How Plea Bargaining Perpetuates a Racist Legal System

The U.S. criminal legal system is racist. By now, this proposition is so well established that it’s hard to believe anyone disagrees with it. Mass incarceration shifted the prison demographic from more than 70 percent white to nearly <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0032885519852090" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">70 percent Black and Latinx</a> by 1989. In certain areas of the South, people of color are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than whites. According to some studies, Black people nationwide are <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3036726" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">three times more likely</a> than whites to have been charged with a felony and five times more likely to get locked up. As of 2022, Despite being just over 13 percent of the overall population, Black people make up <a href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/race_and_ethnicity/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">38 percent</a> of the country’s incarcerated population — and that number <a href="https://naacp.org/resources/criminal-justice-fact-sheet" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">appears to have increased</a> over the last decade. <a href="https://medium.com/i-taught-the-law/how-plea-bargaining-perpetuates-a-racist-legal-system-7b79f5e3ec6c">Visit Now</a>