With recent unarmed shootings and final verdicts that has left society in anger, a majority of the population has lost assurance in the criminal justice system that was once put in place to protect and serve the citizens of America. Many individuals do not feel safe when they see a law enforcement officer but rather terrified and nervous. This is all due to the flaws in the criminal justice system, that has been past due for reformation. The need to reform the justice system is obvious due to the prison's population rising exponentially, shootings by law officials that result in unarmed deaths, the death penalty and the war on drugs. 

During the past four decades, the U.S. prison population has quadrupled even as the crime rate continues to fall. Other countries do not have nearly as many prisoners as we do. The United States has the highest incarceration rate, being 469 and Guatemala has the second highest at 117. 46.5% of the prison's population are incarcerated for a nonviolent crime. Instead of worrying so much about someone who doesn't pose a threat to the public, the law enforcement should be more focused on seeking out terrorists and burglars rather than teens who are smoking pot in their backyard. Another example that shows the flaws within the criminal justice system is capital punishment. Capital punishment has increasingly grown in the news in the past couple of years and 35 states still use capital punishment as of 2013. Critics of the death penalty point to numerous flaws within capital punishment such as the execution of innocent people, the racial bias, and socio-economic bias, just to name a few. The death penalty also costs billions in tax payer's dollars which could be allocated to either education, improving neighborhoods or building playgrounds for kids to keep them off the streets. If we are "a nation under God," is our system exercising too much power with capital punishment?

The war on drugs that began in 1971 with the Nixon administration has spent over 2.4 million dollars on putting nonviolent offenders behind bars. Back in the 70s, crime rates were higher, marijuana had not yet been decriminalized and was listed as public enemy number one. Over the decades society has changed, with newer laws decriminalizing marijuana in certain states. With laws decriminalizing marijuana, the war on drugs contradicts itself. It is just a waste of money to go after these people who are buying their medicine from an accredited dispensary. 

The criminal justice system sparked my interest when I began watching the news a couple years back during the Casey Anthony trial and saw her walk away not guilty after murdering her daughter when the evidence all pointed to her being the culprit. Bias is a part of everyone, and impacts your opinion which helps distinguish you from others. The bias imposed on the jury is based off how the prosecutors or defendant can manipulate the evidence in order to support their argument, by attempting to relate to the jury through emotion. Race has also been seen as a contributing factor to the faulty criminal justice system which could lead to me being targeted by police officers because of my race and potentially detained for something that the officer could let slide for someone of another race. Capital punishment and the growth of prisons is another reason I chose this topic. Another human should not have the power to decide your fate based on actions and circumstances that the judge and jury were not apart of. The growth of prisons is draining tax payer dollars when they could be going to something productive to help society.

The first article that supported my claim was from the New York Times by Adam Benforado, whose central topic revolved around what it would take to achieve true criminal justice in America. He later argues that if we got rid of all the cops that cracked racist jokes and prosecutors who only wanted power, along with lying witnesses, that we would still have innocent women and men sentenced to death. His reasoning for this is that the criminal justice system is based on an inaccurate model of human behavior and that it should be constructed off of scientific facts. 

In the second article I chose, Heuvel addresses the moral and political case for reforming the criminal justice system. Her main point behind her argument is the prison population concerning the "war on drugs," and where each candidate running for office stands on the issue. The author is credible because she is a writer for the Washington Post and has written other posts concerning the political race and news happening in the United States.

The last article I chose to use is informative and states the many flaws within the criminal justice system such as racial profiling from law enforcement in Baltimore, the growth and monopolization of prisons, and how much money would be saved by reforming the criminal justice system.  The source is credible because the information lines up with information on other credible websites from which I have gathered information from. T he research question I chose is arguable because it is a topic that is current in today's society and is seen in the news quite often. Some agreements I found among the sources are that reformation is needed in the criminal justice system, along with the reasons why it needs to be reformed, the steps to achieve reformation as well as political candidates who are in favor of changing the criminal justice system.

