ipl-logo

Racial Bias In The Criminal Justice System

1044 Words5 Pages

One of the biggest controversies in society today is concerning whether or not the criminal justice system is racially bias. It is clear that blacks are overrepresented in America’s prison system. For example, they are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of white people and “constitute for nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population” (Criminal Justice). Although this is true, the disproportionate number of black men serving time in the criminal justice system is due to circumstance, not necessarily race. While there are some judges, police officers, or other officials who may have a racial bias towards black people, in the majority of cases blacks are not arrested because their race, they are arrested because they …show more content…

Police are often accused of racial bias, but it 's not very likely that they are arresting innocent black people and letting white criminals get away. For example, if there had been a recent string of murders committed by a white woman, then the police would be on the lookout for and be more cautious around white women. Likewise, because statistically black men commit more crimes, officers are more likely to be more cautious when they see a black man doing something that looks suspicious. In most cases, an officer is not going to risk his badge and reputation by consistently bringing in innocent black men and accusing them of a crimes there is no evidence for. While there are racist cops out there who will pull black men over unnecessarily or beat them for no reason, these officers will have to face the consequence of their actions. The police arrest people who commit crimes, and if black men commit more crimes then it makes sense that more of them are arrested. It would be a little ridiculous, if officers had to bypass or ignore any black criminal they saw, just because they’d already arrested a number of black men proportionate to the population. According to data produced by the FBI, when compared, the number of black arrestees and offenders are almost identical (Rubenstein). “If police are arresting a larger proportion of blacks than the proportion of criminals victims say were black, it would be evidence of bias”, but this data shows the two figures are very similar (Rubenstein). Yes, there is a higher percentage of black people arrested and serving time in the criminal justice system, but it is because they commit more crimes, not because of a racial

Show More
Related
922 Words | 4 Pages

Police officers are trained to use their discretion in line with statistics or perceived statistics. It is often perceived that people of certain races are more likely to be guilty of crimes, and this concept factors into why the police made the choices that they made during this investigation. While this is illegal to do, it is still very hard to prove it in

Read More
1491 Words | 6 Pages

The police power ought to be an impression of the community. Thus, if a community has a substantial amount of African Americans, there ought to be a proportionate number of African Americans on the police force. Be that as it may, cops of any race soon wind up plainly bored on the off chance that they work in high crime rate areas. The police typically just interact with the most noticeably bad looking of the community, the general population they capture. What's more they are presented to some terrible occasions murder, assault, and kid manhandle.

Read More
1162 Words | 5 Pages

Police departments target minorities as criminal suspects more often than they target non minority groups of people. This then skewing the data between arrested racial groups, putting minorities higher, because they are targeted more. This is more commonly referred to in our society as racial

Read More
1305 Words | 6 Pages

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,

Read More
651 Words | 3 Pages

However, this does not necessarily mean that black people commit more crimes. This is where bias comes into play. Studies have shown that if a black person and a white person each commit a crime; the black person has a greater chance of being arrested than a white person. If a police officer works in a predominately and they arrest a majority of black people, does that mean they are racist? Police officers work in divisions and surveillance the same areas everyday therefore they become acquainted to the behaviors of certain neighborhood and make decisions based off past

Read More
1362 Words | 6 Pages

To most officers in the police department, all they think about when they see a black man is trouble and crime. This has caused them to judge most Black people wrongly. The article Police Killing of Blacks: Here Is What Data Say says “According to the F.B.I’s Supplementary Homicide Report, 31.8 percent of people shot by the police were African-Americans, a proportion more than two and a half times the 13.2 percent of the African-Americans in the general population”(Mullainathan). This explains that the rate at which police are killing Blacks is alarming. In the past years, there has been an increased number of police killings of Blacks that can be prevented.

