MikeNews

Introduction
America purports, internationally and to its own citizens, to champion equality as a bedrock of its society. Today’s increasingly stratified and diverse culture, however, is creating facts that very much problematize this claim of equal opportunity. For example, how is it that African-Americans constitute 65% of the prison population (while the represent less than a third of total population) while women constitute only 5.7% of the prison population (even though they represent more than 50% of the total population)? In America’s highly individualistic society, the comfortable response is that there is something intrinsic to these segments of the population that result in their disproportionate incarceration rates (i.e. African-Americans are inherently violent and women are inherently peaceful). This response has guided many United States crime enforcement policies as well as the social structure of entire societies (such as Greece or Rome). Although it is comfortable, it is also dangerous (resulting in discrimination and hate), untrue (one need only remember Lizzie Borden, Joan of Arc, or a particularly aggressive everyday woman to understand that fact), and self-fulfilling (by assuming that woman are inherently peaceful and African American’s inherently violent the criminal justice system will suspect and seek out the latter rather then the former when resolving a crime and skew arrest rates). These, largely, are the conclusions of sociology concerning disproportionate prison populations.

What is Sociology?
Sociology is the study of human behavior with a special emphasis on “social structures, institutions, classes, groups, and the social consequences of that behavior”. These institutions included in the definition of sociology are “organized entities that are established to meet specific needs for the overall society”. These entities include societal services like religion (which grants common purpose), education (which trains future members of society) and health services (that ensures that future members of society even exist). It is clear that these institutions affect in a significant way human behavior. Western religion has been used to justify certain laws and family structures. What is included in public schooling prescripts the way in which many individuals will approach and understand the world. This paper will focus on the way in which patriarchy (“the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance”) relates to the institution of criminal justice and its effects of the behavior of society as a whole. It’s also important to note, however, that a society’s relationship to these sort of institutions is a two way street. Although it is true that patriarchal institutions will create a society that fosters and justifies (through biased education practices etc.) male dominance, if those in the society are sexist patriarchal institutions will arise. Put another way, although the individuals in a society (are in some ways) constituted by the institutions with which they interact, individuals also constitute (very literally) those institutions with their mindsets and actions. This is important because it means that sociology is more than analyzing how individuals are (in a sense) ‘controlled’ by larger societal structures, it allows individuals (with that knowledge) to change those institutions. The change most often advocated by sociologists, since the French revolution, has been one towards social justice. A socially just society is one in which