Racial profiling and discrimination in the American criminal justice system

Criminal Justice

SYSTEMIC MALIGNITY

Racial Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System

The criminal justice system aims at maintaining social control, enforce laws and administering justice, primarily through law enforcement or police forces, the courts and corrections, in the pursuit of the ideal of justice and fairness (Sentencing Project, 2008). Police work, in particular, is aimed at crime prevention, crime control and the handling of cases when crime occurs. The police conduct a crime investigation, gather evidence and identify the suspects. It is the police who make the first contact with the offender and initiate the mechanics of the criminal justice system by making the arrest after establishing probable cause. They then take the suspect into custody and make him or her go through a process, which includes finger printing, taking mug shots and interrogation. They perform these responsibilities largely on a discretionary basis, characterized by racial disparities and discrimination (Sentencing Project).

Racism and Racial Profiling

Racism or racial disparities affect police behavior, specifically in racial profiling. Racial profiling refers to the stopping and investigating or inspecting persons passing through public places, such as drivers in public highways and pedestrians in airports and other urban areas for the statistical profile of the persons' race or ethnicity (Callahan & Anderson, 2001). The practice has been around for the past many years. Former President George W. Bush considered it wrong and determined to put an end to it in America. Racial profiling links minority groups to drug trafficking and although some claim it is non-existent, others say that there are reports and statistics, which document it. One is about the bold declaration of intent by U.S. Forest Service officers in California's Mendocino National Forest a few years ago to question all Hispanics and stopping their cars in an attempt at stopping marijuana growing in the area. The forest rangers were said to have been ordered to come up with probable cause in stopping their vehicles and searching for marijuana inside. The1999 report of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, which monitors abuses of the American legal system, said that 76% of motorists stopped along a 50-mile stretch from January to September, 1995 were black. Statistics say that 25% of Maryland's population is black. In another case, a police investigator in New Jersey testified that 94% of motorists stopped in a single town were minorities, who were more likely not only to be stopped but also to allow searches in their vehicles. In March, the New York Times reported on the New Jersey police's own investigation of its practices that the drivers who allowed their vehicles to be searched were mainly Hispanics and black (Callahan & Anderson). Still another is the San Antonio Police Department's sloppy police work or inaccurate information (Schott, 2001). And in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Detroit News launched a four-month investigation on the local war on terror in the summer of 2004, which scrutinized mainly the Arab and Muslim immigrants in Metro Detroit. It found that the criminal cases filed against them rose three times to at least 155 in the past few years, with many of them tagged as terror suspects, but the government has proven terror connections with only one in every 50 of these suspects (Schott).

Apartheid in the System

Racism consists of social practices, which explicitly or implicitly attribute merits or values to members of certain racially categorized groups solely on account of their race (Banks, 2004). It may be personal prejudice, ideological racism or institutional racism. A culture, which observes institutional racism, enforces policies and practices of institutions operate to produce systematic and continuing differences between racial groups. One of its aspects is called petit apartheid, involving daily and informal or hidden interactions between the police and minorities. These interactions include extralegal stops and searches, which may or may not result in arrests or consequent entries into the criminal justice system. Apartheid focuses on attitudinal factors, which influence policing and other decisions made within that system. These are culturally biased beliefs and actions, including insults, rough treatment, civility, poor quality and the lack of objectivity of judicial instructions (Banks). Marvin D. Free, Jr., in his edited book, Racial Issues in Criminal Justice, noted the over-representation of African-Americans in arrest rates, juvenile institutions, adult incarceration and rates of receiving harsh penalties (Emmelman, 2005). He isolated drug abuse violations and violent index crimes as the offenses for which African-Americans are disproportionately arrested. He commented that African-Americans arrest rates are higher because of selective drug legislation aimed at the poor and people of color as well as the selective enforcement of such laws. And he also suggested that African-American arrests for violent index crimes were made less often because of the actual commission of these crimes and more often out of police discretion. In the same book, Robert Engvall contributed additional insights on the under-representation of African-American scholars in the field of criminal justice and the marginalization of criminal justice studies in the academe. He called attention not only to the oppression of African-Americans by the white majority but also on the minor status assigned to the issue by American universities and colleges. Michael A. Hallet pointed out that the unduly high imprisonment of African-Americans in private and for-profit prisons was equivalent to the slavery system of the long past. Sarah Eschholz presented evidence that racial minorities were more likely to be portrayed by the media as offenders than as victims, hence as predators (Emmelman).

