretrial, if you can afford to immediately pay fines and fees for minor traffic offenses and municipal code violations, if you can afford to hire an attorney, your experience of the justice system both procedurally and substantively will be qualitatively different than the experience of someone who is poor. More disturbingly, through a variety of policies and practices—some of them blatantly unconstitutional—our courts are perpetuating and criminalizing poverty. And when we talk about poverty in the United States, we are still talking about race, ethnicity, and national origin.

The majority of poor people in the United States are people of color. Although a substantial plurality are white, 24% of African-Americans and 21% of Hispanics live in poverty. Yet, African-Americans comprise just 12% of the total population, and Hispanics comprise just 18%. The impact of what we have done and continue to do daily in courtrooms throughout the United States is to trap people—including disproportionately people of color—in poverty.

In this essay, I will describe how the justice system enforces poverty employing three examples: bail, fines and fees, and access to counsel in civil cases. These are by no means the only ways in which the justice system quite literally imprisons people in poverty, but they are widespread and particularly pernicious. I will also provide a legal framework for analyzing these practices and a brief gloss on their history. I will conclude hopefully with a discussion of successful reform efforts and a way forward.

Recommended Citation

Judge Lisa Foster, Injustice Under Law: Perpetuating And Criminalizing Poverty Through The Courts , 33 G a. S t. U. L. R ev. 695 (2017). Available at: https://readingroom.law.gsu.edu/gsulr/vol33/iss3/8

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The Hyper-Polarization Challenge to the Conflict Resolution Field: A Joint BI/CRQ Discussion BI and the Conflict Resolution Quarterly invite you to participate in an online exploration of what those with conflict and peacebuilding expertise can do to help defend liberal democracies and encourage them live up to their ideals.

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By Michelle Maiese

June 2003

The Many Faces of Injustice

While it is difficult to give a complete and adequate definition of justice, most observers can recognize clear examples of serious injustice when they arise.[1] Such injustice comes in various forms, wherever the norms of distributive justice , procedural justice, or human rights are violated .

Some actions, such as theft and murder, are commonly recognized as unjust by governments and prohibited by domestic law. However, there are also systemic forms of injustice that may persist in a society. These traditions and structures give rise to profound injustices that can be difficult to recognize.[2] In some cases, these unfair conditions are imposed by the ruling party itself, whether it is an authoritarian government or an outside aggressor. Those in power sometimes use the state's legal and political systems to violate the political, economic, and social rights of subordinate groups.[3]

Political injustice involves the violation of individual liberties, including the denial of voting rights or due process, infringements on rights to freedom of speech or religion, and inadequate protection from cruel and unusual punishment.[4] Such injustice often stems from unfair procedures, and involves political systems in which some but not others are allowed to have voice and representation in the processes and decisions that affect them.[5] This sort of procedural injustice can contribute to serious social problems as well as political ones. If voting or litigation procedures, for example, are perceived to be unjust, any outcome they produce is liable to be unstable and produce conflict.[6] In addition, any procedures that are carried out in a biased manner are likely to contribute to problems of religious, ethnic, gender, or race discrimination. When the procedure in question has to do with employment or wages, such issues can lead to serious economic and social problems.

Economic injustice involves the state's failure to provide individuals with basic necessities of life, such as access to adequate food and housing, and its maintenance of huge discrepancies in wealth. In the most extreme cases of maldistribution, some individuals suffer from poverty while the elite of that society live in relative luxury.[7] Such injustice can stem from unfair hiring procedures, lack of available jobs and education, and insufficient health care. All of these conditions may lead individuals to believe that they have not received a "fair share" of the benefits and resources available in that society.

Even more serious than the injustices discussed above are war crimes and crimes against humanity. During wartime, individuals sometimes perform acts that violate the rules of just war set forth in international law . When soldiers engage in wars of aggression, attack non-combatants or pursue their enemies beyond what is reasonable, they commit not acts of war, but acts of murder.[8] However, these are not the only injustices associated with war and protracted conflict. Such conflict can also lead to severe human rights violations , including genocide , torture, and slavery. These crimes violate individuals' most basic rights to life and physical safety.

When political or legal institutions fail to protect individuals' fundamental rights and liberties, members of the unjustly treated group feel disempowered .[9] They are likely to view the institutions that impose such conditions as unjust, and thus find themselves in the midst of a justice conflict . If the subordinate group believes that it lacks the power to change things through political or diplomatic means, it may conclude that the only effective way to pursue justice is through violent confrontation.[10] However, such confrontations tend to produce even more injustice. In addition, because the dominant group typically has more power to inflict harm, such struggles often fail. Therefore, violence is often an ineffective way of addressing injustice, and many believe that it should be used only as a last resort.

Responding To Injustice

Many scholars and activists note that in order to truly address injustice internationally, we must strive to understand its underlying causes. These causes have to do with underdevelopment, economic pressures, various social problems, and international conditions.[11] Indeed, the roots of repression, discrimination, and other injustice stem from deeper and more complex political, social, and economic problems. It is only by understanding and ameliorating these root causes and strengthening civil society that we can truly protect human rights .

There are various ways to address the political, economic and social injustices mentioned above. Whether a response proves to be appropriate and effective depends on the nature of the grievance.

