It goes without saying that in the sphere of criminal justice, informed decision-making and ethics are highly essential. Thus, criminal justice equality is based on the ethical assumption that people have a right for equal legal protection and should be sentenced to fair punishment regardless of their socioeconomic status, race, and education. In turn, criminal justice inequity may be regarded as the violation of these ethical norms and biased attitude to suspected offenders on the basis of stereotypes or prejudice related to his personal peculiarities.
At the same time, conflict theory states that any society may be divided into powerful and powerless groups that are in the state of permanent conflict between each other for limited resources. According to this theory, crime is the result of this social conflict as wealthy individuals try to take and keep more resources traditionally by suppressing poor people, and all groups generally aim to maximize their power and wealth. Within conflict theory, criminal justice equality is impossible as the law and its enforcement are used as a tool of dominance by groups with political, social, and economic power to maintain privileged positions over seemingly dangerous subordinate groups. In this case, the deviant behavior of subordinates is criminalized while the same behavior of powerful individuals remains unpunished.
Throughout history, in the United States, society was divided into White, politically connected, and wealthy individuals included in a dominant group and racial minorities and politically neglected or poor community members in a subordinate group. Thus, criminal justice inequality may be exemplified by racial disparities when African Americans are treated unfairly and with less respect throughout the whole system “from routine police stops to long-term imprisonment” (Hetey & Eberhardt, 2018, p. 183). Other examples of inequality in terms of criminal justice are international corporations’ frauds and embezzlements on a grand scale by politicians that remain even unnoticeable while ordinary people are sentenced to imprisonment for less serious malefactions.
Reference
Hetey, R. C., & Eberhardt, J. L. (2018). The numbers don’t speak for themselves: Racial disparities and the persistence of inequality in the criminal justice system.Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(3), 183-187. Web.