Joshua Steven Duarte CJS/221 June 20, 11:59 PM Ben Harm (Instructor)

Patterns of Discrimination in Police Agencies Paper

Introduction:
Discrimination is the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different groups of people or things because of their race, gender, ethnicity, or belief. Sense the founding of the United States and even well before it, discrimination has been the source or strife and conflict in society. Whether this is because of one side’s belief of racial superiority or because of cultural diversity, the fact remains that it is a problem that continues to exist even today. One area I think that bares special mention to how discrimination has continued to exist to this extent is the criminal justice system. Sense the day the Emancipation proclamation was first declared in 1863 to the era civil rights movement (1954-1968), we’ve made many strives in accepting numerous cultures, but where does that leave today? There are three areas of discrimination that bare special intention, institutionalized discrimination, contextual discrimination, and individual acts of discrimination, what they mean and how they compare with the concept “pure justice”. Pure justice is the conceptual belief that there is no discrimination at any place or time in the criminal justice system. But does such a principle exist in the world of criminal justice, and how much of it is really the case?

Institutionalized Discrimination:
Institutional discrimination is the disparity of an individual or group of people that results from the rules of firms, schools, government, markets, or society as a means or controlling behavior. Institutional discrimination occurs when these rules begin to benefit of hinder one or a particular group of people. Some example of this can occur in interviews if the interviewee is the same race or gender as the interviewer; they tend to be more at ease in the conversation. Other examples can include the accessibility a student has in a college campus or IQ test scores which favor middle-class children, particularly the White middle class because of the types of questions included. One of the defenses often used for institutionalized discrimination is equal opportunity ironically enough. For example in the case of school campus, a majority if not all students tend to have the same level of accessibility with a few exceptions (students who assist faculty members). Jobs that exercise “last hired, first fired” practices also argue that regardless of what person they hire (race and gender being irrelevant) that they would fire them regardless if they were to perform poorly in their work. One of the ways this can compare with pure justice is that institutionalized discrimination policies are meant for everyone and in-turn anyone can be at the rewarded or punished if they break or adhere to their policies. However despite this, one contrast this has with the concept of pure justice people can still show favoritism to a specific race, group, or individual regardless of their established policies, such as how it is shown in the hiring process and in IQ tests.
Contextual Discrimination:
Contextual discrimination is a case-by-case discrimination that basically means to be discriminated or discriminating only in particular situations or cases. For example, say you are a Latino working at a construction company and it is your first day. You are assigned to a partner to work with and he says he doesn’t have a problem working with Latino’s. Another example is if you wanted to ask someone out and they rejected you because you are a particular race and she/he won’t date that race. Essentially you are being defined by your race rather than who you are as a person, and this can present problems in situations like finding a job. People may not hire because you are a particular race or only hire you because you’re a particular race. In the criminal justice field, officers exhibit a similar behavior with racial profiling, because they are basing their suspicions of a person because they are of a particular race. Contextual discrimination contrasts with pure justice because you are either favoring or persecuting someone because of his or her race, and sense pure justice is the belief that there is no discrimination at anytime or any place in the criminal justice system, their isn’t a comparison to be made.

Individual Acts of Discrimination:
Individual discrimination refers to the discrimination against one person by another. It is a personal act of discrimination caused by certain negative attitudes toward another person. It can occur because of ethnic or racial differences between the affected individuals. Individual acts of discrimination involve those carried out by particular justice officials. For instance one police officer is biased in making arrests, whereas others in the department are not; one judge sentences minorities very harshly, whereas other judges in the same court do not. These are discriminatory acts, but they do not represent general patterns of how the criminal justice system operates. Another example would be that an employer that won't hire a job applicant because he or she is an African-American, obese, over a certain age group, disabled, speaks with an accent, a certain height, pregnant, etc. Sometimes discrimination is based on solid information and is justifiable. Also, one must remember that discrimination can be in favor of the individual, for example, you happened to get hired because you're the boss’s brother-in-law even though they may not know how you are as a person is. Discrimination can happen to anyone, but in the criminal justice field it especially tends to be the topic of controversy because officers are supposed to serve and protect us from the most remoteness of actions. Relations between the police and ethnic minorities have experienced strains throughout U.S. Police officers, who are most often White, and minority residents perceive each other as different, often leading to mistrust and animosity. It has been argued that police treat or are perceived to treat members of minority communities differently than their own kind. Although research has shown that people generally hold favorable views of the police, it has also consistently demonstrated that members of minority communities are more hostile toward and fearful of the police than Whites. In fact, the most consistent of all predictors identified to date of citizen attitudes toward the police is race. Although if one thinks about it, many people are still supportive of the police and the way they perform their job. Which does come in to question too, what these people think about police brutality among minorities. In the criminal justice system, for example, when juveniles are processed, for some reason whites are looked as if the environment around them was the cause of them becoming delinquents. However, when an African American juvenile is processed they are viewed as if there was something wrong with them psychologically. This is the reason why African Americans are prosecuted more often. This directly contradicts the concept of pure justice because, at any point, regardless of reason the system can decide to be unfavorable to any group or minority; either because of a preconceived stereotype about them, or because they have an aspect about them that another person doesn’t favor.

