Perpetuating Systemic Discrimination

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how the criminal justice system is a means of social control, as it influences the views that society holds and the actions that are acceptable within it. It can therefore be deduced that particular aspects of the criminal justice system have the same type of social control. It discusses a particular aspect of this type: The sentencing of criminal offenders, which perpetuates systemic discrimination. The main points of the paper examine the various ways that inequality occurs among socio-economic classes, races and genders through sentencing and how these inequalities create control within a society.

From the Paper:

"One aspect of how sentencing within the Criminal Justice System is a means of social control is through the way it propagates inequality among socio-economic classes. "Economic conditions are thought to affect social control response directly. Greater inequality implies the presence of elites who are motivated and able to use legal mechanisms of social control to maintain their privileged position" (Jacobs). When there is a prominent distinction between classes distributed into upper, middle and lower classes with several combinations of any successive two, than more strict punishments are prescribed through sentencing, as those classes that consider themselves to be the elite want to remain in that position, and believe that through stricter punishment of offenders, they can posses that control over society and keep their rein."

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