Examples Of Implicit Biases In Law Enforcement

This paper evaluates the extent to which inherent or implicit biases and a feeling of superiority among authority figures in law enforcement influence their behavior and attitudes toward minority individuals. Additionally, this paper will explore areas of law enforcement—policing and criminal justice—and how biases can specifically influence their behaviors in everyday life on the job. This paper aims to discover if decisions made by police officers, such as the use of force and the act of racial profiling and court rulings produced by jurors, are all impacted by implicit bias and high positions of power that can often go unnoticed due to their inexplicability. In our day-to-day lives, encountering other people is an action that occurs without

In addition, many of these lives taken unjustly often do not receive justice due to flaws in the criminal justice system, once again potentially as a result of implicit or inherent bias at the hands of law enforcement. In the court of law, jurors are entrusted with the responsibility to assess evidence and determine the fate of the convicted without any personal influence. Even with this responsibility that they are entrusted with, it is often seen as a definite example of this expectation not being carried out as it should be. From cases of police brutality to sentencing disparities between white and non-white offenders, it has been made apparent that implicit bias has found its way into the courtroom. Court rulings in cases of police brutality/violence such as the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri have shown how, both explicit and implicit, they can impact jury decisions. Additionally, sentencing disparities as a result of implicit bias that is imposed upon minority individuals, especially Black men, provide a reason for such racially disproportionate incarceration in the US (Exum,

For example, Philip Zimardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment is a perfect example of how power dynamics can interfere with authority figures' treatment of the minority. Even though the SPE does not directly evaluate the effects of uneven power distributions based on race and how it potentially impacts., some parallels can be drawn to further develop a better understanding of how power dynamics are used negatively in law enforcement today. With Zimbardo’s SPE, we see how being placed in certain positions can influence behavior based on the amount of power you are perceived as having. In the experiment, male college students were split up into two groups and they were either assigned as a ‘prisoner’ or a ‘guard’. There was a set amount of rules that the guards made before the start of the experiment in order to prevent negative outcomes, although these rules were soon disregarded and some guards quickly began subjecting the prisoners to verbal abuse, humiliation, and intimidation. This led to emotional and psychological distress of the prisoners which resulted in the two-week experiment ending after less than a week. Even though this experiment was simple as it only involved college students being cast a role, it demonstrates how authority figures with a perceived sense of