Change Your World Week Fall 2021 (Archived)

The criminal justice system is seriously affected by racial biases possessed by some police, leaving this country's racial minorities to suffer and deal with outdated judicial precedents. There are many racial disparities within the criminal justice system that are particularly aimed towards nonwhites, including mass incarceration, attacks on minority groups, traffic stops, post-conviction bias, jury selection and the war on drugs. People of color have often been the target of stereotypes and the Five Fallacies of Racism: Individualistic, legalistic, tokenistic, Ahistoric and fixed fallacies. The graphs below show similar bias in respect to drug and non-violent crimes.

Policing falls under scrutiny, especially now, when under the microscope that is modern media, over the mistreatment of racial minorities while being apprehended or in some cases wrongfully stopped. In recent years, the mistreatment and killing of minorities by police, wrongful or justified, has finally caught the public eye. Granted, whites have a larger majority in population as shown the the table, but of the small percentage of blacks, a great percentage of them have been fatally shot by police.

The Fourth Amendment gives protection against unreasonable search and seizures. A black person is five times more likely to be stopped without just-cause than a white person; when black adults were asked if they felt targeted because of their race 65% said yes, while 35% Asians and Latinos also felted targeted by race. The higher number of minorities being stopped, searched and seized is the byproduct of practicing hot spot policing. This type of policing is done in poverty-stricken communities and heavily increases the chances of encountering criminal activity.  

We can begin to change the systemic cycle of discrimination and unequal treatment of all minorities in the criminal justice system by training officers to communicate better with diverse groups of people, which can be accomplished by way of community policing.

Community policing is similar to that or proactive policing, which isn't so much reactive or responding to calls, but going out with heavy patrol; on foot, motorized, on bikes; and building ties within the community to better relationships between citizens and police but also the image of police as well. Police playing basketball with children in neighborhoods they drive through, handing out free ice cream coupons to little kids, building trust and becoming more approachable are all little things that can add up. 

In policing there is a lot of rules, yet also a lot of discretion; albeit, no matter which way one sees it, police follow a force continuum. Beginning with verbal commands, physical coercion (guided movements/joint locks), nonlethal force (pepper spray and taser), the lethal force (firearms). The rule is that the officer has discretion to operate one rung above whom they are apprehending. All that discretion means is that police are not trained for every possible scenario and must use their own choices to handle the situation and to deescalate. How can this be resolved? It sounds quite dangerous when put this way; the thought of police not knowing what to do in the most hazardous of cases, being an armed officer of the law. Sim or simulation training for police officers can help improve performance of law enforcement and save lives. Drilling through and replicating a manifold of possibilities incessantly throughout a career (versus just inside a semester long academy) can perpetually advance the efficiency of police across the nation. This coupled with sensitivity and diversity classes can better the policing side of the American criminal justice system.

While black on black shootings and crime are overwhelming, it is however a myth that blacks kill each other at a higher rate than other races. This myth is likely stigmatized by the way crime is measured. In recent years police brutality and shootings within the black community have increased at alarming rates; with apparent events taking place that warrant change across the nation. The deaths of Sandra Bland, Michael Furgerson, Daunte Wright and Breonna Taylor, could have been prevented with better awareness and sensitivity training for law enforcement. There is a fine line between criminal and racial profiling and when police are called on scene, racial bias, evidently proves dangerous for people of color in hotspot areas of inner-cities within the United States.

The argument that minorities are marginally mistreated is not all that farfetched when one sees the chart below. With a majority of white population, it would make more sense that more whites are imprisoned, rather than the black minority, though this indicative of implicit bias within our justice system.

• 74 % were male 

• 71 % were minorities 

• 66% Suspicious behavior (looking nervous)  

• 10% Looking out of place