The Role Of Racial Profiling In Law Enforcement

It is evident that racial profiling exists in society, but it is how we address it now that will shape the future of our community and country. If we work to eliminate stereotypes, people will not be judged solely based on assumptions people make about them, whether it spans from citizens to police officers. We now must stand together in the fight to keep equality for all by attempting to halt institutional ethnic and racial profiling, before more tragic events

Introduction and thesis: The topic chosen for this essay concerns the relationship between racial profiling and sentencing. It is relevant to the course material because it concerns the ways someone is treated depending on his or her ethnic origins, and it makes it an interesting sociological and criminological phenomena. This is the reason why I chose to write on this topic, and because I find it an important issue in our society. This essay will demonstrates that visible minorities are more likely to be subjects to harsher sentencing than the majority, and more than them. Literature review: Our society is made of a majority and minorities, and it allows diversity.

This essay will focus on the racial profiling of Mexican-Americans in the Los Angeles community. The parts of Los Angeles I will be focusing in are South Central, Compton, Watts and East LA. Racial profiling consists of the use of race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed an offense. The main suspects that racially profile Mexican-Americans are law enforcement authorities. Racial profiling is a repressive social practice that uses group characteristics to individualize stereotypic behavior for minorities in American society.

In this article, the authors examine the research of how the criminal justice system forms racial profiling in the United States as incarceration increases. The authors use longitudinal data to find information of how one’s skin color can affect one’s punishments compared to someone who is white due to the stereotypes that revolve around their race. As they further investigate they found that “there is a stereotypical link between race and crime” (Saperstein et al., 2014) as arrest and the consequences associated with the crime are increased to people who are minorities. The article strongly suggests an extensive impact on increased policing and rise of incarceration on racialization and stereotyping with results of groups, police judgments

Racial profiling can be defined as any law enforcement initiated action that does not rely on the behavior of an individual, but relies on the individual characteristic such as their race, ethnicity, and national origin. Racial profiling states that if race or ethnicity is used as a factor in a decision to initiate interaction with an individual, then racial profiling is occurring. In other words, if a law enforcement officer stops an individual based on race, then the officer partakes in racial profiling. Historically, the lynching of slaves was advocating racial profiling. Also, the court case in 1944, Korematsu v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court held that ethnic profiling is not unconstitutional and may be practiced in times of national

Certain ethnic communities are targets of racial profiling and create harmful stereotypes. An article titled "Racial Profiling: Is racial profiling a necessary police practice?" presented statistics stating the percentage of people stopped and frisked by New York police in 2011. The statistics stated that 52.9% of those stopped were African American, 33.7% were Latino, and 9.3% were white. Donald Tomaskovic-Devey and Patricia Waren writers of "Racial Profiling Leads to Discrimination" conducted research on traffic stops and police searches. In their article they discussed their findings and noted, "The most recent data (for 2007) shows African Americans were 78% more likely than whites to be searched.

Imagine driving home from a long day, minding your own business when all of a sudden you notice a state trooper behind you with their lights on. What do you do? Do you panic or act natural? In today 's time, it doesn 't matter if you do anything wrong or not. It could be the color of your skin or the way you act and move!

Racial Profiling is one of the many areas covered in racial discrimination. It refers to the discriminatory practice, especially by law enforcement officials which targets individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual 's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. Racial profiling has been and is still an issue today in almost every part of the United States. It is seen in different situations whereby people are treated very unfairly or branded criminals and suspects without any form of evidence It is a type of racial discrimination seen in all places though racial discrimination touches many areas like award of government benefits which is unequally shared as it should ,but at times based on who the person is. For example, I was once a victim in the

Karla Nowicki Mr. Gleason ERWC 12 January 2016 Racial Profiling How would it feel to see someone beaten to the edge of death, just because they were black? How would feel to be that person, or have it be a family member? In the 21st century, many people are pulled over, accused, beaten, and discriminated simply based on the color of their skin.

Are minorities unfairly targeted by law enforcement? Many people would answer yes to the controversial topic of do minorities get unfairly targeted by law enforcement. But not only are minorities targeted unfairly, they also get treated unfairly through the legal system. The bad treatment of minorities in the United States legal system starts at the beginning of that system, the investigation of suspected criminal activity by law enforcement agents.

Racial Profiling in America Racial profiling is defined as refers to the targeting of particular individuals by law enforcement authorities based not their behavior, but rather their personal characteristics ( The Leadership conference) . This is another mechanism for racial discrimination backed by the law. According to the The Leadership conference, racial discrimination is not solely on race, but based on religion, ethnicity and national origin.

minorities. There are other significant violent protest that turned into rioting though out America’s history dating back to the 1965-Watts riots, 1967 Newark riot, 2014 Ferguson Missouri riots, and 2015 Baltimore Maryland riots. The one unique resemblance between all races related rioting is the tension among urban communities and local authorities (Major Race Riots in the U.S., 2000-2016). Conclusion