Racial And Ethnic Profiling In The Criminal Justice System In USA And Canada

Find 5 current (2013 onward) and separate (non-series) newspaper, magazine, journal, and/or Internet articles about a social topic. Use at least 5 sociological concepts from the course readings to help explain the topic.

1. First, summarize the articles.

2. What your chosen theoretical perspective has to say about your social topic.

3. In your introduction, state what your topic is, what theoretical perspective you will be analyzing your topic from, and why this topic warrants sociological investigation.

The five articles analyzed

Yan, H. (2018). This is why everyday racial profiling is so dangerous. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/11/us/everyday-racial-profiling-consequences-trnd/index.html

The article by Holly Yan discusses the different instances of racial profiling. The article reports that the case is more critical than it has been thought. In USA, black people are subjected to monitoring and racial abuse. Similar cases happen with people of Muslim lineage or belonging to the Asian countries. This not only hurts the victims mentally, but has an alternate negative effect on the society. The author reports several instances where complaint against black people were lodged just for petty reasons. One such victim was Darren Martin. Besides these the article also refers to the social injustice meted out to them due to biasness in interviews or other social activities.

Butler, P. (2018). US justice is built to humiliate and oppress black men. It starts with the chokehold... Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/11/chokehold-police-black-men-paul-butler-race-america

Paul Butler in the article writes about the relevance of the book, Chokehold: Policing Black Men. He argues that black men and women have always been subjected to inhuman police atrocities for very petty reasons. One of the main atrocity is the chokehold that is applied by the police to subdue a person. The author reports of incidents where people have been subjected to chokeholds on the basis of simple suspicion and has even caused deaths. The author has the view that subjecting to such activities, black people are always on the symbolic chokehold by the society who looks down upon them for no reason.

Messing, J. T., Becerra, D., Ward-Lasher, A., &Androff, D. K. (2015). Latinas’ perceptions of law enforcement: Fear of deportation, crime reporting, and trust in the system. Affilia, 30(3), 328-340.

The research journal is on the psychological mindset of the Latina people who are more unwilling to report any crime in the USA because of the fear of being deported. This results in many crimes remaining undocumented. The main cause of this problem is fear of the police and the disbelief of the Latinas in the federal judicial system. It is important for the Latinas to grow trust in the police without the fear of deportation and report the criminal actions. This fear can be removed by the active training and spreading awareness among them through different social agencies and the communities.

Nakamura, L., & Chow-White, P. (Eds.). (2013). Race after the Internet. Routledge.

Chapter 9 of the book is by Danah Boyd who discusses on the several aspects of how the social media pages such as Facebook and MySpace were detrimental in shaping the race and class structure in the American teenagers. The article discusses in details how the two social media pages caused the class shift in the teenagers in school and where the special features of the social media played the key roles in doing so. For example, there are no racial segregation in the schools, however, the teenagers were unintentionally segregating among themselves in the social media. The black kids were looked down as troublemakers or the people using Facebook were considered elite.

Summary of the articles

Miller, K. (2013). The institutionalization of racial profiling policy: An examination of antiprofiling policy adoption among large law enforcement agencies. Crime & delinquency, 59(1), 32-58.

The research paper is primarily based on the unethical racial profiling that is one of the key challenge that the judicial system or the other law agencies in the USA. It highlights the importance of the development of new policies by the law agencies to stop the racial profiling at public spaces and have a more equity based approach towards the handling of crimes. The study also puts emphasis on the factors of the racial profiling which needs to be addressed in the developed policies and the equity of the jurisdiction system regarding this issue.

Recently, there have been several instances of conflicts revolving around racial and ethnic profiling in the criminal justice system of United States and Canada. There have been a number of high profile cases where officers of the law have been indicted with the death of African American men, mostly unarmed, on the basis of racial discrimination. The truth is, in America and Canada, skin color is still considered to be a determinant of character and integrity of a person (Yan, 2018). Racial profiling, or judging a person based on their skin color, is one of the most damaging and insidious phenomenon, as far as the relationship between colored communities and law enforcement is concerned (Glaser, 2014). In the past and even today, racial profiling has led to disproportionate arrests and attacks on such minority communities without substantial evidence (Zack, 2015).

The term racial profiling and its relation to criminal justice gained national attention back in the 1980s when the concept of “driving while black” was coined. This referred to a common practice used by law enforcement officers wherein they used race, gender, ethnicity, religion, national origin and skin color as the grounds on which investigation, arrests or detention would be carried out on locals, irrespective of whether there was sufficient evidence of criminal behavior on their parts. Racial profiling also includes the policy of targeting certain specific strata of the society or certain communities for police scrutiny (Nakamura & Chow-White, 2013). This is known as broken windows policing, which is one of the most potent examples of racial profiling. What must be remembered in this case is the fact that a society which is deemed to be breeding lawlessness, on accounts of race and ethnicity is bound to exhibit the same. This theory is in accordance with that of conservative sociology which laid emphasis on the relationship between law and order and social cohesion. This theory claims that implying certain communities or races by nature disordered or unfriendly or likely t show criminal behavior would invite such delinquency in the long run. It is startling to see how racial profiling has seeped in at the grassroots (Welsh, Braga & Bruinsma, 2013). In Canada, it is estimated that on an average, twice as more African Americans are stopped at traffic lights by the police than their Caucasian counterparts. Latin Americans, or Latinas, are more likely to be stopped due to traffic violations, searched during such investigations, arrested instead of merely handed a ticket and so on (Legewie, 2016). Moreover, in cases where the accused was proved to be innocent, no action was taken against the law enforcement officer, despite being guilty of racial profiling.