Addressing political injustice is often a matter of developing institutions of fair governance, such as an accountable police force and judiciary. Legislative action and executive decision-making should likewise be held accountable. Such measures are sometimes a matter of reforming state institutions or revising state constitutions.

In cases where some groups are excluded from political participation, the state can remedy violations of political rights by promoting political inclusion and empowering subordinate groups. Public decision-making should respond to the will of the citizens, and members of the society should have the opportunity to participate in the formulation, execution, and monitoring of state policies. In other words, a culture of political involvement and public participation should be fostered. In addition, there are various social structural changes that might give groups more social, economic, and/or political power. This is often accomplished through the strengthening of the economy and civil society in conjunction with democratization efforts. In some cases countries require outside assistance for election monitoring , nation-building programs and the development of governmental infrastructure to make their political system more stable.

Addressing systemic economic injustice is often a matter of economic reforms that give groups better access to jobs, health care, and education. In many cases, lack of access to basic services stems from enormous inequalities in resource distribution. Redistribution of benefits and resources can thus be an important component of social structural changes to remedy injustice. There are various institutional and economic development reforms that might be put in place to raise living standards and boost economic growth. In addition, by creating social and economic safety nets, states can eliminate tension and instability caused by unfair resource allocation.

For example, development of programs that provide assistance for the poor, pensions for the elderly, and training and education for workers help remedy injustice,[12] tax reform, giving workers the right to unionize and demand a fair wage, advancing ecological policies to protect and preserve the environment, and improving access to land ownership can also help in particular cases.[13]

Balancing out gross inequalities in wealth might also be part of compensatory justice after periods of war. During periods of postwar adjustment and peacebuilding efforts, long-term economic policy must aim to achieve equity, or balance in the distribution of income and wealth. Such efforts to ensure a just distribution of benefits following conflict are typically accompanied by democratization efforts to ensure a more balanced distribution of power. When neglect of economic rights stems from the destruction caused by protracted conflict, countries may require outside aid to remedy injustice and avoid future instability. Humanitarian aid and development assistance are often needed to help a society build its economic resource base and ensure that the needs of its citizens are met. Issues of distributive justice are in this way central to any reconstruction program that aims at economic vitalization and rebuilding post-war economic systems .

Responding to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

Severe violations of basic rights to life and physical safety are sometimes enacted through government policies or inflicted during the course of warfare. It is commonly recognized that government leaders and soldiers, as well as civilians, must be held accountable for perpetrating such injustices.

International humanitarian law has been enacted to preserve humanity in all circumstances, even during conflicts. Various international committees are in place to monitor compliance with human rights standards and report any violations. When breaches occur, the perpetrators must somehow be brought to justice.

According to the notion of retributive justice , past acts of injustice or wrongdoing warrant punishment. Those who perpetrate war crimes or crimes against humanity should be brought to justice. When injustices are committed in the initiation or the conduct of warfare, retribution is typically accomplished through international courts or tribunals that carry out war crimes adjudication.

In other cases, human rights violations form part of national policy. Most believe that government officials should be held accountable for institution policies of apartheid, forced disappearance, torture, or genocide . Such breaches are typically brought to the attention of international tribunals or tried in an international court. Punishment is thought to reinforce the rules of international law and to deny those who have violated those rules any unfair advantages. In addition, many believe that punishment deters other would-be offenders from committing similar crimes in the future.

However, international law and adjudication is often insufficient to address grave injustice. When breaches do occur, they are brought to the attention of international tribunals or a war crimes tribunal . As conditions escalate in violence and more individuals are taken prisoner, tortured, or executed, it becomes more difficult to resort to the legal path.[14]

Some maintain that the vigilant observance of the international community is necessary to ensure justice.[15] Various nongovernmental organization (NGOs) , including Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists, are devoted to bringing injustice to light and pressuring governments to address the injustice. Historically, the United Nations has likewise played a central role in dealing with international justice issues.

Many maintain that massive violations of human rights, such as genocide and crimes against humanity, warrant military intervention . If, through its atrocious actions, a state destroys the lives and rights of its citizens, it temporarily forfeits its claims to legitimacy and sovereignty.[16] In such cases, outside governments have a positive duty to take steps to protect human rights and stamp out injustice.

However, this sort of response is limited, because governments are often reluctant to commit military forces and resources to defend human rights in other states.[17] In addition, the use of violence to end human rights violations poses a moral dilemma insofar as such interventions may lead to further loss of innocent lives.[18] It is imperative that the least amount of force necessary to achieve humanitarian objectives be used, that intervention not do more harm than good, and that it be motivated by genuine humanitarian concerns. Otherwise, such interventions are likely to simply cause more injustice.

Restoring Justice Once Conflict Has Ended

A central goal of responding to injustice is paving the way for future peace. Once conflict has ended and policies of oppression have been repealed, society members face the task of rebuilding their society. Many believe that measures aimed at restorative justice are well-suited for this task.

Restorative Justice is concerned with healing wounds of victims and repairing harm done to interpersonal relationships and the community. It can play a crucial role in responding to severe human rights violations or cases of genocide. Huge advances are made when governments tell the truth about past atrocities carried out by the state.[19] It is thought that true healing requires remembering the atrocities committed, repenting, and forgiving. War crimes inquiries and truth commissions can aid in the process of memory and truth telling and help to make public the extent to which victims have suffered.

