Racial Profiling and Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System

What is Institutional Discrimination?

Institutional Discrimination can be defined as a pattern of unequal treatment based on groups, daily operations within society whether it is or not intended (Healey, Stepnick, & O’Brien, 2018). Institutional discrimination can either be used on purpose or unintentional. This type of discrimination is used within a group of people or within a society. Institutional discrimination has been used since the beginning of time but we especially started to see it be used when slavery was happening within the United States. For example, the text states that after the American Civil War, African American individuals were prevented from voting whereas white individuals were only allowed to vote. This was a form of institutional discrimination. Institutional discrimination still occurs to this day. One of the modern forms of institutional discrimination is racial profiling within the police force.

Racial Discrimination in the Criminal System

In this blog, we will be discussing how racial profiling and discrimination is presented within the criminal justice system because it happens so much in today’s society. There are some individuals that do not believe that race plays a large factor in the criminal justice system but sadly it does. According to The Sentencing Project, the United States criminal justice system is the largest in the world (The Sentencing Project, 2018). Just at the end of 2015, there were 6.7 million individuals who were in correctional control and only 2.2 million of those individuals were incarcerated in federal, state, or local jails (The Sentencing Project, 2018). Research shows that African Americans are more likely to be arrested than white Americans, this means that African Americans are 5.9 times more likely to be incarcerated than white Americans. Why is this though? Well, the United States tends to treat the criminal justice system within two different systems which is a justice system for the rich and wealthy people and a justice system for the poor people and people of color (The Sentencing Project, 2018). The Sentencing Project also discusses that one in every three black boys in a year could go to prison in their lifetime, this is a crazy realization. Also, when it comes to racial and ethnic disparities, women are actually less likely to be substantial among men within the criminal justice system but they still remain prevalent, unfortunately (The Sentencing Project, 2018). There is a lot of prejudice, stereotypes, and racial profiling within our criminal justice system.

What is Racial Profiling?

According to the American Civil Liberties Union or ACLU, Racial Profiling can be defined as when a law enforcement officer or private security officer ends up targeting an individual based on the color of their skin, religion, ethnicity, or even national origin (American Civil Liberties Union, n.d.). Racial profiling is very common within law enforcement in today’s society. Racial profiling is actually unconstitutional and illegal within the United States. ACLU states that racial profiling is actually ineffective and ends up alienating communities from law enforcement which is a result hinders community policing efforts (American Civil Liberties Union, n.d.). If a police officer uses racial profiling within their daily job tasks, they are violating the constitution and doing an illegal practice but unfortunately, this happens all too often especially in the more recent years.

Ahmed Mohamed

In 2015, 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was arrested by Irving, Texas police. He was arrested and interrogated for bringing in a homemade clock into school. The school mistaken the clock for being a bomb and with Ahmed being a Muslim, police did not hesitate to use racial profiling towards the 14-year-old student in Texas. According to Vox, they state that Mohamed looked like what the Irving police thought a terrorist would look like so they decided to treat him differently (Beauchamp, 2015). The article continues to discuss what happened to Mohamed but also explain why racial profiling does not work in law enforcement. Zack Beauchamp, the writer of the article, explains that racial profiling is dehumanizing and is actually counterproductive in society (Beauchamp, 2015). Individuals tend to stereotype Muslims as terrorists because of what happened on September 11, 2001. What individuals do not realize is that anyone of any race can be a terrorist, including white individuals. Beauchamp states that racial profiling is counterproductive because it actually makes us less safe, it can give an actual terrorist a “how-to-guide” for evading airport screening and also police attention (Beauchamp, 2015). If actual dangerous people in our society see how law enforcement wrongly racial profile individuals, they can learn from that and avoid it in order to continue their dangerous acts.

