The movie “ American Violet set in Hearne County Texas, depicts the victimization of innocent second class citizens who are subject to racial bias and police corruption. Hearne county, a small town run by a corrupt D. A. was conducting military type drug raids on low income housing units that targeted the African American population, and this was no coincidence. Shockingly, this all took place not many years ago, just in the year 2000. The culture in the south was still apparently highly prejudice and racists, even in the criminal justice system, causing much harm to innocent people.
Due to the type of people they were targeting, the working class, the trickle down effect of who was being affected by these arrests was everlasting. Dee Brown, in the movie, a single mother of four, is a prime example who was the only source of income for her children and was only a waitress at that. The victimization process in this movie is incredible, and seems almost unreal how insensitive the D. A. was to these people, using them and manipulating them the way he did without any sign of guilt.
This relates directly to our victimization class in how these people are victimized. First, falsely accused and arrested on charges by a single conformant, then forced into a plea bargain or almost a certain conviction. Victimization within the criminal justice system is still a big problem today, as the majority of cases are never sent to trial and almost always settled in a plea bargain. This is corruption within the system and needs to be fixed, but still nothing is done.
And in order to save time and money judges push for public defenders to push the plea bargain upon uneducated clients who cannot afford their own attorney. Thus, in order for the public defenders to make any money they must hear many cases, and in order to do this they cannot waste their time taking cases to trial. Even if their client may in fact be not guilty, they cannot run the risk of losing, and also more importantly angering the judge. Therefore the reason to the never-ending vicious cycle of corruption within our criminal justice system which all comes down to power and money.
Which was apparently a major reason to why these drug raids were happening in Texas. Federal money was going to the counties with the most drug convictions, and having someone in charge of the D. E. A. with racial bias to the African American community made these projects easy pickings. In a small town in Texas, going against the D. A. was simply asking for a lawsuit to brought up against yourself, and to the reason why these raids went on for years, without anyone speaking up for these poor people being served injustice.
I believe we are far from an uncorrupt criminal justice system, but are working in the right the direction. The sad thing is, that behind all the corruption within the system, their will always be victims, and when dealing with corruption many times it is innocent people being victimized. Racial factors also will always be an issue no matter what era we are in, and would be naive to overlook it as the nation did so for so long in Texas, not believing that such racial discrimination could still exist in the 21st century.
