Abayomi Azikiwe, PANW Editor, Featured on Press TV's U.S. Desk: 'U.S.Criminal Justice System Race-based'

Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, depicted in a graphic for Press TV's United States Desk. Azikiwe is a frequent guest on international media outlets., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

‘US criminal justice system race-based’

Tue May 14, 2013 3:55AM GMT

To listen to the statement by Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, broadcast over Press TV's U.S. Desk, just click on the website below:
http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/303313.html

A political analyst tells Press TV that the US criminal justice system is a race-based institution, where African-Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people.

In an exclusive interview with the channel on Monday, Abayomi Azikiwe, a Pan-African News Wire editor, said that African-Americans are “disproportionately represented” in jails, prisons and other criminal justice correctional facilities.

He added that figures show how deep “racism and national oppression [exist] within the US legal system.”

Azikiwe also pointed out that the trend reflects how “African Americans and other people of color are dealt with, not only in the civil courts but also in the criminal courts as well.”

Reports indicate that the US has seen a surge in arrests and putting African Americans in jail over the last four decades.

The US police also stop blacks and Latinos at rates that are much higher than whites. In a California study, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found that blacks are three times more likely to be stopped than whites.

Additionally, African Americans are arrested for drug offenses at rates 2 to 11 times higher than the rate for whites, according to a report on disparity in drug arrests by the Human Rights Watch.

African Americans are frequently illegally excluded from criminal jury service, according to a study released by the Equal Justice Initiative.

The American Bar Association points out that only 3 to 5 percent of criminal cases go to trial, and the rest are plea bargained. Most African Americans defendants never get a trial. As a result, they plead guilty even when innocent.

A report by the Sentencing Project also reveals that two-thirds of the people in the US with life sentences are non-white.

Finally, while African American juvenile youth make up 16% of the US population, they are 28% of juvenile arrests, 37% of the youth in juvenile jails and 58% of the youth sent to adult prisons.