Restoration often becomes a matter of restitution or war reparations. In cases where clear acts of injustice have taken place, some type of compensation package can help to meet the material and emotional needs of victims and remedy the injustice. Repentance can also help to re-establish relationships among the conflicting parties and help them to move toward reconciliation . In some cases, conflicts can end more peacefully when parties acknowledge their guilt and apologize than when formal war crimes adjudication or criminal proceedings are used.

In cases of civil war, because the line between offenders and victims can become blurred, a central goal of peacebuilding is to restore the community as a whole. Restoration often becomes tied to the transformation of the relationship between the conflicting parties. However, such restoration cannot take place unless it is supported by wider social conditions and unless the larger community makes restorative processes available.

Many note that an adequate response to injustice must involve social structural changes , reconstruction programs to help communities ravaged by conflict, democratization and the creation of institutions of civil society. Only then can the underlying causes of injustice be remedied.

[1] Paul Wehr, Heidi Burgess, and Guy Burgess. Justice Without Violence. (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994), 9.

[2] Morton Deutsch, "Justice and Conflict." In The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice , ed. M. Deutsch and P.T. Coleman (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc. Publishers, 2000), 55.

[3] Wehr, Burgess, and Burgess, 9.

[4] Wehr, Burgess, and Burgess, 37.

[5] Deutsch, 56.

[6] Deutsch, 52.

[7] Wehr, Burgess, and Burgess, 37.

[8] Alex Moseley, "Just War Theory," in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2001)

[on-line] available at: http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/j/justwar.htm , accessed January 30, 2003.

[9] Wehr, Burgess, and Burgess, 9.

[10] Wehr, Burgess, and Burgess, 7.

[11] Antonio Cassese, Human Rights in a Changing World . (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 59.

[12] "Reconciling Social Policy and Economic Reform," an Interview with Domingo Cavallo by the Center for International Private Enterprise, Economic Reform Today, [on-line] available at http://www.cipe.org/publications/fs/ert/e22/cavE22.htm , accessed on January 30, 2003. (No longer available as of March 5th 2013)

[13] Gustavo Palma Murga, "Promised the Earth: Agrarian Reform in the Guatemalan Socio-Economic Agreement," (Conciliation Resources, Accord, 1997) [on-line] available at http://www.c-r.org/accord-article/promised-earth-agrarian-reform-socio-economic-agreement , accessed on January 30, 2003.

[14] Michel Veuthey, "International Humanitarian Law and the Restoration and Maintenance of Peace." African Security Review 7, no. 5 (1998) [on-line] available from http://www.iss.co.za/Pubs/ASR/7No5/InternationalHumanitarian.html , accessed on January 30, 2003.

[15] Cassese, 55-6.

[16] Don Hubert and Thomas G. Weiss et al. The Responsibility to Protect: Supplementary Volume to the Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. (Canada: International Development Research Centre, 2001), 136.

[17] Hubert and Weiss, et al., 136.

[18] Hubert and Weiss, et al., 137.

[19] Peggy Hutchison and Harmon Wray. "What is Restorative Justice?" [on-line] Available at: http://gbgm-umc.org/nwo/99ja/what.html , accessed on January 27, 2003.

Use the following to cite this article: Maiese, Michelle. "Addressing Injustice." Beyond Intractability . Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: June 2003 < http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/address-injustice >.

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Essay on Justice System In The Philippines

Students are often asked to write an essay on Justice System In The Philippines in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Justice System In The Philippines

Introduction to the philippine justice system.

The justice system in the Philippines is the way the country keeps peace and order. It’s like a set of rules and people who make sure everyone is treated fairly. This system has courts, police, and laws that help solve problems when people disagree or someone does something wrong.

Courts and Judges

In the Philippines, courts are where judges decide on cases. They listen to both sides and look at the evidence. There are different levels of courts, from local ones to the Supreme Court, which is the highest.

Law Enforcement

Police officers are important in the justice system. They make sure people follow laws. If someone breaks a law, the police take them to court where a judge can decide what happens next.

Laws and Rights

The country has many laws that protect people’s rights. These laws say what is okay and what is not. Everyone must follow them, and they help the courts decide on cases.

The justice system in the Philippines faces challenges like taking a long time to finish cases and not always being fair to everyone. People are working to make the system better for all Filipinos.

250 Words Essay on Justice System In The Philippines

What is the justice system in the philippines.

The justice system in the Philippines is made up of courts that handle different kinds of problems. It is like a ladder with many steps. The first step is the local courts, where small cases are heard. Bigger cases go to higher courts. The highest court is the Supreme Court, which makes the final decisions.

Types of Courts

There are several types of courts. The lowest is the Barangay court, which deals with small community issues. Above them are the Municipal and Regional Trial Courts, which look at more serious cases. The Court of Appeals reviews decisions from lower courts. The Supreme Court is at the top and has the last say.

How Courts Work

When someone breaks the law, they go to court. The judge listens to both sides before making a decision. If the person is found guilty, they might need to pay a fine or go to jail. People can ask higher courts to check the decision if they think it’s wrong.

