Is race and ethnicity a contemporary issue in today's modern criminal justice system, or is it a problem from the past. Race and ethnicity play a huge role in our justice system, but to argue otherwise would be false. We can look back through history and see many examples of the role she played. Numerous studies prove that race and ethnicity continue to be an ongoing issue in our contemporary criminal justice system. There is much debate as to whether or not this will still impact our justice system. We cannot deny that race and ethnicity impact the functioning of our justice system, not in our system, but in other systems around the world. In particular, race and ethnicity still impact our system. It could be argued that race and ethnicity play a significant role in sentencing more than any other stage of our justice system. If we look at cases from the past, we can see many examples of disparities between different ethnic groups. African Americans, for example, have been sentenced to long prison terms or death for crimes they may or may not have committed, unlike non-African Americans who have been released or have been sentenced to only a few months. For example, in the past, an African-American man who committed rape against a white woman was severely sentenced. However, a white person who committed rape against an African American woman would serve little or no prison time, and that still happens today, perhaps. not as openly as in the past. Disparities between different ethnic groups existed then as much as they do today. Minorities are still harshly punished in our justice system. Minorities are far more likely to be convicted than non-minorities. According to an article published on the Huffington Post, minorities would be directly targeted and sentenced to harsher sentences than whites. In Bill Quigley's article, titled "Fourteen Examples of Racism in the Criminal Justice System," he states that "the U.S. Sentencing Commission reported in March 2010 that in the federal system, black offenders receive sentences 10% longer than white offenders for us.” I can see many examples of the impact of race and ethnicity on our justice system at every level. For example, we can see its impact in our courts in terms of prosecutions and sentencing. We can even see this in our prisons, more specifically in confinement. We see that there is a huge disparity between non-minorities and minorities. Both are sentenced differently and are incarcerated in different areas of our prisons. They are also prosecuted differently. Many will say that this is a problem of the past, while others will argue the opposite. Many studies show how race and ethnicity are a problem in our justice system, while other studies show that race is not a problem. Race and ethnicity may not be as overt and visible as in the past, but they remain present in our justice system. As a society we can fight this problem, but it will take a lot of time and everyone's participation to combat it.