Deck 11: Minorities and Corrections

Question 1

Historically, minority group members have been more likely to be ______.

A) supervised in the community
B) housed in jails than prisons
C) incarcerated when innocent
D) given lenient more sentences

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Which of these is an ethnicity?

A) Black
B) White
C) Hispanic
D) Asian

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Discriminatory attitudes, beliefs, and practices directed at a group of people based specifically on physical features such as skin color is most accurately referred to as ______.

A) sexism
B) disparity
C) discrimination
D) racism

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Sometimes the term racism can also apply to discrimination based on ______.

A) ethnicity
B) socioeconomic status
C) disability status
D) gender

Question 5

The legal ability to own slaves in the United States originally came from the ______.

A) Thirteenth Amendment
B) Jim Crow Laws
C) U.S. Constitution
D) Bill of Rights

Question 6

The Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups perpetuated a culture of fear through extrajudicial ______.

A) disenfranchisement
B) Jim Crow laws
C) lynching
D) incarceration

Question 7

Racism practiced by many, if not most, members within a broader public or private organization such as the criminal justice system is known as ______ racism.

A) individual
B) disparate
C) correctional
D) institutional

Question 8

The ______ Amendment, adopted in 1865, ended slavery.

A) Eleventh
B) Thirteenth
C) Fifteenth
D) Seventeenth

Question 9

Historically, the criminal justice system has disproportionately incarcerated Black males, and before the civil rights movement, everyone working within the system treated them differently from their White counterparts. This best exemplifies ______.

A) ethnic discrimination
B) sentencing disparity
C) racial profiling
D) institutional racism

Question 10

Rates of incarceration for Black children have ______ compared to that of their White counterparts.

A) decreased slightly
B) decreased significantly
C) increased
D) remained stable

Question 11

The incarceration rate for African-Americans has ______ over the past 10 years.

A) decreased
B) increased slightly
C) increased significantly
D) remained stable

Question 12

Initially, the en masse relocation of Native Americans to ______ was an effort at incarceration.

A) internment camps
B) penitentiaries
C) reservations
D) county jails

Question 13

An offender who is a Native American tribe and lives on a large reservation has been accused of petty theft. What is the most likely outcome?

A) The trial will be handled by the tribe.
B) The offender will be handed to federal authorities.
C) The case will go to a court of appeals.
D) The stolen goods will be returned without punishment

Question 14

Incarceration rates are ______ for Native Americans than for Whites.

A) slightly higher
B) much higher
C) much lower
D) slightly lower

Question 15

The term Latinx is sometimes used because it is ______.

A) the federal census category
B) more general than Hispanic
C) nationally specific
D) gender neutral

Question 16

A 19-year-old Central American citizen and his younger brother are crossing the border into the United States in Arizona to escape political persecution in their native country. What should they be most worried about?

A) law enforcement demanding their papers
B) not being able to return to their home country
C) becoming the victims of human trafficking
D) being shot by the police

Question 17

In recent years, the number of incarcerated Latinx people has ______.

A) increased slightly
B) increased significantly
C) remained stable
D) decreased

Question 18

Laws against opium dens were passed because Chinese immigrants were thought to be ______.

A) corrupting the White population
B) overdosing at exorbitantly high rates
C) stealing money from White people
D) engaging in prostitution

Question 19

Many Americans fail to recognize ______.

A) a class system
B) ethnic groups
C) racial groups
D) different genders

Question 20

Which of these individuals is most likely to be caught up in the criminal justice system?

A) White male who goes to college
B) White female who works at the mall
C) Black female who just graduated from law school
D) Black male who is unemployed

Question 21

The upward mobility of many racial and ethnic groups in the United States is often hampered due to ______.

A) religious differences preventing gainful employment
B) the war on drugs and a code of silence within these groups
C) increased offending counterbalancing educational gains
D) a combination of poverty and systemic discrimination

Question 22

What was a legislative means by which White elites continued to restrict rights of Black citizens in employment, housing, education, and voting?

A) African American Exclusion Act
B) Ku Klux Klan
C) Jim Crow laws
D) Civil Rights Act

Question 23

Jim Crow laws were devised by ______ states to prevent newly freed African Americans from participating fully in social, economic, and civic life.

A) northern
B) southern
C) eastern
D) western

Question 24

Some people have claimed recently that ______ is the new Jim Crow.

A) racial profiling
B) stop-and-frisk policy
C) mandatory minimum sentencing
D) the war on drugs

Question 25

In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander investigates the ______.

A) success of colorblind legal policies
B) discriminatory results of the war on drugs
C) history of the Jim Crow laws until 1965
D) improvements of the criminal justice system

Question 26

The start of the modern drug war is credited to President ______.

A) Richard Nixon
B) Ronald Reagan
C) George H. W. Bush
D) Bill Clinton

Question 27

The federal drug war has been ongoing since the ______.

A) 1960s
B) 1980s
C) 1940s
D) 1920s

Question 28

It can be argued that the war on drugs is the new Jim Crow because both ______.

A) are primarily tools of southern states
B) purposefully codify the unequal treatment of minorities
C) more harshly sentenced crack than powder cocaine
D) resulted in widespread disenfranchisement of Black voters

Question 29

Which of the following statements is true?