Problems and Improvements

The justice system in the Philippines faces challenges like long delays and corruption. The government and some groups are trying to fix these problems by training better judges and using computers to speed up work.

The justice system in the Philippines is a set of steps designed to solve disputes and keep peace. It has issues, but efforts are being made to make it better for everyone.

500 Words Essay on Justice System In The Philippines

Introduction to the justice system in the philippines.

The justice system in the Philippines is a set of rules and institutions that the country uses to solve legal problems, punish people who break the law, and make sure that everyone is treated fairly. It’s like a big machine with many parts working together to make sure that people live in peace and that those who do wrong are held responsible.

Types of Courts in the Philippines

In the Philippines, there are different kinds of courts, each with its own job. The lowest courts are called the Municipal and Metropolitan Trial Courts. They handle small cases. Above them are the Regional Trial Courts, which deal with more serious matters. Then there’s the Court of Appeals, where you can ask for a decision to be looked at again if you think it’s wrong. At the top is the Supreme Court, which is the most powerful and makes the final decisions on the biggest issues.

Police and Law Enforcement

The police are the ones who make sure the laws are followed. They catch people who break the law and help gather evidence. However, in the Philippines, some people worry that the police are not always fair or that they sometimes do not respect the rights of the people they are supposed to protect.

The Legal Process

When someone is accused of a crime, they go through a legal process. First, they are charged, which means they are told what they are accused of. Then, they go to court where a judge or a group of people called a jury listen to both sides – the side of the person who is accused and the side of the government. After hearing everything, the judge or jury decides if the person is guilty or not.

Challenges and Issues

The justice system in the Philippines faces many challenges. Sometimes, it takes a very long time for cases to be finished, which can be unfair to the people waiting for a decision. There are also times when the rich and powerful seem to get special treatment, which is not fair to everyone else. Fighting corruption within the system is also a big problem that the country is working on.

Improvements and Reforms

To make the justice system better, the Philippines is trying to introduce changes. These include training for judges and police, making the process faster, and using new technology to manage cases. By doing this, the hope is to make the justice system more fair and efficient for everyone.

The justice system in the Philippines is an important part of how the country runs. It has many parts, from the police who enforce the laws to the courts that make decisions. While there are difficulties, such as slow processes and corruption, efforts are being made to improve the system. It’s essential for a fair society that everyone, no matter who they are, is treated equally under the law.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

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Happy studying!

Middle East Crisis Grim Task After Gaza Hospital Battle: Collecting Human Remains

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Palestinians returning to Khan Younis after Israel withdrew some of its ground forces from southern Gaza. Associated Press
Palestinian forensic workers recovering human remains at the grounds of Al-Shifa Hospital on Monday. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Jordanian armed forces airdropping aid over Gaza. Alaa Al Sukhni/Reuters
Treating the injured at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, in central Gaza. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A burial in Rafah, in southern Gaza. Mohammed Salem/Reuters
Women prepare cookies for Eid al-Fitr at a shelter in Deir al Balah. Associated Press
Destroyed buildings after airstrikes in Khan Younis. Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock
An Israeli tank near the Gaza border. Leo Correa/Associated Press
A Palestinian doctor inspecting damage at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock

Workers comb devastated Al-Shifa Hospital for bodies.

United Nations workers and Gazan health officials returned to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Monday to begin burying the unidentified remains of scores of people who died there during a 12-day Israeli raid on the complex in March.

The raid pitted Israeli soldiers against Gazan gunmen and drew international condemnation, as did an earlier incursion into the hospital by Israeli forces in November.

But the battle in March reduced what was once the Gaza Strip’s largest health care facility to ruins. On Monday it was a scene of shattered concrete, buildings stripped of their facades, overturned cars and a half-crushed ambulance. In the air hung the stench of dead bodies.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, said on Tuesday that aid workers had found bodies covered by only rough plastic sheets or partially buried under mounds of dirt. He said they were making sure that bodies found at the hospital “were given fuller burials on site or at a nearby area."

“When the dead are buried properly, they can be identified later with forensic examinations, giving loved ones some consolation,” Dr. Ghebreyesus said. “This war is a moral failure of humanity.”

Israeli officials have said that their forces raided Al-Shifa last month because remnants of Hamas’s military wing had regrouped there after Israel’s withdrawal in January.

That reflects what some analysts have argued is a strategic failure: Israel has been unwilling to administer captured territory in Gaza, but has also been unwilling to turn it over to a non-Hamas Palestinian group. That has created the kind of power vacuum in which militant groups can thrive.

Gazan officials have said that hundreds of civilians were killed in the raid, an accusation that Israel has denied. It says the Israeli military killed about 200 fighters and captured 500 more. The New York Times has not been able to independently verify either account.

In a video posted online by Dr. Ghebreyesus, aid workers can be seen picking through the rubble of the hospital and removing at least two bodies.

Dr. Mustasem Salah, a Gazan medical official, says in the video that identifications have been done in part by using wallets or other identifying possessions found on the bodies.

“The psychological impact of the scene on the families is unbearable,” he says. “Seeing their children as decomposing corpses, and their bodies completely torn apart, is a scene that cannot be described.”

