CJ 100 - Chapter 8: Issues of Inequality in the Criminal Justice System

Human rights

The rights that everyone has by virtue of being human.

Positive law

Laws enacted by people, their representative governments, or handed down by duly constituted courts or other human institutions.

Marginalization

The act of relegating or confining a group of people to a lower social standing in society such that they are excluded from meaningful participation in one or more forms of social life.

Agency

A person’s capacity to act in a self-directed and purposeful way.

Intersectionality

Refers to the interlocking oppressions inherent in the social categories of age, ethnicity, gender identity, language, nationality, physical ability, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status.

What year was the the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights published?

1948

Poverty

Having a level of income below that needed to cover basic needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter.

True or false, according to your text, U.S. residents living in poverty represent the largest demographic group of all marginalized groups in the United States.

True

True or false, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2023) less than 30,000,000 Americans live in poverty.

False

In ___________ the California Supreme Court ruled that requiring defendants to remain in jail simply because they cannot afford bail is unconstitutional.

In re Humphrey (2021)

True or false, research has found that, compared to Whites, people of color are more likely to be stopped, frisked, and have force used against them, in some of America's largest cities.

True

True or false, the Center for Constitutional Rights has concluded that stop-and-frisk programs cause lasting emotional, psychological, social, and economic harm.

True

______ warrants allow officers to enter a premises without knocking and announcing their presence.

No-knock

Violence

The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.

Sex

The physical state of being either male, female, or intersex.

Gender

The psychosocial identification with particular socially constructed qualities or ways of behaving that society associates with males/men, females/women, or some other gender identity that is not captured by the male/female binary, but rather exists on a spectrum.

Cisgender

Having a gender identity that matches the sex assigned at birth.

Transgender

Having a gender identity that differs from the sex assigned at birth.

Intimate-partner violence

Interpersonal violence of a physical, sexual, or psychological nature, that is committed by current or former spouses or intimate partners regardless of whether they live together in the same household or not.

Gender-based violence

Violence directed at a person because of their gender or violence that affects persons of a particular gender disproportionately.

Vicarious or collective: which is not one of the domains of violence embodied by the World Health Organization's (WHO) definition of violence?

Vicarious

True or false: compared to women, men are more likely to experience physical violence in public.

True

True or false, people who are transgender are more likely to experience violent victimization than are people who are cisgender.

True

Wrongful convictions

Cases in which people were convicted of crimes either under circumstances involving significant procedural errors that violated their constitutional rights or when they were factually innocent of the charges against them.

Exonerations

Refers to a situation in which a person convicted of a crime is excused from legal consequences after the discovery of evidence of their innocence.

True or false, studies estimate that between 1.4% and 15% of all incarcerated people in U.S. prisons are factually innocent.

True

True or false, Black people represent less than 20 percent of the American population but make up more than 50 percent of exonerations.

True

True or false, loss of liberty, relationship strains, and emotional stress are rarely the result of wrongful convictions.

False

Rape

The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.

Sexual assault kits

Kits that contain a checklist, materials for the collection of evidence, instructions, and envelopes and containers to package any specimens collected during a sexual assault forensic examination.

True or false, the problem with the "traditional" definition of rape was that it only focused on female victims.

True

_____ is a woman whose death is at least partially attributed to inaction in testing evidence in a rape case.

Eliza Fletcher