A) Crack cocaine is more harmful and addictive than powder cocaine.
B) Powder cocaine is more harmful and addictive than crack cocaine.
C) Neither crack cocaine or powder cocaine is harmful or addictive.
D) Crack cocaine and powder cocaine are both harmful and addictive.

Question 30

______ refers specifically to law enforcement focusing on people of color who are operating motor vehicles.

A) Racial profiling
B) Stop and frisk
C) Driving while Black or Brown
D) Police brutality

Question 31

Racial profiling research suggests that the disproportionate number of stops of people of color may be partially due to the fact that ______.

A) police officers tend to stop older vehicles
B) people of color tend to commit more moving violations
C) their vehicles are missing the appropriate tags
D) these groups tend to have newer, flashier cars

Question 32

Who is most likely to be pulled over for a traffic stop?

A) Native American woman
B) White man
C) Asian American woman
D) Black man

Question 33

Accounts written by inmates incarcerated since the 1970s suggest that today, ______.

A) the influence of white supremacists is greater than before
B) racial and ethnic tensions are much higher than they once were
C) correctional staff are more racially similar to inmates' communities
D) inmates tend not to be divided down the so-called "color line"

Question 34

Writer and inmate Victor Hassine (2009), serving a life sentence since 1980, commented that ______ had played an integral part in his experience of prison life.

A) gender
B) solitary confinement
C) race
D) security classification

Question 35

According to the account of inmate Victor Hassine, inmates who differ from correctional staff in terms of race, may also differ in terms of ______.

A) nationality
B) religion
C) age
D) gender

Question 36

Which of the following is true regarding victimization in prisons?

A) Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics report similar amounts of victimization but from different sources.
B) Blacks report more victimizations from other inmates.
C) Whites report more victimizations from staff.
D) Hispanics report less victimizations from both staff and inmates.

Question 37

In studies on victimization in prisons, ______ were more likely to report sexual or physical violence from staff than from other inmates.

A) Asian Americans
B) Native Americans
C) Hispanics
D) African Americans

Question 38

______ inmates report more victimizations from other inmates than from correctional staff

A) White
B) Black
C) Asian American
D) Native American

Question 39

Which of the following sentences would a White offender likely prefer?

A) prison
B) jail
C) probation
D) shock probation

Question 40

A 28-year-old Black first-time offender has just been convicted of simple assault. You are his attorney. Which sanction would you most expect him to want you to argue for?

A) prison
B) probation
C) GPS monitoring
D) shock probation

Question 41

You are the defense attorney for a 25-year-old White female offender who has been convicted of drug possession. Which sanction would you most expect her to want you to argue for?

A) probation
B) jail
C) prison
D) shock probation

Question 42

Some researchers have theorized that Blacks might be more willing to accept prison than probation because they ______.

A) are less likely to know people in prison
B) believe their probation would ultimately be revoked anyway
C) prefer to avoid the potential threats associated with incarceration
D) have already tried probation once and failed

Question 43

In recent years, the number of minorities working in prisons has ______.

A) decreased slightly
B) decreased substantially
C) increased substantially
D) increased slightly

Question 44

Recent statistics suggest that non-Hispanic Blacks make up ______ of correctional staff in local jails.

A) around a tenth
B) about a quarter
C) around half
D) nearly three-quarters

Question 45

According to recent data, non-Hispanic Whites account for ______ of correctional staff in prisons.

A) a small minority
B) just under half
C) slightly more than half
D) the vast majority

Question 46

According to recent data, Hispanics make up ______ of correctional staff in prisons.

A) around a tenth
B) about a quarter
C) around half
D) nearly three-quarters

Question 47

Discrimination and disparity differ in terms of the entity performing them.

Question 48

The legacy of racism runs back to the founding of the United States.

Question 49

Slavery was a lucrative business in both the North and South.

Question 50

Larger Native American reservations have their own jails.

Question 51

Mexican Americans and their land were forcibly made part of the United States.

Question 52

The term Hispanic is specific to Latin America.

Question 53

During World War II, over 100,000 German Americans were put in internment camps.

Question 54

The wartime incarceration of Japanese American families was based on racism.

Question 55

Traditions of discrimination toward African Americans have hampered upward social mobility.

Question 56

The first president to speak about a war on drugs was President Nixon.

Question 57

"Driving while Black or Brown" refers to the police practice of focusing law enforcement on people of color who are operating moving vehicles.

Question 58

Explain the difference between discrimination and disparity.

Question 59

Explain the treatment of Japanese Americans placed in internment camps during World War II in terms of race.

Question 60

Explain Jim Crow laws and briefly analyze their purpose in terms of race and power.

Question 61

Do you believe that the war on drugs is racist? Use material from the course to support your position.

Question 62

Discuss racial profiling and how it is practiced.

Question 63

What has research suggested about African Americans in regard to prison vs. probation?

Question 64

Discuss slavery and the impact of racism for African Americans in correctional history.

Question 65

What is the connection between class and race/ethnicity? Evaluate its impact on minority groups in the United States.

Question 66

Based on the content of the chapter, evaluate the criminal justice system in terms of racism. Do you believe the system is racist? Justify your answer.

Question 67

Assess the influence of individual race or ethnicity on adjustment in corrections.

Question 68

Imagine you are an administrator at a correctional facility where there has traditionally been a lot of racial tension between inmates and officers. Discuss what measures you would take to reduce these tensions, and discuss how the racial makeup of correctional officers is currently changing.