— Liam Stack

Active fighting has ebbed, but Gazans still face extreme hardship.

In early March, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began amid dashed hopes that negotiators would reach a deal for a pause in the fighting in Gaza.

On Tuesday, as weeks of fasting were drawing to a close, the pace of the war had slowed. But the prospect of relief and peace of any duration in the embattled territory remained elusive.

Cease-fire talks are still sputtering , Hamas has dismissed the likelihood of a deal and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has doubled down on his vow to invade Rafah, the final stretch of the Gaza Strip that his military has yet to push into.

“We will complete the elimination of Hamas’s battalions, including in Rafah,” he said on Tuesday . “No force in the world will stop us.”

For weeks, allies and the international community have been warning Israel that a move into Rafah would result in a humanitarian calamity. But Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks to military recruits on Tuesday — a day after proclaiming “there is a date” for the planned Rafah invasion — made clear he remained undeterred.

Hamas, in a statement on the messaging app Telegram early Tuesday, said it was reviewing the latest cease-fire proposal, even though its demands had not been met. Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been mediating the negotiations.

Active fighting in the 140-square-mile enclave has ebbed to its lowest point since November. Israel withdrew troops from southern Gaza over the weekend, allowing some people to return to survey their homes in the southern city of Khan Younis, only to find much of it annihilated.

Analysts said the pullback of troops signaled a new phase of the war rather than the likelihood of an enduring cease-fire. Israeli leaders said the withdrawal was a result of their military’s achievements on the battlefield.

Eid al-Fitr, the festival marking the end of Ramadan , will begin in Gaza on Wednesday. Under normal circumstances it’s a holiday filled with family visits, new clothes and sweet treats.

But this year, Gazans are facing Eid under the pall of widespread hunger and extreme shortages of basic necessities, on top of the destruction and death that have touched all corners of the enclave in six months of war. During the month of Ramadan, about 2,000 people were killed in the fighting, bringing the toll to more than 33,000 lives lost since the war began on Oct. 7, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its statistics.

COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for coordinating aid deliveries into Gaza, said 419 trucks with humanitarian aid had entered the territory on Monday, the largest number since the outbreak of the conflict. Before the war, an average of 500 commercial and aid trucks entered each day, the level that aid agencies say is needed.

On Monday, the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and France urged an immediate cease-fire in Gaza in a joint opinion essay published in The Washington Post and other publications, citing the “catastrophic humanitarian suffering” and “intolerable human toll” brought on by the war.

King Abdullah II of Jordan, President Emmanuel Macron of France and President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi of Egypt together called for a two-state solution for the Palestinians, saying it was the only credible path to peace, and warned Israel against invading Rafah.

“Such an offensive would only bring more death and suffering, heighten the risks and consequences of mass displacement of the people of Gaza and threaten regional escalation,” they wrote in the essay.

Cassandra Vinograd contributed reporting.

— Victoria Kim

At the top U.N. court, Germany fights allegations of aiding genocide in Gaza.

Germany on Tuesday defended itself at the International Court of Justice against accusations that its arms shipments to Israel were furthering genocide in Gaza, arguing that most of the equipment it has supplied since Oct. 7 was nonlethal and that it has also been one of the largest donors of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.

At the U.N. court in The Hague, lawyers for Germany said that the allegations brought by Nicaragua had “no basis in fact or law” and rested on an assessment of military conduct by Israel, which is not a party to the case.

“Germany firmly rejects Nicaragua’s accusations,” Tania von Uslar-Gleichen, an official at Germany’s Foreign Ministry and lead counsel in the case, told the 15-judge bench, adding that Nicaragua had “rushed this case to court on the basis of flimsiest evidence.”

On Monday, Nicaragua had argued that Germany was facilitating the commission of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza by providing Israel with military and financial aid, and it asked for emergency measures ordering the German government to halt its support. The court is expected to decide within weeks whether to issue emergency measures.

The proceedings, which concluded Tuesday, were the third time in recent months that the U.N. court — usually a sleepy venue for disputes between nations — became a forum for nations to put pressure on Israel and support Palestinians.

Earlier this year, the court heard arguments by South Africa that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and ordered the Israeli government to take steps to prevent such atrocities. The court has not ruled on whether genocide was in fact taking place, an allegation that Israel has strongly denied.

The latest case, brought by a Nicaraguan government that itself has been widely accused of repression and human rights violations, has placed a spotlight on Germany, Israel’s second-largest arms supplier after the United States. Germany’s leadership calls support for Israel a “Staatsräson,” a national reason for existence, as a way of atoning for the Holocaust.

But the mounting death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza have led some German officials to ask whether that backing has gone too far.

Lawyers for Germany urged the court to throw out the case. They argued that Germany has tried to balance the interests of both Israel and the Palestinians, and presented figures showing that Berlin was among the largest individual donors to the U.N. and other agencies that provide humanitarian aid to Gaza.

“Germany has always been a strong supporter of the rights of the Palestinian people,” Ms. von Uslar-Gleichen said. “This is, alongside Israel’s security, the second principle that has guided Germany’s response to the Middle East conflict in general, and to its current escalation in particular.”

