Aamir Khan

 

            Criminal justice policies across the country have resulted in mass arrest, prosecution, conviction, and incarceration of people of color. Consequently, African-American and to a lesser extent, Latino communities have been casualties of the domestic “wars” on drugs and crime. Racial disparity in sentencing can cause problems within a community. Public outcry can stir tension between the police and the community, people from different backgrounds, and can even cause riots like in the case of Rodney King vs. the L.A. police department. This is why it is important for the justice system to be aware of the disparities in sentencing, and make an effort to fix the problem. Before the problem can be fixed the problem needs to be identified.

According to the research conducted by Beck, Karberg, and Harrison there have been more blacks incarcerated compared to other races. When incarceration rates by State are estimated separately by gender, race, and Hispanic origin, male rates are found to be 11 and a half times higher than female rates; black rates 6 times higher than white rates; and Hispanics rates 2 times higher than white rates. The largest differences in incarceration rates between men and women are in Massachusetts (18 times higher for men) and Maine (17 times higher for men).  The largest differences in rates between whites and blacks are in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Minnesota (approximately 13 times higher for blacks), and between whites and Hispanics in Connecticut and Pennsylvania (7 times higher for Hispanics), Massachusetts and North Dakota (6times higher).Wisconsin led the Nation with an estimated 4,058 black prison and jail inmates per 100,000 black State residents, followed by Iowa (with 3,302) and Texas (3,287).  New Hampshire with 1,747 Hispanic inmates per 100,000 Hispanic residents, Pennsylvania (1,680), and Connecticut (1,434) had the highest Hispanic rates.

Because racial profiling, discrimination, and the disparities within the criminal justice system seem to always be a topic of concern, the best way to understand what is happening is to research the problem to gain a better perspective and point of view. The need to find the reason behind the higher numbers of minority inmates, to that of white inmates, is crucial to a fair and balanced judicial system. 

Aamir Khan

 

How To Stop Racial Profiling?

 

How can police avoid it? The police are expected to keep residents feeling safe and when a crime wave hits they are under greater pressure to be proactive. When most of the suspects are Black, in a largely White and Asian community, it's easy to see how cops might multiply their traffic stops of minority persons in the hopes of turning away or maybe even catching the few criminals they are after. The cops are like industrial fishing outfits that cast a large net even if they end up throwing away many of the fish they capture. Only, in this case the practice leaves a trail of humiliation, resentment and inequity for a lot of innocent people.

          It's similar to the way police will park outside of bars at closing time and stop drivers who emerge from the parking lot with a faulty taillight or an expired tag in the hope of netting a drunk driver before they hit the road. They are playing the odds; using their powers strategically. But these are not the rules of the game we want them to play by. These are Orwellian rules that make many law abiding folks feel that Big Brother is watching them.

          Recognizing and talking regularly (not just at an annual diversity workshop) about our prejudices and biases is a valuable start for any police force (and community). Keeping stats of every traffic stop and who was in the car is also good as a starter. But without training in clear-cut procedures and practices that are alternatives to profiling, those statistics and dialogues don't change much.

          My solution is to eliminate this tactic that is being abused. We need to start off with making a law regarding racial profiling and its limits. Also making new laws that will back up the law that prevents racial profiling. One good idea is to have the police take an oath that states that he will be equal in all ways and will not have his personal feelings get into his work, saying that he cannot and won’t stop traffic because of assumptions that are weak (For example because he assumes that a black person that is driving a Gold BMW will have drugs or guns, or take an Arab and questioning him and think that he is a terrorist because he wears a rag on his head).

          In conclusion, there are many problems in today's society and this big issue that people want to see change must happen. This issue has back up from other papers written from professionals from NAACP and ACLU, and people that have been studying this issue for many years. The solution is only made up from the facts of the problems in America before. This profiling tactic has been abused to where it can be in our society today and the law enforcement agencies have made it to where it is not just a special tactic for finding a criminal, but made it were their personal feelings has got into the profiling tactic, and it has been made into racial profiling. The trials and tribulations that a minority goes through are a big problem, and must be eliminated. We can start out by eliminating Racial Profiling.

