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Racism and discrimination in the criminal justice paper
Racism in the american justice system
Racism in the american justice system
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Being suspicious about someone is not necessarily bad for police officers, as long as you have a reason to suspect. For example, have you ever seen a person that you have never seen before, walk by your neighborhood? Law enforcement officers patrol the streets making sure there isn’t anything suspicious going on. There have been cases were the police have been accused of stopping people over for no reason. Some say they were racially profiled. Whatever the case is, police have to have reasonable suspicion to stop someone.
The term reasonable suspicion is a lesser standard than probable cause. It is a general belief that a crime is occurring, or has occurred. Reasonable suspicion can’t be only a hunch. It has to be based on the facts at hand and the reasoning from those facts that will lead someone else under the same circumstances to believe that a crime has occurred. The standard reasonable suspicion only allows law enforcement to temporarily detain, question, and frisk. It does not allow officers to search or seize because that will require probable cause. Probable cause is a set of facts and circumstances that would lead someone to believe that someone else has committed a specific crime. Probable cause is the next level of belief in order to arrest, search, and charge someone of a crime. Racial profiling, a controversial issue, has become a common problem in the police field. Some have said that they were stopped for being black, or Hispanic. Racial profile is a different problem; reasonable suspicion can’t be based on merely race, or ethnicity. For example, in my personal experience, I usually think anybody that is out late is suspicious. If I see someone walking by the neighborhood at night, I just obser...
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... to occur in predominated areas. People might say they’re being racially profiled, but if it’s in an area where mostly Hispanics, or African Americans live, then it’s not. Whatever the situation is, an officer must articulate the facts and see if there is reasonable suspicion to stop someone.
Law enforcement officers need a reason to stop you. Remember, it cannot be just a hunch the police officer had. Their action has to be backed up with facts that led him to believe you, or someone else had committed a crime. Like the Supreme Court cases we went over, all dealt with reasonable suspicion in some way. Reasonable suspicion is the standard police officers need to stop and frisk someone. They will need probable cause, a higher standard, to search and arrest a person. Remember, officers need reasonable suspicion to stop, question, and frisk for any weapons.
Our criminal justice book defines racial profiling as "any police initiated action that relies on the race, ethnicity, or national origin rather than the behavior of an individual, or on information that leads the police to a particular individual who has been identified as being, or having been, engaged in criminal activity” (Schmalleger 757). I think it is best summed up as the practice of using race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion as the primary factor in deciding who to subject to law enforcement investigations. Racial profiling can be used as a basis for racist police officers to arrest more minorities and this is documented very often. In the article Jim Crow policing, Bob Herbert talks about the unnecessary frisking and racism connected to searching for potential criminals. Herbert makes several points as to why police are harassing the black and Latino population and how it is wrong.
Opponents will argue that racial profiling is based on suspicious behavior and not on race. They feel as though racial profiling can potentially stop certain crimes befor...
They are influenced by the same things that we are, and they see things the same as we do. How these law enforcement officials are raised is how they are going to carry out their duties. If they are raised without morals or with racial influence they will most likely use that influence and bad judgment during work. Additionally, terrorism and hate crimes instills great fear in today 's society. With all the recent violence against law enforcement, I can understand why they profile or may come off defensive to the general public. At the same time, I can also understand why the public may fear police officials. Also I can see why they may not trust the police with all the recent police involved shootings that have
Stop and Frisk is a procedure put into use by the New York Police Department that allows an officer to stop and search a “suspicious character” if they consider her or him to be. The NYPD don’t need a warrant, or see you commit a crime. Officers solely need to regard you as “suspicious” to violate your fourth amendment rights without consequences. Since its Beginning, New York City’s stop and frisk program has brought in much controversy originating from the excessive rate of arrest. While the argument that Stop and Frisk violates an individual’s fourth amendment rights of protection from unreasonable search and seizure could definitely be said, that argument it’s similar to the argument of discrimination. An unfair number of Hispanics and
While making any program in the criminal justice system “color-blind” is not an easy concept, many regulations can be enacted to help ensure equality when finding a precinct and performing a stop and frisk among NYC civilians. The new policy can include regulations that make it necessary to use a higher form of discretion when stoping a person. Such as attempting to overlook the persons race and focus more on where they are coming from, how they are acting, and/or who they are surrounding themselves with.
Racial profiling is the tactic of stopping someone because of the color of his or her skin and a fleeting suspicion that the person is engaging in criminal behavior (Meeks, p. 4-5). This practice can be conducted with routine traffic stops, or can be completely random based on the car that is driven, the number of people in the car and the race of the driver and passengers. The practice of racial profiling may seem more prevalent in today’s society, but in reality has been a part of American culture since the days of slavery. According to Tracey Maclin, a professor at the Boston University School of Law, racial profiling is an old concept. The historical roots “can be traced to a time in early American society when court officials permitted constables and ordinary citizens the right to ‘take up’ all black persons seen ‘gadding abroad’ without their master’s permission” (Meeks, p. 5). Although slavery is long since gone, the frequency in which racial profiling takes place remains the same. However, because of our advanced electronic media, this issue has been brought to the American public’s attention.
