More handpicked essays just for you.
Essay outline on racial profiling within the law enforcement and criminal justice system
Racial profiling by law enforcement
Essay outline on racial profiling within the law enforcement and criminal justice system
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Essay outline on racial profiling within the law enforcement and criminal justice system
Racism and racial discrimination has been a major issue in the U.S. since the colonial periods, where people have been treated differently only based upon their race. Although the civil rights movement opposed racial discrimination, the act of stereotyping individuals still continues till this day. Racial profiling by law enforcement is commonly defined as a practice that targets people for suspicion of crime based on their race, religion or national origin. A recent case, involving a young black man named Michael Brown is an example of how a police officer may act differently when facing an African American. “Ferguson Grand Jury Evidence Reveals Mistakes, Holes In Investigation” is an article written by Jason Cherkis’s and published on November
The severity of racial profiling is very concerning. As proven by numerous texts studied for this Expository Writing class, it is evident that the Black respondents of Otis Johnson’s poll, analyzing citizens’ relationships with the police, are not the only Black people that: “expressed far less confidence than whites in local police to treat both races equally” (Johnson). In White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, Peggy McIntosh describes various privileges which sound ordinary, though surprisingly only White people have. Among them, is one that affects all people on a daily basis: “If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race” (McIntosh). Governmental
Brent Staples’s essay is still relevant today because of the fear that lives inside people who don’t understand or accept others, which often leads to authorities abusing their power so that they can feel safe while others live their lives cautiously. This relates to how both African Americans and the police live their lives in fear and with caution. The police fear African Americans due to their own prejudice reasons which causes them to abuse their authority by acting more aggressive which helps themselves feel safer and stronger. This forces African Americans to live their lives with caution and patience because if they don’t, they put themselves at a higher risk of endangering themselves. Brent Staples wrote the article “Black Men in Public
In his essay “Arrested Development: The Conservative Case Against Racial Profiling” published in the New Republic on September 10, 2001, professor James Forman Jr. illustrates his disagreement with racial profiling. Forman Jr. is a professor at Yale Law School. He teaches Constitutional Law and seminars on race and the criminal justice system. In his piece, Forman primary goal is to create understanding about the effectiveness of racial profiling and how this affects the black community especially youths. Forman achieves this by appealing to a liberal audience.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, M. (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: The New Press. Michelle Alexander in her book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" argues that law enforcement officials routinely racially profile minorities to deny them socially, politically, and economically as was accustomed in the Jim Crow era.
The Michael Brown murder by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri brought attention back to racial discrimination throughout the United States. Anger has been directed towards police officers and court judges by many unhappy citizens. I chose this crime related article because all the sudden I see things about police brutality on the media, which I am not use to seeing. I am interested in reading the author's opinion on the matter, as well as trying to form my own. These stories are causing me to see that the police force, the ones supposedly responsible for my safety, becoming the ones doing all the harming.
Annotated Bibliography Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Alexander opens up on the history of the criminal justice system, disciplinary crime policy and race in the U.S. detailing the ways in which crime policy and mass incarceration have worked together to continue the reduction and defeat of black Americans.
In “An American Dilemma”, Gunnar Myrdal calls attention to discrimination plaguing law enforcement and justice systems in the South during the mid 20th century. Although his volumes of work were written nearly twenty years prior to the A.C. Hall case, Myrdal highlights troubling patterns of law enforcement and criminal justice that clearly manifest in A.C. Hall’s death and the incident’s aftermath. Myrdal unpacks how southern law enforcement conditions are rooted in the disenfranchisement of black communities, with far reaching consequences for not only the political climate of the region, but also for the trends of justice served to black defendants and plaintiffs. In many areas of the south, local governments employed judges, prosecuting attorneys, court officials, and high ranking police officers based on local elections (rather than appointments) and this practice led to low professional standards among these positions.
We live in a society where ethnic minorities are target for every minimal action and/or crimes, which is a cause to be sentenced up to 50 years in jail. African Americans and Latinos are the ethnic minorities with highest policing crimes. In chapter two of Michelle Alexander’s book, The Lockdown, we are exposed to the different “crimes” that affects African American and Latino minorities. The criminal justice system is a topic discussed in this chapter that argues the inequality that people of color as well as other Americans are exposed to not knowing their rights. Incarceration rates, unreasonable suspicions, and pre-texts used by officers are things that play a huge role in encountering the criminal justice system, which affects the way
Keisha Blain in “Violence in Minneapolis is rooted in the history of racist policing in America” elaborates upon the governmental condonement of police brutality on black Americans and its effects. Like redlining, state-sanctioned violence from police officers against the African American community has shaped the history of U.S. cities. Police failed to punish white residents, inflicting harm on their black counterparts, and as a result, many black people were lynched, and their killers were never brought to justice. Police are far more likely to arrest and fatally shoot black people in comparison to those who are white, and they rarely receive any reprimand for their actions. The death rate of Black Americans at the hands of police today, is almost the same as what it once was during the lynchings a century ago (Blain, 2020).
Even before our nation’s founding, people of color have been discriminated. Decades pass and the criminal justice system is still “racist” labeling people of color as criminal, meaning black equal criminals therefore is fine to discriminate people of color just because they’re criminals. In “The New Jim Crow” the system targets black men because they are associated with crime, meaning crime stands in for race. In the other hand, As Heather Mac Donald writes in her book “The War on Cops”, “The criminal-justice system does treat individual suspects and criminals equally, they concede. But the problem is how society defines crime and criminals” (154).
There is an increasing pattern of unfair behavior towards black people. CNN had made a poll questioning to white, black, and Hispanic people, if they were treated unfairly with the police on the last 30 days because of their racial/ethnical status. The results of those polls were shocking; they conclude that 1 out of 5 black people have been treated unfairly in the last month. Consequently in the news article explains how the media is playing a big role, since many people is upset of the behavior of the police towards black people, frequently on the internet many videos are posted of how the police treat them unfairly. Furthermore, the statistics that the article provide us, also shows that white people is likewise concerned of this bad behavior presented in today’s society.
These statements developed in reaction to the recent deaths of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man strangled to death by police in Staten Island, New York, and Michael Brown, an unarmed black adolescent shot to death by police in Ferguson, Missouri. These are two recent examples of the explicit racial prejudices that have plagued the country’s history. The Caucasian police officers who were accountable for these deaths were not charged for the wrongdoing nor were they taken to
This report is showing light to the communities’ response to police brutality particularly in the black communities and also their encounters with police officers. Police brutality is physical violence and great cruelty demonstrated by a police officer. Police brutality and misconduct have existed for many decades and it even has been broadcasted in news stories over America, but nothing has changed. It has happened predominantly to African Americans in lower-income states. Police officers are given slaps on the wrist for taking a life or injuring an innocent person.
Minorities often receive a lower quality education that their white counterparts, live in environments not conducive to producing productive members of society, and are forced to endure unjust discrimination. The justice system has coined the phrase “innocent until proven guilty,” but a more accurate motto might be “Innocent unless not white”. There is no city that serves as a better example of how blacks are unfairly discriminated against that New York City. Since 2002, New York City has had a Stop-and-Frisk policy in place allowing police to stop any citizen on the street and search them for illegal contraband The justification for the policy is highly questionable, and the statistics on the policy prove that it has discriminatory motives. The Stop-and-Frisk street interrogations have proven to be wildly inefficient with “nearly nine out of 10” of the “more than 5 million” New Yorkers who have been stopped having been “completely innocent” (“Stop-and-Frisk” 1).