In 2023, Germany approved arms exports to Israel valued at 326.5 million euros, or about $353.7 million, according to figures published by the economics ministry. That is roughly 10 times the sum approved the previous year.

Germany’s legal team argued on Tuesday that most of its exports were nonlethal support, such as protective gear, communications equipment and defense equipment against chemical hazards .

Christian Tams, a lawyer for Germany, denied Nicaragua’s claims that Berlin had increased weapons supplies to Israel since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. He argued that since then, Germany had approved four export licenses for military equipment, with three of the licenses for training and testing matériel not suitable for combat. The fourth license was for 3,000 portable antitank weapons.

Critics have said that there is little distinction between the types of weapons provided to Israel while it is at war. On Monday, Carlos Jose Arguello Gomez, Nicaragua’s ambassador to the Netherlands, told the court that “it does not matter if an artillery shell is delivered straight from Germany to an Israeli tank shelling a hospital” or goes to replenish Israel’s stockpiles.

Pieter D. Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks global arms exports, said the German position is in line with typical arms exports to Israel.

“While they don’t do the killing directly, they are an essential part of the overall system, the armed forces of a country, which actually make it possible to engage in warfare,” he said.

Lawyers say that Germany is an easier target for a suit than is the United States, by far Israel’s main military supporter . Germany has granted full jurisdiction to the International Court of Justice. But the United States denies its jurisdiction, except in cases where Washington explicitly gives its consent.

— Marlise Simons , Christopher F. Schuetze and Erika Solomon

Israel and the U.N. can’t agree on how much aid reached Gaza this week.

Israel said on Tuesday that it had increased the amount of aid it had allowed into the Gaza Strip over the previous 48 hours, arguing that it was complying with demands from the United States as well as the United Nations to address a hunger crisis that verges on famine.

But the main U.N. agency that helps civilians in Gaza, UNRWA, questioned that claim, saying there had only been a “modest increase” in aid flowing through the two main crossing points in southern Gaza lately — and no sign of the big push needed to alleviate hunger in the north of the territory, which is the epicenter of the crisis.

Israel’s agency that oversees policy for the Palestinian territories, known as COGAT, said 741 trucks of humanitarian aid had entered Gaza on Sunday and Monday combined, calling that an “unprecedented number.” On Tuesday, the agency said another 468 humanitarian aid trucks had crossed into Gaza.

But the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, gave a lower figure, saying its data showed that over Sunday and Monday, only 326 aid trucks had entered Gaza through the two main crossings. A spokeswoman for UNRWA, Juliette Touma, stood by the agency’s figures, which are published daily , and said she had no explanation for the discrepancy.

Before the war, about 500 commercial and aid trucks supplied the enclave each day.

Shimon Freedman, a spokesman for COGAT, said he had no comment on when the country would open two more ways for aid to reach Gaza, as it promised to do last week in response to pressure from President Biden: a crossing at Erez in the north, and the nearby Israeli port of Ashdod.

Lloyd J. Austin III, the U.S. defense secretary, again urged Israel on Monday to significantly increase the amount of aid that flows into Gaza. On Tuesday, the American secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, speaking at a news conference in Washington with the British foreign minister, said Israel had stepped up its aid to civilians in Gaza, with more than 400 trucks on Monday.

But Mr. Blinken warned that the increase in aid must be “sustained for as long as it takes to put in place something more permanent” after the war ends. He added the United States wants to see 350 trucks entering Gaza each day by later this week, a figure that is roughly triple the number that were entering each day earlier in the conflict.

Israel imposes stringent checks on incoming aid to keep out anything that might help Hamas, which it has pledged to eliminate. Humanitarian groups say this bottleneck, and a lack of security for aid convoys, have been the major barriers to distributing aid within Gaza.

But Israel says that there is no bottleneck, and that it is the fault of the U.N. and aid agencies if aid is not reaching people, because they are not providing it and handing it out quickly enough.

“The capabilities are there, so if they send more aid we are willing to inspect it and facilitate it into the Gaza Strip,” said Mr. Freedman.

UNRWA has consistently given lower figures than the Israeli authorities for the amount of aid reaching Gaza.

The situation for around 300,000 people living in northern Gaza was “definitely getting worse” because of a lack of aid, Ms. Touma said, blaming six months of Israeli restrictions. Israel’s decision to prevent UNRWA from delivering food to the north has not helped, she said.

— Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Adam Sella

In Germany, discomfort with Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza is growing.

Even before the International Court of Justice this week heard arguments that Germany was aiding a genocide in Gaza by supplying weapons to Israel, there was growing concern in Berlin over its strong support for Israel during the war.

Some analysts have suggested that, as outrage at the civilian death toll in the war has grown around the world, the perception of Berlin’s unconditional support for Israel has damaged other important international relationships. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock recently said that Germany would send a delegation to Israel as a reminder of the duty to abide by international humanitarian law.

Stefan Talmon, a professor of international law at the University of Bonn, said that the initial news that Nicaragua would take Germany to the U.N. court in The Hague “put the plight of the Palestinians more in the sight of ordinary Germans.” The case, he said, has provided a rare opportunity for some Germans to discuss their discomfort with the Israeli offensive, which Gazan health authorities say has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians.

