Diversity in Law Enforcement

Diversity Law Enforcement Diversity in Law Enforcement The United States culture has had a level of diversity ever since it's founding. In fact, the U.S. would called to potential immigrants from all over the world to come and join the "melting pot" of individuals that had different beliefs, religious practices, unique trade skills, and inventiveness. Despite the way the American society was originally constructed, there are still issues with racism and inequality in opportunities that are present today.

Furthermore, the divisions in society include more points of conflict than ever before. There are polarizing lines drawn on topics such as abortion, gay rights, religion, and politics in general. Today's society is incredibly diverse and this level of diversity also requires that law enforcement organizations incorporate diversity into their organization as well to handle these challenges. By incorporating diversity into the law enforcement organization, it is possible to improve race relations, public attitudes towards police, police professionalism as well as minimize the potential for racial profiling.

This paper will conduct a literature review on different aspect of diversity and how they relate to modern day law enforcement organizations. Literature Review The role of race can manifest in many ways in law enforcement activities. For instance there can be a racial bias in the way law enforcement professionals deal with criminal suspects that of different races. One social psychology study explored law enforcement officers' racial bias in decisions to shoot criminal suspects as well as their self-reported beliefs about Black vs.

White suspects and also examined what factors contribute to officers' racial biases and the likelihood of having these biases eliminated (Michelle & Ashby, 2006). Through the use of survey about disposition of racial biases towards criminals of different backgrounds it was found that the officers' explicit attitudes toward Black people and their beliefs about the criminality and difficulty of Black suspects revealed strong relationships with the quality of their contact with Black people on the job and in their personal lives.

Officers who have a negative view about African-Americans, as opposed to those with more positive beliefs about the criminality of Black people, were more likely to tend toward shooting unarmed Black suspects on a shooting simulation. However, officers with positive contact with Black people in their personal lives were particularly able to eliminate these biases with training on the simulation. There are many applications of such findings that would be relevant to a police organization.

First of all it is important to recognize the fact that a predisposing and opinion about race can have implications for law enforcement professionals and their performance on the job.

If a person of any race holds a view that a certain race is more likely to commit a crime, then it is reasonable to suspect they would be more likely to have a presumption of guilt when they encounter members of this ethnicity; to the extent that they could even be more likely to shoot a member of this group before ascertaining the facts of the case. There are other insights that are equally important.

Creating a level of diversity within an organization, such as a law enforcement organization, is an important component of an education that can work to challenge the core of the racially biased discrimination that can impact job performance. For example, if a white officer who is racially biased works with an Afro American officer on the job, then he would likely realize that not all Afro Americans are criminals and his biasness is unfounded.

Much of the racial biasness that persists in today's society comes from a lack of exposure to diversity. If someone never gets a chance to interact with members of different ethnocentric group, then they are more likely to create an unrealistic perception of this group. Therefore, having a diverse workforce in a law enforcement agency can help mitigate some of the racial discrimination that might be found throughout the organization. There have been efforts to change the racial and gender composition of law enforcement agencies in the past.

Under the Affirmative Action (AA) legislation there was a conscious effort to allow minorities more opportunities in the workplace. One study considered the outcomes of employment discrimination lawsuits against U.S.

law enforcement agencies to estimate the cumulative and persistent employment effects of temporary externally imposed affirmative action (AA); the study found that AA increased black employment at all ranks by 4.5 to 6.2 percentage points relative to national trends and it also found no erosion of these employment gains in the fifteen years following AA termination, although black employment growth was significantly lower in departments after AA ended than in departments whose plans continued (Miller & Segal, 2012). However, for women, in contrast, we find only marginal employment gains at lower ranks.

Many of these efforts have worked to transform the modern day police force from an all-white and all-male department as found in the 1950s and 1960s, to an organization that is more likely to include more women and minorities as well as openly homosexual officers which are becoming increasingly more common (Sklansky, 2006). Some have argued that the growing diversity of American police forces is grounds to reexamine the entire approach to policing in general.

The changing demographics within law enforcement agencies have done much to challenge many of the police subcultures that persisted in some organizations by diminishing some of the occupational solidarity and social insularity that was built into many ideals about policing that persisted in previous generations. In the 1950s and 1960s when most police organizations were mostly white males who had their own subculture, an us vs. them attitude began to develop with the civilian organizations that they were tasked to protect.

Not all police organizations have introduced levels of diversity at the same rate since this time. For example, the New York City Police Department announced not too long ago that a majority of the new officers graduating from the academy were members of racial minorities; yet in other jurisdictions such as in Phoenix, there is still the prominently white-male organizational composition within their police force. The same kinds of trends also emerge with gender in the work place.

In many law enforcement organizations there has been a significant increase in the number of female officers while in others the move to gender diversity has made little improvement. Methods/Results The methods of this investigations involved conducting a literature review of how diversity and considerations of race might effect a law enforcement organization. It was found that there are several implications of diversity within the organization as well as in attitudes and the job performance of officers.