Katheryn K. Russell, in the same book edited by Marvin Free, commented that the "driving while Black" phenomenon goes beyond traffic and extralegal stops and that racial profiling results in a vicious cycle of black marginalization and disrespect for the system (Emmelman, 2005). Marvin Free's research on race and pre-sentencing decisions also revealed racial disparities in decision-making. Becky Tatum contributed the finding on juvenile justice system, in particular, the transfer of juveniles to adult courts for the primary purpose of controlling and punishing minority youth rather than the youth in general. Tatum wrote that politicians typically supported such policies on account of public pressure, due in turn to perceptions and fear of crime as the media shaped them. On the other hand, racial discrimination in decision-making occurs throughout the processing of youth by juvenile justice officials and ends in racially disparate rates of transfers to adult courts. Meanwhile, David V. Baker reviewed three landmark Supreme Court decisions on capital punishment and concluded that the death penalty is capriciously imposed on Black defendants and thus serves the extra-legal function of preserving majority group interests. He viewed discrimination in capital sentencing as deliberate and identified the primary reasons why Black defendants with white victims have been denied fairness in capital sentencing. These are prosecutorial discretion in the selective prosecution of capital cases, prosecutorial misuse of peremptory challenges to systematically exclude Blacks from juries, judicial overrides by trial judges, prosecutorial misconduct and the ineffective assistance by defense counsel (Emmelman).

Helen Taylor Greene used a colonial model to explore the effectiveness and limitations placed on the police in the past and in the present (Emmelman, 2005). This colonial model showed that the police, regardless of color, were an oppressive force in many communities. Lately, Black political empowerment and ascendancy in many law enforcement departments have somewhat lessened police colonialism. Drawing from the history of Black policing in the U.S., Greene contended that Black police chiefs impacted policing because they held the power to establish priorities within their agencies and thus affect law enforcement policy on a national level. Elissa Krauss and Martha Schulman discussed Black juror nullification, the jury's right to determine both the law and the facts of a case and to act contrary to law. Some believe that African-American jurors were likely to judge cases according to their race-conceived notions of justice rather than on evidence. But Krauss and Schulman contended that, contrary to this claim, Black jurors follow the law by holding prosecutors to the burden of proof that the defendant be proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. On the other hand, whites reject Black jurors because of Black jurors' behavior, which tended to assume that their role is to convict the defendant and thus their failure to administer "color-blind" justice according to the logic and experiences of white, not Blacks. Black juror nullification was then proposed as a solution to racial inequity in the courts, although the authors said this has not been practiced. Hiroshi Fukurai proposed the use of affirmative action programs as an alternative method for selecting jurors. These programs can solve the problem of inadequate representation of minorities in juries or the failure of minority defendants to be judged by a jury of their peers or color. According to these programs, half of the jurors can come from the majority groups and half from minority groups. These suggested that the extent of juries' racial representative-ness reflected the proportion of majority and minority groups in the general population. The final jury would be chosen by affirmatively selecting from the eligible pool those jurors who shared racial, socio-cultural and other relevant characteristics as those of the defendants. Final comments were contributed by Robert Conners on whether restorative justice was actually restorative. He used an oppressive theory, or a framework of minority discourse on social inequity, in establishing that restorative justice held the offender accountable to the victim, the victim's primary social circle and the community. Conners presented the extent to which these methods can actually establish justice in the light of social, economic and political inequality. He found that there has been no attempt to solve or address the problems relating to a system of oppression. Thus, restorative justice as currently applied is mis-directed and only serves to reaffirm the status quo (Emmelman).#