A study by the California Judicial Council Advisory Committee on Racial and Ethnic Bias in the Courts found that the justice system gives little attention or resources to investigating crimes against minorities and that minority defendants receive harsh treatment compared to white defendants in similar circumstances (www.geocities.com). The study also found that black-on-black crime or Latino-on-Latino crime is not taken as seriously as crimes against whites. Minority and female attorneys believe they are viewed and/or treated less credibly than white counterpa

There are several inequities in relation to sentencing and corrections as it pertains to men, women, immigrants and minorities within the American criminal justice system. African Americans are being arrested and incarcerated at alarming rates when compared to their white counterparts. Women are disproportionately under-represented in regards to sentencing and the American criminal justice system. Mandatory sentencing laws have affected women in paramount ways. Immigrants too are dealt with inconsistently where the criminal justice system is concerned. The American criminal justice system is definitely two-tiered, one set of rules for whites, and another set of rules for minorities and people of color. The American criminal justice is obviously a system of racial biases.

However, other studies show arrest, prosecution, and incarceration differences based on skin color alone, particularly in the treatment of whites and African-Americans in the enforcement of our nation's drug laws. A study by the Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project, which tracks the demographics of who in our society goes to prison and for what kinds of crimes, found that African-American men go to jail in record numbers due to a surge in arrests for non-violent drug offenses (www.uua.org). The Sentencing Project also found that in 1993, 88% of those sentenced federally for crack cocaine distribution were African-American, while only 4.1% of the defendants were white. This, while there are studies showing that a majority of the nation's reported crack cocaine users are white (www.chicagoreporter.com). Because of the irrational federal cocaine sentencing guidelines, the Sentencing Commission recommended amending its guidelines to reflect a one-to-one ratio at the current levels set for powder cocaine, but, for the first time in the Commission's history, the Congress and the President rejected the Sentencing Commission's recommendation and reinstated the illogical sentencing structure.

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