...101-01 Research Paper October1, 2013 Racial Profiling and the Effects it has on Blacks in the Criminal Justice System. Some people wonder what is racial profiling. Racial profiling deals with miss-education, slavery, and incarceration. Since the beginning of slavery African Americans have suffered due to their identity. Racial profiling deals with selecting a person for their complaint of a specific racial group. The main reason in advocating racial profiling in the background of criminal study can enlarge the possibility of arresting criminals. Paul Bou-Habib stated, “If the rate at which members of a specific racial group commits a crime is higher than that of other criminals will be caught if the police concentrate their efforts on investigating members of the racial group in question?” (2011, p.34). It is injustice, when police officers, political officials, and judges have learned how to automatically have a racist attitude towards blacks. For example, my friend was in McDonald’s parking lot and he was in the process of switching seats with his friend because he was exhausted of driving. While leaving the parking lot, the officer had pulled them over because he seen a black guy get out of his car and thought something seemed suspicious. The officer implied that my friend did not use his right turning signal. The term “driving while black has been used to describe the practice of law enforcement officials to stop African-American drivers without probable cause” (Weatherspoon...
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...Racial Profiling Furnie J. Oden IV Strayer University- Lithonia Campus Some people wonder what is racial profiling. Racial profiling derives from fear of the unknown, miss-education, slavery, and incarceration. Since the beginning of slavery African Americans have dealt with profiling due to their identity. Racial profiling deals with selecting a person within a stereotypical criteria according to their specific racial group. The main reason in advocating racial profiling in the background of criminal study can enlarge the possibility of arresting criminals. Paul Bou-Habib stated, “If the rate at which members of a specific racial group commits a crime is higher than that of other criminals will be caught if the police concentrate their efforts on investigating members of the racial group in question?” (2011, p.34). It is not right when police officers, political officials, and judges make decisions based on predetermined racist and some would say ignorant beliefs. For example, my friend was in McDonald’s parking lot and he was in the process of switching seats with his friend because he was exhausted of driving. . The term “driving while black has been used to describe the practice of law enforcement officials to stop African-American drivers without probable cause” (Weatherspoon, 2004). This is one of the leading minority men are pulled over in their vehicle. Which usually leads to a unwarranted stop...
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...Racial Profiling and Male African Americans Racial Profiling and Male African Americans INTRODUCTION Imagine driving to the store on a cold winter day, dressed in a hoodie to keep warm. You simply pull into the parking lot in hopes of getting something nice for your daughter for the holidays. Driving the posted speed limit, you pull slowly into a parking space in the back of the store. All of a sudden, a car pulls up behind you, blocking you in. You look in your rearview mirror only to find the community crime watch officer staring you down. The officer immediately treats you like a suspect, smothering you with questions concerning what you’re doing, where you’re going; yet never really had any reasoning behind the questions. After an aggravating experience, they send you on your way. Now imagine you are black and the officer is white. You have probably just experienced racial profiling. WHAT IS RACIAL PROFILING? One of the most important civil rights facing our nation today is racial profiling. The main source of those accused of racial profiling are police officers. In the eyes of citizens, racial profiling by a police officer can be defined as “any police-initiated action that relies on the race, ethnicity or national origin rather than behavior of an individual or information that leads the police to a particular individual who has been identified as being, or having been, engaged in criminal activity” (Ramirez, 2000). For instance, concerning traffic stops...
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...Crime and Punishment sect. 00002 | Racial Profiling | Negative effects of race on law enforcement | Presented to Dr. Gina De Iaco | Presented by Lara Ipekian 1228828 | 11/7/2014 | | Abstract Practicing racism is the act of discriminating due to different pigmentation of skin color or culture. Racial profiling is when a person of legal authority uses their racist prejudices on a civilian while making decisions. It is hypothesized that racial minorities of a population are judged prior to knowing details about the case due to the color of their skin. There are numerous researchers who have provided enough information in order to prove that racial profiling is still an issue for either juror, policeman or any other figure of legal status. Studies show that minorities are treated unfairly in court and on the roads since the first gun law. Introduction The following dissertation will be discussing the issue of unequal distribution of law enforcement in correlation to racism. It is an atrocity that a horrible mentality created centuries ago is still being used against ethnicities in the 21st century. All races should be considered as equal to one another, whether white, black, yellow or even purple. We, humans, share the same planet. Under our skin, we share identical functioning. Somewhere between our pigmentation and our culture we have lost our rationality. For some reason, the media exposes more crime from minorities, creating prejudice. It is important...
