I recently took a class called “Punishment & Inequality” where we talked about the deeply rooted flaws of the American criminal justice system. As a criminology major, I’ve learned much about law enforcement, criminal justice, and history over the last two and a half years. I was inspired by recent political events and Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show to write this article. Lamar’s brilliant halftime show was filled with symbolism that calls out racism. In his performance, Samuel L. Jackson was dressed as Uncle Sam, a personification of the U.S. government and a symbol of white America. He criticizes Lamar’s performance and tells him what he should and shouldn’t do. Similar to how the government and white people have been trying to control Black people for decades. The dancers were dressed in red, white, and blue and formed a flag, symbolizing how America was built on the enslavement of Black people. Black people are essentially the fabric and foundation of America. Those were my personal favorite symbols displayed throughout the performance, and there were plenty more that you can look up on your own if you want. Although I could write an entire article on that halftime performance, I wanted to discuss how that performance inspired me to use what I’ve learned in my classes to educate others about the flaws of America’s criminal justice system.
To delve into the jarring racism that is embedded in the American criminal justice system, I want to first talk about sentencing disparities. In my Punishment & Inequality class, we often talked about racial disadvantages in the system. Black males receive around 13.4% longer sentences compared to white men. The national incarceration rate of Black people is six times the rate of white people and more than twice the rate in every state. These longer sentences are also a major contributor to mass incarceration. The United States has the highest rates of incarceration, and even though Black Americans make up only 14% of the United States population, about 40% of the incarcerated population are Black people. Additionally, Black people are more likely to be arrested for drug-related offenses despite there being similar rates of drug use among all racial groups. One reason why there are more Black people incarcerated than Whites is because of heavy policing in urban areas and racial profiling. Although law enforcement has been made better over time, there are still many flaws that will hopefully continue to be fixed over time.
Some true crime serial killer cases that baffle me to this day are the Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy cases. Most people know of them because of the horrific crimes they committed, but if you don’t know all the details of the cases, you might be unaware that prejudice was an underlying cause of why they continued to kill for a while. Allow me to explain.
Jeffrey Dahmer was a prolific serial killer who murdered 17 men and boys until he was ultimately caught and arrested in 1991. Most of the men and boys he killed were Black, Hispanic, or Asian. Jeffrey had many run-ins with the police, and if they had simply investigated a little more, he could’ve been caught sooner, and some lives could have been saved. One specific instance was when Dahmer lured a 14-year-old boy back to his apartment to “take pictures and pay him $50.” He tried to drill a hole in the boy’s head and pour acid into the hole in an attempt to make him his zombie. The boy woke up and stumbled out of his apartment. Dahmer’s neighbors saw the boy wandering naked in the street and called the cops. When Dahmer saw his neighbors with the boy talking to the police, he intervened and told them the boy was his boyfriend. His neighbors were enraged because they could clearly tell the boy was hurt, bleeding, and also underage, but the cops told them they had it under control. The cops went back to Dahmer’s apartment to look around but ultimately decided to believe that the boy was his boyfriend and he’d had a little too much to drink, which was why he was stumbling. They returned the boy to Dahmer, and soon after the cops left, he killed the young boy. If the cops had examined Dahmer’s apartment more closely, they could’ve found the bodies of other young men who were missing at the time. Not only were these cops racist at this time, but they were also homophobic. Because Dahmer said the boy was his boyfriend, the cops did not want to spend a lot of time in his apartment out of fear that they would contract a disease. Also, because most of his victims were people of color and members of the LBTQ+ community, the police and media tended to overlook them and simply did not care. Additionally, because Dahmer was a white man, they were more likely to believe him and constantly let him off the hook.
Dahmer’s victims:
Similarly to Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer also had many run-ins with the police but was let off the hook because he was so charismatic and charming (as many people described him). As a white man, the police were also more likely to believe his lies and not feel the need to investigate further. The reality is that if he was a Black man, the story would have been much different.
Bundy’s victims
Although these cases happened 40-50 years ago, they still reveal a lot about the development of the criminal justice system and how far we’ve come since then. With Lamar’s halftime show calling out the history of racism in America, I felt as though this was a perfect time to speak on what I’ve learned in my classes as a criminology major. As someone who aspires to work in law enforcement and be a part of the criminal justice system after graduation, I hope to be the change in the system that I want to see.