Comparing Data from 2010 to 2018

• In 2010, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, they stated that the U.S. Census showed that Blacks are incarcerated five times more than white individuals and Hispanic individuals are twice as likely to be incarcerated than white individuals (Prison Policy Initiative, 2014). 2010 data shows that there was a U.S. population that had white (non-Hispanic) individuals living in the U.S. which were at 64%, Hispanic individuals were at 16% and Black individuals were at 13%. When it came to the percentage of races incarcerated within the U.S., white (non-Hispanic) were at 39%, Hispanic individuals were at 19%, and Black individuals were at 40%. This data shows that more Black individuals were incarcerated than white (non-Hispanic) individuals.
• According to an ABC news article titled, ‘ABC News analysis of police arrests nationwide reveals stark racial disparity’, they reveal that Black individuals were actually arrested at a rate of five times more in the year 2018 than white people (Thomas, Kelly, & Simpson, 2020). For example, since the death of George Floyd in 2020, people have questioned whether law enforcement treats Black individuals differently than white people, which shows that racism still holds a large significance within the criminal justice system. In the article, Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the National Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Law explained that if a white person were to have marijuana on them, a police officer would just give them a slap on the wrist, and if the roles were reversed where a Black person had marijuana, a police officer would arrest and prosecute them (Thomas, Kelly, & Simpson, 2020).

Public Policies and Inequality

In the criminal justice system, there are national and law enforcement policies within the system that involve inequalities especially involving racial inequality and discrimination. According to The Harvard Gazette, analysts have shown that there is a high incarceration rate within the American Prison system and almost every prisoner is either poor or of people of color (Walsh, 2016). People of color are in the prison system and are treated more differently than white individuals which shows the inequality within the criminal justice system. One policy that has inequalities within it would be the different voting laws in states. For example, the Roosevelt House explains that certain voting laws in states don’t allow individuals who were once convicts to vote even after they have served time which most ex-convicts are Black or African American which means that this demographic cannot vote (Venkateswar, 2016). The Roosevelt House also confirmed that in 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that all states required identification in order to vote and African Americans and poor individuals tend to not have access to this form of luxury which is considered to be voter discrimination (Venkateswar, 2016).

The criminal justice system can have ways of reducing the inequalities that unfold with people of color in the system. According to The Harvard Gazette, there are multiple factors in reducing inequality. Analysts have said that if the criminal system were to reduce inequalities within the system, it would require, “an overhaul of the nation’s sentencing system, better diversion and prevention programs, prison reforms, more effective policing policies, and training, and comprehensive support for former prisoners trying to mold stable lives” (Venkateswar, 2016). Reducing inequality within the criminal justice system is not an easy task. Over the years, the system has strengthened punishment rather than reducing inequalities. Devah Pager, a Harvard professor of sociology and public policy, explained how the criminal justice system views Black men as criminals thus affecting the entire Black population ( Walsh, 2016). Racial discrimination and inequality are still relevant in today’s society and hopefully, throughout the next couple of years, we can reduce this inequality.

References:

American Civil Liberties Union. (n.d.). Racial Profiling. Retrieved from https://www.aclu.org/issues/racial-justice/race-and-criminal-justice/racial-profiling

Beauchamp, Z. (2015, September 16). Ahmed Mohamed’s arrest is the perfect example of why racial profiling doesn’t work. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9341037/ahmed-mohamed-racial-profiling

Healey, J. F., Stepnick, A., & O′Brien, E. (2018). Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class: The Sociology of Group Conflict and Change (8th ed.). Retrieved from https://capella.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781506399768/cfi/6/26!/4/2/32/14/2@0.00:0

Prison Policy Initiative. (2014, May 28). State-by-State Incarceration Rates by Race/Ethnicity. Retrieved from https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/rates.html

The Sentencing Project. (2018, May 1). Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System. Retrieved from https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/un-report-on-racial-disparities/

Thomas, P., Kelly, J., & Simpson, T. (2020, June 13). ABC News analysis of police arrests nationwide reveals stark racial disparity. Retrieved from https://abcnews.go.com/US/abc-news-analysis-police-arrests-nationwide-reveals-stark/story?id=71188546

Venkateswar, S. (2016, August 1). Race, Inequality and Law Enforcement: An Understanding of Complex Social Realities. Retrieved from http://www.roosevelthouse.hunter.cuny.edu/?forum-post=race-inequality-law-enforcement-understanding-complex-social-realities

Walsh, C. (2016, February 29). The costs of inequality: A goal of justice, a reality of unfairness. Retrieved from https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/02/the-costs-of-inequality-a-goal-of-justice-a-reality-of-unfairness/