Imagine driving home, on a pleasant evening, after a tedious day at work. Just as you are about to arrive to your neighborhood, you notice blue and red flashing lights and pull over. It seems the police officer has no reason for stopping you, except to search your vehicle because of your suspiciously perceived skin tone. This unnecessary traffic stop, designed for people of colored skin, happens on numerous occasions and has been termed Driving While Black or Brown. Racial profiling is the act of using race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed a crime.
One of the biggest reason stop-and-frisk should be abolished is in hopes to decrease such blatant racial profiling that has been going on under the name of “stop-and-frisk”. In 2007, 55% of the people stopped in New York were blacks and 30% were Hispanic (“Update: Crime and Race”). When checked again in 2011 a total of 685,000 people were stopped by the police of that 685,000, 52.9% were African Americans, 33.7% were Latino, and 9.3% were white (“Racial Profiling”). There is a story of an innocent victim of the stop-and-frisk policy, a man by the name of Robert Taylor. Police in Torrance stopped the elderly man and claimed he fit the description of a suspect that was linked to a robbery. But there was one simple problem; Taylor is a light complexioned, tall, 60 year-old man and the suspect was believed to be a short, dark complexioned, stocky man in his thirties; nothing like Taylor at all (Hutchinson). His shows that the police do not always stop people based on the right reasons, they tend to stop people based on the color of thei...
One discriminating practice used by police officers is racial profiling. This is the police practice of stopping, questioning, and searching potential criminal suspects in vehicles or on the street based solely on their racial appearance (Human Rights Watch, 2000). This type of profiling has contributed to racially disproportionate drug arrests, as well as, arrests for other crimes. It makes sense that the more individuals police stop, question and search, the more people they will find with reason for arrest. So, if the majority of these types of stop and frisk searches are done on a certain race then it makes sense that tha...
There is dispute regarding what defines racial profiling. Critics ask Is it racist, or is a necessary part of law enforcement. Racial profiling is identified by Adele Cassola in her article as unjust whereas Denyse Coles argues that racial profiling is necessary and is not considered racism. According to the Ontario Human Rights Commission “Racial profiling is based on stereotypical assumptions because of one’s race, colour, ethnicity, etc.” whereas criminal profiling “relies on actual behaviour or on information about suspected activity by someone who meets the description of a specific individual” (Facts Sheet, para 2). This definition is also shared by Casola but Coles considers them as the same. It is important to separate fact from feelings when discussing racial profiling; stereotypes are offensive, however identifying one’s race in a criminal profile does not make one racist.
The key to understanding racialized profiling is to understand what systemic discrimination and profiling mean. Systemic discrimination sometimes called systemic racism is defined as, “Patterns and practices… which, although they may not be intended to disadvantage any group, can have the effect of disadvantaging or permitting discrimination against… racial minorities” (Comack, 2012, p30). Profiling in policing is defined as,
Profiling is unconstitutional and violates civil rights. Police can search a person without a warrant if they have reasonable doubt that they are armed and dangerous; however, of people who are pulled over while driving, less than 4% of whites are searched while about 10% of bla...
Every day you see and hear about minorities groups complain about cops and their tactics against them stopping them while in traffic taking them in to custody or even getting kill over nothing. Racial Profiling is a common thing in this community and it is causing a lot of trouble. According to Minnesota House of Representatives analyst Jim Cleary, "there appear to be at least two clearly distinguishable definitions of the term 'racial profiling ': a narrow definition and a broad definition... Under the narrow definition, racial profiling occurs when a police officer stops, questions, arrests, and/or searches someone solely on the basis of the person 's race or ethnicity... Some ways to stop it is find out who is guilty of it, look at their
In the article “What are the Causes and Effects of Racial Profiling,” the interviews imply that most police officers think that racial profiling means they stop a vehicle or pedestrian solely based on the race or color. In other words, as long as racial or color is not the only base, it is not called racial profiling (“Heal the Street Race”). Most police officers also think that racial profiling is not a widespread problem. They believe that it is only caused by a “few bad apples.” In addition, there is another phrase called biased profiling which officers believe to be more common. They explain that every person has his own preference and methods, so some personal bias is inevitable during investigation. On the other hand, most victims do not think in this way, since African Americans define racial profiling differently. They state that, as long as race or color becomes a factor, they are treated unfairly, because race or color can’t indicate anything related to crime. As a result, the absent of a comprehensive understanding about racial profiling prevents people from really solving the problem. Each side of the argument will have a feeling that they are the real innocent people. And at the same time, racial profiling will keep
Even before the stop are made (add comma after made?) cops watch possible suspects of any suspicious activity even without any legal right. “Plainclothes officers known as “rakers” were dispatched into ethnic communities, where they eavesdropped on conversations and wrote daily reports on what they heard, often without any allegation of criminal wrong doing.” (NYPD Racial Profiling 1) This quote explains how even before a citizen is officially stopped by a cop, there are times when that they have already had their personal conversations assessed without their knowledge or without them having done any wrong acts. It was done, based solely on their ethnicity and social status alone. (you can add an example of what the people, who were being watched, were doing) Then (comma?) when police are out watching the streets, they proceed to stop people again simply based on racial profiling. In an article called Watching Certain People by Bob Herbert, stated that “not only are most of the people innocent but a vast majority are either black or Hispanic” (Herbert 1). Racism is happening before the suspect even gets a chance to explain themselves or be accused of any crime, and the rules of being able to do such a thing are becoming even more lenient so that police are able to perform such actions. “The rule requiring police to