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...Racial profiling has been around for many years, with laws such as the "Black Codes", which were created during the reconstruction in the South. These laws imposed severe restrictions on freed slaves such as prohibiting their right to vote, forbidding them to sit on juries, limiting their right to testify against white men, carrying weapons in public places and working in certain occupations; and the “Jim Crow” laws, which were laws that discriminated against African Americans with concern to attendance in public schools and the use of facilities such as restaurants, theaters, hotels, cinemas and public baths. Trains and buses were also segregated and in many states marriage between whites and African American people. According to Heather Mac Donald, the term "Racial profiling" has two meanings, hard and soft profiling. “Hard” profiling uses race as the only factor in assessing criminal suspiciousness: an officer sees a black person and, without more to go on, pulls him over for a pat-down on the chance that he may be carrying drugs or weapons. "Soft" racial profiling is using race as one factor among others in gauging criminal suspiciousness: the highway police, for example, have intelligence that Jamaican drug posses with a fondness for Nissan Pathfinders are transporting marijuana along the northeast corridor. A New Jersey trooper sees a black motorist speeding in a Pathfinder and pulls him over in the hope of finding drugs (Mac Donald). Racial Profiling really came...
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...The practice of racial profiling by law enforcement agencies was begun during the late 1970s, as police officers worked to capture drug traffickers. Studies in Arizona show that in 2006-2007 the state highway patrol significantly more likely to stop African Americans and hispanics than white people on all highway studies. A profile is a collection of gathered facts that help law enforcement officers target individuals who are likely committing criminal acts. Law enforcement officers have long used profiling to help them gain understanding about the likely characteristics of the perpetrator of a crime, including but not limited to age, sex, race, and observed behaviors (Institute on Race and Justice, 2008). Police have used profiling to target...
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... Racial Profiling Racial profiling is a practice used knowingly and unknowingly in police departments, airport systems, and many other agencies worldwide. Racial profiling refers to the targeting of particular individuals based not on their behavior, but rather their personal characteristics, a person's race, ethnicity, or religion. Background of racial profiling The term racial profiling is relatively new term. Law enforcement agencies have...
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...disappeared. Moments later Wilson drove past two young black males and ordered them to move off the street. After a second look, Wilson realized one of the young men matched the description of the stealing progress. Wilson radioed for backup and in little over minute and young man lay dead at the scene. He was unarmed. That young man was Michael Brown; the 18-year-old black boy who’s shooting this past summer sparked a major controversy and raised a lot of questions about Police Shootings in the U.S. and their undeniably pattern of racial issues. Currently young black males risk of being shot by police officers is 21 times more likely greater than young white males (Staples). Due to police tactics motivated by racial profiling, racially bias news and media that enhance minority stereotypes, United States law enforcement is targeting minorities that results in Police Shootings caused by racism. After Michael Brown’s tragic death, many realized that our country had seen similar circumstances like this before. A young, unarmed, black male shot dead, taking with him, the alternative perceptive of the incident in question. We are only left with shooters’ recollection of incident and possibly a few witnesses. It’s a story that we know all too well. Police shootings happen every day, but recent events begin to raise many questions; Of all these police shootings how many are black men? Who kills these young black men? Are all of the officers white? What is the cause...
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...discrimination such as affirmative action, the argument has been made that racial discrimination is no longer a pressing issue in American society.[1] It has further been argued that the Constitution protects all citizens, and race has no weight in the American criminal justice system.[2] While the United States Constitution guarantees equal treatment of all citizens, regardless of race, racism still exists in the American law enforcement and criminal justice systems. In this era with the end of official institutional racism, there has been a corresponding shift from de jure racism to a de facto racism where members of minority groups, especially African Americans, are subject to unequal protection of the laws and excessive in the American criminal justice system, particularly in drug law enforcement.[3] Drug law enforcement is far more discretionary than for other offenses. It is for the police to decide when and where they will seek to make drug arrests, and what priority they will place on enforcing drug laws.[4] Since the war on drugs began in the 1980s, two general trends have been identified. First, there has been a substantial increasing in the number of drug arrests overall; and second, black males have constituted an increasing proportion of these arrests.[5] Based on this evidence, it would be natural to assume that the number of arrests is proportional to the crime rate – that blacks began using drugs in greater numbers since the 1980s and continue to up...
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...traffic stops (Whitney 264). Racial profiling has been a very heated issue in the U.S. for many years. It happens when police target a person for something due to their race, national origin, or ethnicity. Race is the main characteristic that authorities look into when engaging in this type of profiling. There are many young talented black males that are being killed, mistreated, and imprisoned just based on their race. Throughout time, the law enforcement has taken advantage of the racial profiling to discriminate, harass, and arrest many people of different races. Racial profiling is the targeting of individuals...