Debate over Israel’s war in Gaza has long been muted in Germany, where support for Israel is seen as an inviolable part of the country’s atonement for the Holocaust. Analysts say that Germans have historically been reluctant to question their country’s support for Israel publicly lest they be accused of being antisemitic.

“There is always this concern over how not to slide into antisemitism, but there shouldn’t be this atmosphere where we can’t have this debate at all,” said Sudha David-Whilp, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. “This may not be unique to Germany but also many democracies who see a need to defend other democracies like Israel but at the same time want to make sure their values are respected.”

Still, it has been jarring for Germany to be taken to court to answer charges of abetting a genocide. German officials have long maintained that the country’s past crimes give it a special duty to protect against future genocides.

Although Germany strongly rejected the accusations from Nicaragua at the court on Tuesday, analysts say that the government is slowly toughening its stance toward Israel in any case, not because of the court case, but largely because of growing criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war from its main ally, the United States.

Some German news media said it was absurd that Germany should have to answer to accusations from Nicaragua, which is led by the President Daniel Ortega, an authoritarian whose government is widely accused of repression.

One opinion article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily newspaper noted that Mr. Ortega has often used heavy-handed tactics against perceived enemies. For instance, the newspaper said, Mr. Ortega shut down street celebrations of the victory of a Nicaraguan in the Miss Universe pageant over concerns that they could lead to a coup attempt.

“Ortega, of all people, now appears to want to campaign internationally for the observance of human rights,” the newspaper said.

— Erika Solomon reporting from Berlin

A U.S. congressman says he’s ready to hold up an F-15 jet sale to Israel.

Representative Gregory Meeks, Democrat of New York, said Tuesday that he was willing to hold up an $18 billion sale of F-15 fighter jets to Israel unless the Biden administration can show him that Israel has given sufficient assurances it will no longer engage in what he called “indiscriminate bombing” of Palestinians in Gaza.

“I don’t want the kinds of weapons that Israel has to be utilized, to have more death,” he said in an interview with CNN . “I want to make sure that humanitarian aid gets in. I don’t want people starving to death. And I want Hamas to release the hostages.”

When asked if he would hold up the sale of the jets, he said, “I will make that determination once I see what those assurances are.”

If it goes forward, the order would be one of the largest weapons purchases by Israel from the United States in years, but the warplanes would not be delivered until 2029 at the earliest. Israel gets $3.8 billion each year from the U.S. government to buy American-made weapons and to bolster its missile defense systems because of a 10-year agreement that President Barack Obama approved in 2016.

The State Department gave two congressional committees, the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, informal notification of the F-15 order in January. In the informal review process, those committees can ask the department questions about how Israel intends to use the jets.

The State Department usually follows the procedure of getting approval from the top Republican and Democratic member on each committee, known as the “four corners,” before moving forward to formal notification to Congress of the sale.

Mr. Meeks is the top Democrat on the House committee, so his position on the jets is significant. The top Republican members on each committee gave their approvals in January. Mr. Meeks and Senator Ben Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, who is the top Democrat on the Senate committee, had not given their approvals as of last week.

Mr. Meeks spoke about his reluctance to give his approval for the first time on Tuesday.

“I take things very seriously,” he said, adding that he would review Israel’s assurances in a secure room where he can look at classified information.

“I want to make sure that death stops now and hostages come home now,” he said.

Some Democratic lawmakers as well as centrist and liberal former officials have been pressing President Biden to place tough conditions on weapons aid to Israel to get the Israeli military to curb civilian deaths in Gaza. The Israeli military has killed about 33,000 Palestinians there since the war began, according to the Gaza health ministry.

The war began after Hamas led a terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7 in which fighters killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, the Israelis say, and abducted about 240 others.

During the formal notification stage of an arms sale, Congress can block the sale by getting a supermajority to pass a joint resolution in both chambers, but that is extremely difficult to do, and the president could still veto the resolution.

— Edward Wong Reporting from Vienna

Turkey imposes export restrictions on Israel over the war in Gaza.

Turkey said on Tuesday that it would restrict exports to Israel until there is a cease-fire in Gaza, prompting threats of a tit-for-tat response from a government with which it has long had tense relations.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has defended Hamas and lashed out at Israel over the war in Gaza, accusing it of deliberately attacking civilians. But his government had until Tuesday stopped short of taking concrete economic measures against Israel over the conflict.

Turkey’s Trade Ministry said it was imposing restrictions covering dozens of exports — including aluminum, steel products, cement and jet fuel — after Israel denied a Turkish government request to airdrop humanitarian aid to Gaza.

“This decision will remain in place until Israel declares a cease-fire in Gaza and allows the flow of a sufficient amount of uninterrupted aid to the Gaza Strip,” the ministry said in a statement.

The announcement drew an angry response from Israel’s foreign minister, who accused Mr. Erdogan of “sacrificing the economic interests” of Turkey’s people in the name of supporting Hamas.

“Israel will not capitulate to violence and blackmail and will not overlook the unilateral violation of the trade agreements and will take parallel measures against Turkey that will harm the Turkish economy,” the minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement.

