African American and Latina Women and the Criminal Justice System :: essays research papers

African American and Latina Women and the Criminal Justice System Sentencing disparities are an as inequitable derivative of mandatory sentencing which requires increased sentences for guessing cocaine violations, plot of ground offering flexible alternatives in cases arising from powder cocaine arrests. Powder cocaine is used by predominantly white middle-class or suburban defendants. More than 71 percent of women in federal prison house and 35 percent of female state inmates have been convicted of medicate offenses, usually involving crack cocaine, which carries mandatory sentences as long as 25 years for maiden time offenders. Moreover, large numbers of women of color convicted of crack offenses have been charged because of relationships with boyfriends, husbands or early(a) significant males who themselves are statistically more endangered to police apprehension and racial profiling. Two cases exemplify the numerous other instances of young African American women doing ha rd time for minor drug involvement. Kimba Smith, a first time offender in Virginia, was unable to promise with prosecutors because she could offer no breeding about the drug dealer with whom she was romantically involved. She was sentenced to federal prison for 24 years without possibility of parole--one year for severally of her 24 years of age. Dorothy Gaines, a mother of two minor children and defender of two grandchildren, is serving a 19-year, seven-month federal sentence without possibility of parole. many believe she was convicted not because of the scant evidence but because she had no information to offer against her live-in male companion. The Prison Industrial Complex, driven by the impulsion of privatized prison construction as an effective rural economic evolution tool, has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It encourages more convictions, larger prison populations and longer prison sentences, even though these prisons increasingly have become warehouses for the m others of black and embrown children. In 1995, over $5.1 billion was allocated for new prison construction by federal and state governments, at an average cost of $58,000 for a strength security cell.