Relevance of sociological concepts

For the past few years, headlines of major newspapers have been filled with news items about colored people, who may have simply been going on with their daily lives, had the police tailing them or stopping them for random investigations. Such encounters not only reflect poorly on the criminal justice system of the country but also take a toll on the psychological state of the victims. For example, a person who has been a victim of racial profiling would lose trust in the justice system of the country and at the same time live his or her life in absolute fear of the police force, unsure of when chaos might strike. Canada and the United States has a large Latino population; in popular media and in real life, Latinas are often mistakenly assumed to be harboring criminal tendencies, with films and novels portraying their grossly exaggerated associations with drug abuse and domestic violence (Messing et al., 2015). As a result, Latinas are less likely to report some violent crimes that they may have encountered. This is due to the fear of unfair criminal proceedings and deportation, which is another direct consequence of racial profiling (Golash-Boza & Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2013).

It must be remembered that the colored communities faith in the criminal justice system would be directly linked to the personal experiences they have had with the law enforcement in the country, along with that of their peers and friends. Involuntary contacts with members of law enforcement, due to racial discrimination, immigration enforcement policies and ethnic profiling has resulted in a loss of faith in the justice system – the common perception is that the law enforcement officers are the enemy and not on their side, and thus must be avoided at all costs.

The problem of ethnic or racial profiling prevailing within the law enforcement agencies has posed to be a serious challenge that has garnered international attention from elected officials, politicians, researchers and the general public. The idea that a police officer, one who is supposed to protect the local communities, may make decisions and choices based on certain racial characteristics as found in the citizens would automatically threaten the essence of the justice system itself – the idealistic principles pertaining to equal treatment and fair justice which is the birth right of every citizen. Research shows that indeed there is a prevalent notion of police officers using racial profiling in exercising their discretion. With a growing awareness of the issue and the negative consequences followed by it, a number of law enforcement agencies have adopted some anti profiling policies in order to address and resolve the racial disparities evident in the justice system and eliminate it even at the grassroot levels (Miller, 2013). Racial profiling would be one of the major reasons that calls for an evaluation of the police policies, because this exists at the very intersection of police procedures, accountability, fairness and efforts to control and curb crime. Although a number of anti profiling measures have been enacted, it is doubtful as to how many police officers actually practice these policies. This is primarily because racial profiling is a matter of personal beliefs. The stereotypes that exist about African Americans and their association with criminality is pervasive to the extent where “young black male” is considered to be a euphemism with respect to criminal predators (Butler, 2018). This is because the perceptions of the police officers along with that of the justice system is embedded in the image portrayed of crime, rather than actual dynamics of the same. In society, whenever a crime is committed, it is automatically assumed that a black man would have been behind it. Americans and Canadians, both law enforcement officers and locals, tend to associate the image of an African American or even Latinas with that of a menacing or violent street thug, which is further fuelled by their portrayal in mass media (Holt, 2013).

To conclude, the whites have always considered criminal behavior and related tendencies to be innate characteristics of African Americans. This unfavorable reputation of the African American and Latino communities have been prevalent since time immemorial – ever since they were brought in as slaves to the United States. Since then, people of color have been discriminated against on grounds of their ethnicity and their national origin. As a matter of fact, such discrimination has penetrated the justice system as well. Police officers, who have been entrusted with the duty to protect the citizens, abide by the law and provide equal and fair treatment to all, have been accused of racial profiling. Racial profiling is potentially damaging not just because it further deteriorates the reputation of colored communities, but also challenges the credibility and the fairness of the justice system as a whole.

References:

Butler, P. (2018). US justice is built to humiliate and oppress black men. It starts with the chokehold... Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/11/chokehold-police-black-men-paul-butler-race-america

Glaser, J. (2014). Suspect race: Causes and consequences of racial profiling. Oxford University Press, USA.

Golash-Boza, T., & Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. (2013). Latino immigrant men and the deportation crisis: A gendered racial removal program. Latino Studies, 11(3), 271-292.

Holt, L. F. (2013). Writing the wrong: Can counter-stereotypes offset negative media messages about African Americans?. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 90(1), 108-125.

Legewie, J. (2016). Racial profiling and use of force in police stops: How local events trigger periods of increased discrimination. American journal of sociology, 122(2), 379-424.

Messing, J. T., Becerra, D., Ward-Lasher, A., &Androff, D. K. (2015). Latinas’ perceptions of law enforcement: Fear of deportation, crime reporting, and trust in the system. Affilia, 30(3), 328-340.

Miller, K. (2013). The institutionalization of racial profiling policy: An examination of antiprofiling policy adoption among large law enforcement agencies. Crime & delinquency, 59(1), 32-58.

Nakamura, L., & Chow-White, P. (Eds.). (2013). Race after the Internet. Routledge.

Welsh, B. C., Braga, A. A., & Bruinsma, G. J. (2015). Reimagining broken windows: From theory to policy. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 52(4), 447-463.

Yan, H. (2018). This is why everyday racial profiling is so dangerous. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/11/us/everyday-racial-profiling-consequences-trnd/index.html

Zack, N. (2015). White privilege and black rights: The injustice of US police racial profiling and homicide. Rowman & Littlefield.