Law enforcement There have been instances of injustice demonstrated by law enforcement officials pertaining to black individuals. A disproportionate amount of black people are being subject to brutality and incarceration due to racial profiling. More black individuals in prison means an increase in the chance of the decision of the death sentence for black individuals, depending on what is being accused of them. This can be justified based on the belief that blacks are simply committing more crime, but the truth of the matter is, black people are often targeted based on racism by officers and this is why they represent such a large proportion of people in correctional facilities. To illustrate, following a wrongful vehicle search without consent
In fact, White people are given preferential treatment by the police. In Charles Epp’s Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship, Jeff, a White man who was pulled over by a police officer for speeding, explains, “I was just a little over 20 going down the street. And I got pulled over… Just told me that the speed limit is 20 and that’s the way it goes” (Epp 115). Despite breaking the law by driving over the speed limit, the White driver was simply let off with just a warning from the officer. On the other hand, police officers constantly seek for small offenses like this, to be used as legitimate excuses to pull over Black drivers.
African Americans are more likely to be searched than a Caucasia due to racial bias from Caucasian officers. To most officers, a Caucasian does not look as suspicious as an African American which makes them more susceptible to searches. Even if a Caucasian is searched and caught for having illegal drugs, the consequences are usually not as bad for them. In fact, in Chicago alone, “White drug offenders are rarely arrested” and when they are caught and brought to court “they are treated more favorably at every stage of the criminal justice process” (189). All across the nation, African Americans are filling up our county jails at a higher rate than any other race in the United States, which is better known as mass incarceration.
Richard miles was wrongfully convicted of murder and attempted murder in 1995 based on eyewitness testimony, false or misleading forensic evidence and official misconduct. The evidence presented at his trial that is useful for this particular research paper is the eyewitness testimony. Thurman the witness in this case identified Miles as the gunman from a photospread that police had given him. Several other witnesses were shown the same photospread but could not identify Miles. Miles was charged with murder and attempted murder.
It is stated in the article What It’s Like to Be Black in the Criminal Justice System that “black drivers are also more likely to be pulled over and less likely to receive a reason for being stopped” . It is the police's job to protect all American people, meaning no matter what skin color, and many are abusing the power they are given to do that by specifically going after Black Americans
When it comes to the perceptions of the criminal justice system and the role that the police play in society, blacks and whites live in different worlds. African Americans do not receive equal
Police officers are more likely to stop and arrest African Americans, compared to other ethnic groups in America, and this has to do with stereotypes. Mainstream media portrays black men as violent, thugs or drug sellers which shapes the perceptions majority of Americans have towards African Americans (Hurwitz & Peffley, 2005). Therefore, these stereotypes become a method to dehumanize and make it acceptable for black people to be treated in a certain way in the criminal justice system. Also, there is a big gap when it comes to how to black people and white people view the criminal justice system because they experience it differently. Whites are significantly more likely to approve police aggression compared to their black counterparts, because they are not subjected to violence from Criminal Justice system (Hadden, Tolliver, Snowden, & Brown, 2016).
Police officers are always looking for a target and they end up finding the perfect person to penalize. For example, many people are usually shocked when they find out that the reason they were pulled over was not, in fact, against the law, and end up penalized. In my opinion police officers should really focus on stopping crimes such as rapes, robbery, murders etc. Those crimes should have high penalties, but crimes such as speeding, driving without a license, carrying a small amount of drug should not equal the same prison time for a major crime for ethnic minorities. Therefore, unreasonable suspicions, pre-texts used by officers and jail time are things that play a huge role regarding the criminal justice system that affects the way ethnic minorities are
We see Lacey transform into herself throughout the process of the film. In the early stages of her life, she was uncomfortable with her appearance. She recognized that her appearance was different than those around her starting at a young age when a boy asked to see her gums. From that point on, she struggled with how she looked. She noted how in her younger years, she didn’t like the color of her skin or the texture of her hair.
According to some charts mainly African American, latino and other minority races are the most common to be stopped by officers because of stereotypes. The Constitution, through the fourth amendment, protects people from unreasonable search and seizure by the
The killing of a young African American Michael Brown by white police officer Daren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014 shed a light on something that had long been ignored by the white population of the USA, the obvious inequality between black and white individuals in the criminal justice system. This racial bias is no longer based on explicit racism which was outlawed by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, instead it is influenced by implicit racial bias present in all aspects of the criminal justice system resulting in implicit assumptions that lead to quick and prejudice judgments based on negative stereotypes by the actors of the criminal justice system especially law enforcements which lead the uneven usage of “stop and
Sure, there are surveys and statistics all over the internet, are these really true? “Not so fast” says the Manhattan Institute, “the charge is police have ‘too many’ interactions with minorities, but this leaves the questions’ too many’ compared to what”? This is exactly the problem we are facing against the opposing opinion. An officer only does a “stop and frisk” if they see something that looks suspicious. This also leads an officer to suspicion by behavioral tensions such as nervousness, threatening behavior, and of course absence of license plate.
One of the greatest challenges law enforcement are facing is providing effective policing for minority communities. Some factors that prevent minorities from gaining access to justice or being taken advantage of certain criminal justice services are language barriers, racial stereotyping, and cultural differences. Since the 30 's and 40 's, and even during the 60 's, civil rights activists damaged the police-minority relations in the United States, believing that police only interest are protecting white communities. A big explanation of why there 's a poor police-minority relations in the United States is racism on the part of the individual officers. Many minorities in the United States have continued to complain about being treated more harshly than whites and the Department of Justice believes that racial profiling and police discrimination will continue to be a big problem.
Racial profiling has had great effects on African American communities all over the US. Victims of racial profiling incidents and people who have witnessed have begun to fear and hate the police when they should be trusting that they are there to keep them safe. Many incidents have occured in the US where unarmed black individuals have been brutally killed by the hands of white police or have been pulled over when driving because they have commited the crime of “driving while black”, which in today's world has become something that African Americans have to fear because of the likeliness of them being pulled over by police, because of their racial bias towards them. “Driving while black” is something that black families tell their kids to be careful of at a young age because of their own experiences with police. In between 2007-2010, people of colored skin accounted for 75 percent of the people stopped by Boston police and 65 percent of them were black in a city whose population was made up of 25 percent African Americans at that time.
Throughout history, disputes and tensions between law enforcement officials and communities of minorities have endured hostility and violence between each other. Racial profiling has become a “hot topic” for researchers as well as for politicians and by now it is likely that most citizens are at least aware of the common accusations of racial bias pitted against law enforcement (Cochran & Warren, 2013). Communities of color are being discriminated against and racially profiled by white police officers for any suspicion of criminal activities. It has been widely assumed by policy makers and citizens alike that allegations of racial profiling are mostly associated with the policing practices of white officers and their treatment of racial and ethnic minorities (Cochran & Warren, 2013). Also, individuals of minority descent will certainly recognize that they are being racially profiled during a stop that is being conducted by a white police officer.