Turkey’s exports to Israel were worth $5.4 billion in 2023, or 2.1 percent of its total exports, according to official data.

Turkey has long had turbulent relations with Israel, though in recent years there had been some signs of a thaw: In 2022, Turkey welcomed Israel’s president to Ankara, the first visit by an Israeli head of state since 2008. Mr. Erdogan met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for the first time last September.

Less than a month after that meeting, Hamas led the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that set off the war in Gaza.

Under Mr. Erdogan, Turkey has often hosted members of Hamas, some of whose leaders were in the country for meetings on Oct. 7. The Turkish leader has strongly criticized Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, putting him sharply at odds with his NATO allies.

But the rising death toll and dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza have prompted increasing criticism from Israel’s allies over how the war is being conducted.

President Biden threatened last week to condition future U.S. support for Israel on how it addresses his concerns about civilian casualties and the humanitarian crisis. This week, the foreign minister of France told French news media that imposing sanctions might be one way of putting more pressure on Israel to open humanitarian corridors to Gaza.

Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.

— Cassandra Vinograd reporting from Jerusalem

Defense secretary pushes back on protesters’ claims of genocide in Gaza.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III told a Senate committee on Tuesday that the Pentagon had no evidence that Israel was carrying out a genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Mr. Austin made the comments in testimony at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that was disrupted several times by demonstrators protesting U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Hamas. More than 33,000 people have died in Israeli bombardments on Gaza, according to Gazan health officials, and severe hunger is sweeping through the Palestinian enclave.

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a Republican, asked Mr. Austin to address the protesters’ concerns.

“Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza?” Mr. Cotton asked.

“We don’t have any evidence of genocide being created,” Mr. Austin replied.

“So that’s a no?” asked Mr. Cotton. “Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza?”

“We don’t have evidence of that, to my knowledge,” the defense secretary answered.

South Africa has brought a suit before the International Court of Justice contending that the Israeli military campaign in Gaza amounts to genocide, an accusation that Israel vehemently denies.

The court issued an interim ruling that Israel must take actions to prevent acts by its forces in Gaza that are banned under the 1948 Genocide Convention. The prohibited actions include indiscriminately killing Palestinians and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Critics who contend that the campaign is genocidal accuse Israel of indiscriminate bombings that have leveled civilian apartment blocks, public buildings and mosques. Many of the dead were women and children. They have also accused Israel of using hunger as a weapon by restricting the aid entering Gaza.

Israel has argued that its bombing campaign has been aimed at military targets, accusing Hamas of using civilians as shields. The Israeli military says Hamas has built hundreds of miles of tunnels underneath the heavily populated enclave’s buildings.

Israeli officials also deny they have unduly restricted the aid coming into the country and have accused United Nations agencies and other aid organizations of being inefficient in distributing assistance.

The hearing room was not the only scene of protest on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. The police arrested around 50 people who briefly shut down a cafeteria for senators, their aides and visitors to the Capitol.

Dozens of protesters, including clergy members and laypeople from different Christian denominations, peacefully occupied the cafeteria at peak lunch hour, chanting and singing to demand a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and an end to U.S. arms transfers to Israel.

“The Senate and their staffers cannot eat until Gaza eats,” the protest’s organizers, led by Christians for a Free Palestine, declared.

The Capitol Police blocked off the cafeteria for around 30 minutes as it was cleared out. Staff members having lunch crowded into a nearby seating area, and then quickly returned to the cafeteria when it was reopened.

Kayla Guo contributed reporting.

— John Ismay Reporting from Washington

Blinken says Israel must keep aid flowing at higher rate.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Tuesday that the newly increased flow of aid from Israel into the Gaza Strip must be “sustained for as long as it takes to put in place something more permanent” after the war ends.

Mr. Blinken, speaking at news conference with the British foreign minister in Washington, said the United States wanted to see 350 aid trucks entering Gaza each day by later this week. That volume is roughly triple the number that was entering daily through much of the conflict. On Monday, Israel allowed more than 400 trucks into Gaza, and on Tuesday it allowed in 468 aid trucks, a single-day high since the start of the war, according to COGAT, the Israeli agency that oversees policy for the Palestinian territories.

The United Nations has warned that the food shortages in Gaza have become severe enough to risk famine there soon.

Mr. Blinken offered no new detail about the international talks aimed at reaching a cease-fire tied to the release of Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza. But he suggested that Hamas should be facing more pressure to accept an Israeli offer now on the table.

Hamas’s willingness to allow the conflict to continue, he said, “is a reflection of what it really thinks about the people of Gaza, which is not much at all.”

Noting that the Hamas militant group set off the Israeli invasion with its Oct. 7 attack, Mr. Blinken said, “It’s also extraordinary the sense in which Hamas has been almost erased from this story.”

He said he understood the anger at Israel over its devastating military offensive, which has left much of Gaza in ruins and has killed about 33,000 people, most of them civilians. But, he said, the attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage, deserves condemnation as well.

“It would also be important that so much of the understandable passion, outrage and anger directed at Israel for the plight of Palestinian civilians in Gaza — that some of that might also be reserved and directed for Hamas,” Mr. Blinken said.

— Michael Crowley

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Examining the Data and Innovative Justice Responses to Address Disparities

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