The American justice and legal system is primarily about punishment. First off, let’s be very clear on something—it does very little correcting or rehabilitating. When certain people get out of line, police and prosecutors are in place to make sure those people are punished, penalized, and removed from society for their behavior. It’s nowhere near cut and dry that whoever breaks the law is who gets punished. It’s about who breaks the law in certain zip codes, from certain backgrounds, with certain income brackets. It’s why Black and white New Yorkers have smoked weed at an identical rate for the past generation, but 95 percent of the arrests and prosecutions have been of Black and Brown New Yorkers. Weed has been functionally legal in New York for white people since the 1970s. Why? Because who gets policed and who doesn’t for smoking it has always been more about race and wealth than public safety.
The harsh truth about the systems of justice and punishment in America is that the machines that keep those systems moving were created to protect white people, white property, and particularly white power, and to punish Black and Brown people by any means necessary.
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Article URL:
https://www.newsweek.com/why-donald-trump-wont-held-accountable-our-justice-system-1717175