Racial Profiling: Illegal Immigration

The United States has for many years faced a great challenge in establishing the exact needs of its population as a result of illegal immigration. For this reason, politicians whose strategies point out on combating illegal immigration have in the recent past received a lot of public support from American citizens. However, the new Arizona law seems to be taking a different dimension with some citizens supporting it and others strongly opposing it. Arizona lawmakers approved one of the harshest immigration laws of all time which makes it a crime to be in the United States of America without the right registration credentials. This law also gives the police the power to stop, question and scrutinize the immigration status of people suspected to be illegal immigrants in the United States (Archibold, 2012). The unique impacts of this law have elicited different feelings among U.S. citizens.

Though issues such as use of excessive force by the state’s law enforcement agencies, give a bad press image of the Arizonian government and international relations have had a big part in the great opposition being against this law, racial profiling is the most prevalent issue among opponents of the Arizona immigration law. Even though there are many Americans who support the new law but quite a number of cities have staged protests against the Arizona immigration law because of the many loopholes within it. Opponents claim that this law is likely to propagate racial profiling since the excessive mandate given to the police could cause prejudice against minorities who are the most at risk to federal laws and other laws as opposed to American Natives. Opponents claim that the undefined clauses give the policemen unjustifiable freedom to persecute people based on their own judgments. In that regard, a policeman can unjustifiably decide to take on a suspect based on racial grounds without being charged under a court of law. Opponents claim that accepting this law will take America aback in its fight against racism and hence counteract all the efforts that have been implemented against racism so far.

Citations:

Washington., Randal C. Archibold; Helene Cooper And Carl Hulse Contributed Reporting From. "ARIZONA ENACTS STRINGENT LAW ON IMMIGRATION." The New York Times. The New York Times, 24 Apr. 2010. Web. 03 Nov. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/us/politics/24immig.html?ref=us>.

 

Racial Profiling in Airports

RACIAL PROFILNG IN AIRPORT

                Traveling has become popular and with the advancement in technology, it has become easier to get from one place to another.  One of the most common ways to get across the nation or the continents is via airplanes. More and more people are using airports as a method to get to areas where it’s nearly impossible to go to. Ever since 9/11 safety has become a great concern for the government and since airports were never really targeted until 9/11 security wasn’t that big of a concern.

Today, terrorism faces worldwide attention, and it is assumed that terrorists who wish to harm the United States are concentrated in the Middle East or in countries with a predominate Muslim population such as Indonesia. The United States government has begun to develop strategies for detecting and apprehending terrorists. One of the most popular methods is racial profiling, which uses race and ethnicity as the main principles for detaining or stopping suspects. Some of the things that the federal government begun doing is “random” stopping of people based on how they look or are dressed. The "random" stopping of people before and after they board a plane not only violates that person's personal rights, but it creates an artificially induced hatred to a particular group of people as well as demonstrates the overall ignorance associated with racism.

The New York Times authors Michael S. Schmidt and Eric Lichtblau wrote an article called “Racial Profiling Rife at Airport, U.S. Officers Say” in which they state that “In interviews and internal complaints, officers from the Transportation Security Administration’s “behavior detection” program at Logan International Airport in Boston asserted that passengers who fit certain profiles — Hispanics traveling to Miami, for instance, or blacks wearing baseball caps backward — are much more likely to be stopped, searched and questioned for “suspicious” behavior.”  This “behavior detection” program has become more of racial profiling according to the agents working for TSA. This became so much of a problem to where even the Massachusetts State Police officials began questioning why there are high numbers of minorities cases being referred to them. 

Racial profiling is the law-enforcement practice of singling out members of racial minorities as suspects. Heavily practiced in airports today, this procedure does much more harm than good. In suspecting Arabs or other minorities solely for the fact that they are of a different ethnic background strongly violates what our country stands for. Arabs and other minorities who once saw the United States as a place of freedom and equal opportunity now experience firsthand the true injustices it furnishes.