Police and Ethnic groups:
Although a majority of the community has a fair amount of faith in local law enforcement, there’s also a fair amount of people who have a low opinion against police. This is because officers (particularly white American officers) tend to treat other ethnic groups different from their own. One group in particular that comes to mind is African Americans. Historically police officers have had the most difficult community-relations with African Americans than any other ethnic group. One of the reasons this might be is because of the differences in income, reported crimes and calls for police service compared to a white majority community. African communities also have a higher chance of reporting crimes such as domestic violence and other incidents to police despite their poor favor with them (amounting to roughly 60 percent of violent victimizations from African American women). Despite this African American’s have the highest percentage of being shot by police, to the point were parents are so fearful for their children they make it a point to teach them to be respectful towards police officers. Likewise, Hispanics communities have a similarly unique history of difficulty with police. Police are less likely to pull over Hispanic drivers because they have difficulty communicating with non-English speaking Hispanics, and therefore they would get nowhere with conversation. Hispanic communities similarly avoid police, often because they are fearful of immigration policies sending them back to their country. Hispanic families have a strong sense of family and involving the police (who are generally referred to as outsiders) would be seen as a betrayal to the father’s authority in the household. That being said, Hispanic families (typically non-English speaking members) report the least amount of crimes compared to non-Hispanic communities because they tend to have difficulty conveying the nature of the situation/emergency to those that don’t speak Spanish: as well as the risk of being found by immigration officers as mentioned before. Officers tend to have a better relation with English speaking Hispanic’s as they report roughly four times more crimes to officers that non-English speaking Hispanics, while also being much easier to cooperate with.

Opinions and Group Discussion:
In essence, theirs really no way that there can be 100 percent pure justice. Pure justice is the belief that there is no discrimination at anytime in any part of the criminal justice system. That alone is impossible because every individual that works in the criminal justice system has his or her own set of moral and viewpoint that differ greatly from one another. Even if there was the case where they wanted to follow those ideal, in some form or another, they have a bias opinion about something or someone, which immediately contradicts the concept of “Pure Justice”. This is supported in the discussion when Joe mentions the time he went to apply at a company and how he was the only colored individual among five other individuals who applied for the same position. When he was interviewed he mentions that the interviewer touched upon drug and alcohol tests in particular, as well as disciplinary actions if he failed to meet with his required duties. This subject was not touched upon with the others and serves as an example of individual acts of discrimination. In the end nobody is perfect and despite our efforts there will always be discrimination. Pure justice is too unrealistic because everyone is different and will always have his or her own views and morals. However, we can always serve as our own example and try our hardest to change things for the better by treating everyone with respect and dignity.

References:
Walker, S., Spohn, C., & Delone, M. (2012). The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America (5th ed.). Retrieved from https://phoenix.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781285310213/cfi/0!/4/2/2@0:13.0.
Perceptions of Treatment by Police. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.nij.gov/topics/law-enforcement/legitimacy/pages/perceptions.aspx
Criminal Justice System - HISTORICAL TREATMENT, MEDIA DEPICTIONS, RACIAL DIFFERENCES IN JUSTICE INVOLVEMENT, DISPARITY VERSUS DISCRIMINATION, BIOLOGICAL RACE Read more: Criminal Justice System - HISTORICAL TREATMENT, MEDIA DEPICTIONS, RACIAL DIFFERENCES IN JUSTICE INVOLVEMENT, DISPARITY VERSUS DISCRIMINATION, BIOLOGICAL RACE - JRank Articles http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/6106/Criminal-Justice-System.html#ixzz4BValP0dC. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/6106/Criminal-Justice-System.html
Bayer, . (2011). Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System. Retrieved from http://wikis.swarthmore.edu/div_econ/index.php/Discrimination