Stop And Frisk Pros And Cons

The Controversial Stop and Frisk Policy in the United States In recent times, police brutality has become an increasingly recognized issue in our society. A large proponent of this issue is due to the policy of “Stop and Frisk” and I argue that this policy is a direct violation of human rights in this country and is fundamentally counterproductive in the nation’s commitment to liberty, democracy, and political equality. The United States of America, has struggled with the war against crime and is constantly trying to find ways to lower crime rates and create a safer America and in doing so the government has passed many controversial laws, such as the stop and frisk policy which can be seen as targeting specific racial populations, as well

Primarily, it is in opposition to the liberty of United States citizens, because it hinders our freedom in many ways. This method is enforced extremely unequally between the different racial groups. The specific communities that are targeted are often due to racial bias, thus threatening their freedom to express themselves in the street for fear of being seen as a risk for simply the way they dress or walk. At the height of it’s enforcement, in 2011, New York cops stopped over 680,000 people a year, 89% of whom were of ethnic background in a city that was predominantly white (Taibbi 8). According to professor Thorpe’s lecture on April 18th, 2017, between the years of 2004-2012 there was a census conducted in which they calculated the amount of people were stopped before there was actually a seizure of illegal possessions and the findings were as such; of the black population on average there were 143 stops before a seizure, versus the white population which took only around 27 stops before a seizure occurred. Not only does this prove that the black population is unfairly stereotyped, but the ratio of the number of stops conducted were incrementally higher for the black population than the white population, thereby increasing the freedom to feel safe on the streets as a person of color. Stop and frisk is detrimental to our nation’s commitment

People are then stereotyped and are put into a group or more specifically as shown in the article, a box. The population who are affected by stop and frisk, would fit into box four. Box four is described as deviants with a subcategory including; criminals, drug addicts, communists, etc. Said people who fall into this category are demonized, their benefits are undersubscribed and burdens are oversubscribed. As described in the article, “Negatively constructed powerless groups will usually be proximate targets of punishment policy, and the extent of burdens will be greater (oversubscribed) than is needed to achieve effective results” (Schneider and Ingram 337.) The target populations for stop and frisk include poor underdeveloped neighborhoods in New York and other large cities and therefore those people would be considered “deviants” and stop and frisk is an example of an overprescribed punishment due to their social