Read More
1180 Words | 5 Pages

Since the nature of the; law enforcement frequently requires the police officers to make snap judgments about the danger posed subjects and the criminal nature of their activity, subconscious racial associations influence the way officers perform their job” (Racial Disparities: U.S. Criminal Justice System). Racially profiling people started very recently; the police racially profiling people and arresting them, thus destroys the belief of “innocent until proven guilty” in which is embedded in the U.S. Criminal Justice

Read More
1111 Words | 5 Pages

Black Americans are more than twice as likely as white Americans to be unarmed when they are shot and killed by police officers, according to a study published in the Journal of Criminology and Public Policy. In addition, the study finds that racial bias is a contributing factor (Schumaker). How does racial bias influence police brutality? Defined, “Police brutality is the use of excessive physical or verbal assault during police procedures, such as apprehending or interrogating a suspect. Deadly force is not always excessive force.

Read More
182 Words | 1 Pages

Not all trials are impeccable. The issue of racial disparity has been a serious problem of the United States. Especially in the criminal justice system category. For in criminal justice system today racial inequality is increasing not receding. This is because today, our justice system remotes the idea of fair trials and discriminate many African Americans and other minorities as well without realizing it.

Read More
310 Words | 2 Pages

People hear of police killing innocent black men and blame them for being racist. However, after further research, I argue that their claims are not true. When it comes to police shootings, blacks aren’t the only targets. Far many more white people are killed by police which shows that this is definitely not a racial problem. Based on data collected by the FBI, crime rates have gone down but the number of police shootings have increased.

Read More
407 Words | 2 Pages

In 2003, the Department of Defense (DOJ) banned the use of racial profiling in federal agencies, except when it came to looking for terrorists. States have also taken a stance against racial profiling, with many enacting their own laws that ban the use of racial profiling by the police. Departments are also encouraged to do things such as “monitor activity reports for evidence of improper practices and patterns” per the PERF report. In the end, it is up to the police officer and individual police departments to stop racial profiling and racially biased policing. If departments and people don’t try to change, then nothing will change in the

Read More
1195 Words | 5 Pages

When it comes to racial profiling by the police in the criminal justice system, African Americans are more often racially profiled than any other race in America today. This has become a problem because not ever black individual is a criminal and not every criminal is black. Therefore, there needs to be some sort of resolution to this epidemic. “By analyzing data from 4.5 million traffic stops in 100 North Carolina cities, Stanford researchers have found that police in that state are more likely to search black and Hispanic motorists, using a lower threshold of suspicion, than when they stop white or Asian drivers” (Andrews, E., 2016).

Read More
915 Words | 4 Pages

Rather than targeting people of color for their conduct or activities, the police target them because of their race. Minority groups, especially African Americans, are more prone to have unpleasant contact with law enforcement officers, according to studies that have been conducted repeatedly (Davis, 2017). Several studies indicate that people of color are unfairly affected by police officers, which is a serious problem in policing known as racial profiling. Compared to white Americans, black People had a more than twofold increased risk of being murdered by police. Research shows that black people are more likely to be subjected to police officers using excessive force than other groups (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2018).

Read More
947 Words | 4 Pages

After the results of a poll called “Race and Reality in America,” it is an acknowledgement that we have a race problem. According to the report, a large majority of minorities say that whether an incident in which an unarmed person is harmed or killed by police is videotaped plays a major role in whether or not the police officer or officers are charged for the crime (CNN Wire). A tangible solution, however, is to put body cameras on all cops. Most blacks feel like they are discriminated against when it comes to police brutality, because they are a minority. In our criminal justice system, the disadvantage of being a minority is

Read More
571 Words | 3 Pages

The fear and racism behind the idea that black people deserved what comes to them is blocking the vast majority of Americans from not only black humanity, but to the fact that they are getting killed as well. Many will assume the central accusation of this piece is "if I 'm scared of black people, which means I 'm racist". However, whether you, or I, or the officers in question personally hate black people is entirely beside the point. Hate doesn 't need to be in the calculus to know whether or not an individual recognizes the humanity in another or at least fosters implicit bias that manifests itself in real world conflict. The fact of the matter is frightened police are killing people, and doing so with impunity because the suspects in question scare us as well.

Read More

More about Racial Bias In The Criminal Justice System

Open Document