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...unknown Seq: 1 5-JUN-09 8:30 Racial profiling and searches: Did the politics of racial profiling change police behavior?* Patricia Y. Warren Florida State University Donald Tomaskovic-Devey University Massachusetts, Amherst Research Summary Scholarly research has documented repeatedly that minority citizens are disproportionately stopped, searched, and arrested relative to their baseline populations. In recent years, policymakers have brought increased attention to this issue as law-enforcement agencies across the United States have faced allegations of racial profiling. In the 1990s, the politics generated by accounts of racially biased policing placed heightened pressure on law-enforcement agencies. However, to date, few studies have explored whether the increased social and political scrutiny placed on police organizations influenced or changed their general pattern of enforcement among black and white citizens. Using data in the search and citation file from the North Carolina Highway Traffic Study, this research specifically examined whether the politics generated by the media coverage of racial profiling and racial profiling legislation in North Carolina influenced the search practices of officers of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol’s drug interdiction team. The findings suggest that media accounts and the passage of new legislation were particularly powerful influences, which thereby reduced racial disparity in searches. Declines in...
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...163 9/18/12 Group 6 crime paper 1 Crime For many years there has been a lot of attention on racial profiling, media and otherwise in the United States. Through the years there has been a history of issues that include racial bias regarding African Americans, Muslims, and middle-eastern people. This racial profiling intensified in the 1990’s. There have been a number of studies revealing evidence of racial profiling. The comedian Ron White said in a comedy act that he was once arrested because “the police were stopping ever car going down that particular sidewalk and that’s profiling, which is illegal.” He was making fun of this situation, but unfortunately it is something that happens every day in the United States. Many Americans of ethnic background face racial profiling. Racial profiling goes against what our constitution stands for, and violates the constitution’s promise that all people are equal and that people should be free from unreasonable searches and seizers. Racial profiling targets people of color and different ethnic backgrounds for investigation and police enforcement, but unfortunately this alienates communities from law enforcement and causes them to lose creditability and trust among the people they are supposed to protect. We expect the police to protect and be fair and just, but this horrible practice of racial profiling has led to people living in fear and makes communities feel that they are all suspects. Also troubling are...
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...150 April 1, 2015 Male African Americans & Racial Profiling in American INTRODUCTION Considering our time and age racial profiling one of the most untouched subjects in history, especially in the law-enforcement community. Most people get it confused with criminal profiling which is not the same. Racial profiling is any police-initiated action that relies on the race, ethnicity, or national origin rather than the behavior of an individual or information that leads the police to a particular individual who has been identified as being or having been, engaged in criminal activity. Criminal profiling is any police- initiated action that used the compilation of the background, physical, behavioral, and motivational characteristics for a type of perpetrator that lead the police. Now imagine driving to the store on a cold winter day, dressed in a hoodie to keep warm. You simply pull into the parking lot in hopes of getting something nice for your daughter for the holidays. Driving the posted speed limit, you pull slowly into a parking space in the back of the store. All of a sudden, a car pulls up behind you, blocking you in. You look in your rearview mirror only to find the community crime watch officer staring you down. The officer immediately treats you like a suspect, smothering you with questions concerning what you’re doing, where you’re going; yet never really had any reasoning behind the questions. The major reason to oppose racial profiling is that it simply doesn’t...
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...let go after the police ran a quick background check on him (Driving While Black par. 1-3). From an outsider’s point of view, one would expect the police to detain Graham because Graham possessed characteristics that suggested he could be involved in some illegal activities, and because he was rude to the police officer. Nonetheless, the reality was the opposite. Graham was neither detained nor did he receive any ticket or citation for his...
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...In today’s world we live in a very media driven manner. The media can sway people’s attitudes towards a certain direction depending on the circumstances. Racial Profiling is a very sensitive topic every individual can relate to. It is known as the inclusion of racial or ethnic characteristics in determining whether an individual is considered likely to commit a particular type of crime or illegal act. For example, the media has “essentialized” the meaning of terrorism destroying the sweet religion of Islam. The word essentializing means to combine complex terms into a single thought or image making it simpler. Due to racial profiling we regard terrorists as any type of brown male. It is the society we live in and hence we have no choice to deal with it. What exactly does the term racial profiling meaning? One could say that it is the consideration of race in criminal investigations. “For example, the popular term “DWB”, means that black people are more scrutinized and thought of when driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs (Geek). It is also a state of imagery that comes to mind when thinking of a crime; one tends to think of African Americans as the cause of most crimes. It is very unfair for them but that is the society we live in. Even though many “Black People” do live in the ghettos, it is unjust to tie them with most crimes such as gang wars, drive by shootings and thefts. The media contributes to 90 percent of these stereotypes (Geek). Like in the inner city...
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