Cultural Competence In Criminal Justice Essay

Openly meaningful reforms to the criminal justice system cannot be accomplished without acknowledgement of racial and ethnic disparities in the system. Focused attention on reduction of disparities is needed. The unequal treatment of minorities in the criminal justice system is one of the most critical issues in America. Diversity and multiculturalism issues in the judicial, policing, and correctional system has been an ongoing problem. We are often witnesses of the tensions between minority groups and law enforcement, unequal treatment in prisons, courts, and representations. Cultural competence is important in the criminal justice field, because it can decrease these tensions and unequal treatment we often witness.

According to the Prison

Policy Initiative from Bureau of Justice Statistics, Latinos and African Americans have a higher rate of incarceration then white individuals. This comes to show how minorities have a higher population rate in prisons than any other group. Often this is referred to the encounters law enforcement have in low income communities, that are generally populated by minorities. Why is it that these officials target these areas? These areas are surrounded by minority groups whom lack resources to better their communities. Many individuals in these communities suffer either health issues, mental issues, and lack education, often pushing them to commit crimes in order to obtain help or a sense of calmness. Many of the encounters made by officers with minorities set a tone of discrimination and disparity. Many people do not understand the cost of these disparities and how it only obtains more violence between first responders and individuals seeking for help. Not only do we see this disparity in law enforcement relations, but we also see this in the court system through institutional discrimination, contextual discrimination, individual acts of discrimination, and systematic discrimination. Policy making has also had an impact on racial disparities, only setting these groups to have a rise in incarceration. An example of this is racial profiling, where many officers still today work around that technique.
It is clear that the criminal justice system must have reform and improvement in techniques that can help diminish these type of disparities. There is no doubt that many minority groups have a sense of distrust and suspicion with law enforcement. Because of this distrust, many individuals from these groups often have a negative and dangerous encounter with police officers, by disobeying and not following instructions for their own safety. Not only does it affect the individual but it also effects in the way of receiving help from the community to stop other crimes going around. It also creates challenges for police officers to communicate with individuals. It also effects the individual by taking action of certain crimes committed against them into their own hands, instead of getting help from law enforcement. Trust is key to having a better type of communication and allow enforcement to help in difficult situations. Cultural competence is important in the criminal justice system and can diminish these disparities. According to Hanser and Gomila, cultural competence is the process of effectively attending to the needs of individuals by integrating the salient aspect of the culture to which they identify themselves. (p. 108) This can become helpful because it allows to have a better communication with minorities of different ethnic groups. It is important to create a trust building environment within the law enforcement and minorities.
Law enforcement have one of the toughest jobs in America.

Being involved and trying to solve difficult situations, especially with minority groups can become a very difficult task. Developing knowledge and applying techniques to understand different minority groups background can be extremely helpful. In our everyday growing multicultural society, cultural competence can be very helpful, especially within law enforcement agencies. Cultural competence offers those techniques through programs and regulations in different agencies within the criminal justice system. This is offered through training, assessment, evaluation of cultural competence appearance, and practices within these agencies. Many of us are aware that individual officers can often damage a departments effort to become cultural competent by ignoring agency policy and by integrating their own negative racial bias belief. This is really bad because it can distinct individuals and cause negative interactions. One example is the recent deathly shooting that killed Jordan Woods, a 15-year old African American. Officer Roy Oliver from Texas, shot a vehicle that was driving away, which killed individual who was on the passenger side. The chief of the police department believed that there was no need for the shooting, since it was not considered an endangerment to the officer, and did not believed it met the agencies core values. It is important for agencies norms and officer’s perception to be at the same level so that the response can be positive, affective, and without any deadly confrontations. Individual officer’s biases can lead to negative outcomes. Not having these norms and policies upheld by officers can undercut the agencies intention to better relationships among law enforcement and minority

groups.
As mentioned above, cultural competences are vital to bettering relationships within minority groups. Acknowledging the disparities between minorities is the first step. Being aware of these issues can allow us to research and create methods that can help law enforcement agencies. Cultural competence offers those needs to help ease tensions. Law enforcement hiring and training divisions can also be extremely helpful factors to help these negative impacts and high incarceration rates of minorities.
Firstly, explaining the benefit of hiring a diverse employment within law enforcement agencies, will help inform the need to do so. As mention earlier, many minority groups offer a sense of distrust against police officers. This often due to the bad and unethical decisions many officers have made in the past and still present. Because diversity is made of different ethnicities and cultures, it is important to have diversity in agencies so that they can promote a trusted and legitimacy effect in policing. Not only will that better the trust issue, but it can also help incorporate cultural competence. Multicultural hiring is needed in order to create this positive effect, therefore recruiting different ethnicities can become extremely helpful.
Cultural competence can help in force this this type of recruitment and training, by ensuring that most agencies are doing what they must do to obtain better communication with minority groups. Implementation of agency cultural competence is way of ensuring that these agencies are operating in a type of way that is beneficial for both parties. Agencies must be strict and transparent with their policy.

Training is another way of integrating cultural competence in law enforcement agencies. Agencies must provide early training to future police officers so that they can have a better understanding of the issues faced daily. This should most likely be done during the pre-service training phase. The amount and length of training should be given careful consideration and taken seriously in order to ensure effective policing procedures among diverse minority populations. Using ill structured problems in developing cultural competence help give an understanding of diversity issues that can simply be addressed in a good faith manner before getting out of hand or control. According to Hanser and Gomila, problem-based learning approach is a superior approach to training individuals beyond the pre-service level that should be extended. (p.371) Learning from mistakes, and fail forward are two techniques used in this type of learning approach. Evaluation of culture competence in agencies also helps agencies research their rates and draw attentions to where they need improvements. This is done through three basic types of evaluation. Implementation evaluation, process evaluation, and outcome evaluation all take place in researching and evaluating agencies cultural competence. Another way of successfully obtaining cultural competence is through a method called evidence based practice. According to Hanser and Gomila (2015) evidence based practice suggests certain outcomes are desired over other, outcomes are measurable, and defined accordingly. (p. 381) The National Institute of Justice (2005) have created eight measures of evidence-based practice that consist of assessing the needs of organizational participants, enhancing motivation of participants, targeting operational changes, providing skill training for staff and monitor their services delivered, increasing positive reinforcement, measuring relevant practices, and providing measurable feedback.
Overall, it is necessary to successfully have a cultural competence reform in our criminal justice system. It must be integrated into agencies in order to have a better relation with different minority groups. Offering these approaches can help police officers and minority groups create a trusting and safer environment, rather than ignoring the issue and simply going based off of one’s beliefs.