The singling out members of the minorities as possible suspects by the law enforcement is racial profiling and it is a practice that is being commonly used throughout the nation by many different law enforcement agencies. It does not just affect the Muslims but it affects anyone that falls under the minority groups such as Hispanics and African-Americans. The minorities who once saw the United States a place of freedom and equal opportunity, no longer see it because they are victims of the system that in-justly labels them as possible criminals or terrorists.  The United States has a large minority’s population and the question of whether the federal government should take race into account as the main factor when profiling for possible terrorists requires a balancing of moral, legal, equality, and liberty values, all values which our country was founded upon.

 

 

 

 

 

CITATIONS:

Lichtblau, Michael S. Schmidt and Eric. "Racial Profiling Rife at Airport, U.S. Officers Say." The New York Times. The New York Times, 12 Aug. 2012. Web. 28 Sept. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/us/racial-profiling-at-boston-airport-officials-say.html?pagewanted=all>.

Racial Profiling Post 1

Racial Profiling

            Racial profiling is defined as discriminatory process by law enforcement officials who target a group or person of certain ethnicity, race, religion or national origin on suspicion of crime. This has been an ongoing issue for a long time. Nowadays certain racial groups are targeted on a daily basis such as Middle Easterners, African Americans, and Mexican immigrants. It has become a problem because people are now being judged by the type of clothes they wear, they color of their skin, and the issue whether they have legally or illegally entered this country.  There are stops being made by law enforcement officials throughout the day because an African American was driving by looking suspicious or a Middle Eastern looking person has left his bag near the elevator to go to the bathroom and people decide to call 9-1-1- because there might be a bomb in the bag, only to find out it was his laptop and he had just gone to the bathroom. Numerous amounts of people are affected by racial profiling many of those which fall under the minority group. Some of the factors such as religion and race play a huge role. A person with darker skin is more likely to be pulled over than a person with a lighter skin. A Muslim person is more likely to be frisked at the airports than a person who is a Christian. The legal system itself gets sued by many of these individuals and most of the time these individuals win their cases because of the mistakes that are made by the officials. The government loses millions of dollars and not all to law suits but to the funding it provides the departments to properly train their employees about racial profiling.

            There really isn’t anyone who benefits from this problem since it involves people being disrespected, the government losing money, and some even losing their lives. For example, Kendrec McDade was killed by Pasadena police officers who responded to a call of a person who was robbed at gun point by two black teenagers. When the police responded they found Kendrec who started running and one of the police officers blocked Kendrec with his police cruiser while another was on foot chasing him. The police officers alleged that Kendrec was reaching for something in his waist therefore he was shot by both of the officers and later died at a nearby hospital. He was later found to be unarmed and the person who reported the crime had lied to the police about the gun so they would respond faster. The police department tried to cover up the mistakes that they did during the investigation and the lawyer which represented the family stated “They have made millions of mistakes in this case. The cover up is the worst.” (Pelisek 2012) Parents lost a son who was unarmed to violence and since he was black he was already considered dangerous. What made it worse was him trying to pull up his pants which looked like he was reaching for something in his waistband. People that contribute to the problem are people who are uneducated about other races. Just because someone is Muslim doesn’t mean they are a terrorist, just because someone is Mexican doesn’t mean they are here illegally, and just because someone is black or brown doesn’t mean they committed a crime. Law enforcement officers who are not properly educated will continue to racially profile innocent people and maybe someday it will go too far which will probably have devastating results. However some law enforcement agencies have implemented programs to educate their officers about the different types of races and how to handle a situation related to racial profiling. It’s not just the officers who are making these mistakes. There are normal citizens who are making this mistake on a daily basis. Many people are targeted and are affected in some sort of way by racial profiling. It is time for the government to create programs that will be educate people and if the problem still persists then there should be appropriate action taken against the person or people that are making the same mistake again.