The Role Of Discrimination In Just Mercy

Chapter 4 in The Color of Justice: Race, ethnicity, and crime in America, was about the relations between society and law enforcement officers. This has been a major topic, especially in the United States for a long time. The unfortunate statistic that minorities are more likely to encounter being killed, arrested, and victimized by excessive physical force; has been a real issue even in today’s society. However, police departments are trying to combat the way police officers interact with the community; especially those of color. Although steps have been takes there are still some instances where police aggression happens. With all of the issues that arise between certain minority populated community’s police it is evident that conflict

Law enforcement and minorities have long been the focus of the criminal justice injustice within the United States. African Americans, Arab Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic and Latino Americans are a number of communities in the United States along with Caucasian or non-minorities as a whole, which make up a large portion of the United States. Racial discrimination has been a large factor the criminal justice system has been plagued with for many years. In the book Just Mercy, authored by Bryan Stevenson, Stevenson details his life’s work to help those who were wrongfully convicted and biased towards in sentencing. A big part of the book is related to racial discrimination among officers. Analytically I will be looking at the question of whether the relations between the police and minority and non-minority communities differ. I will look at number of factors related to traffic enforcement practices, use of force and arrest of minorities and non-minorities in determining if there is any differences among police community relations.

Many of the problems and conflicts between the community and the police are based on situations involving police misconduct and race. Other issues occur because of an experience one has had with the police because he or she is minority. Early resentments from White officers cause a different outcome when handling a police situation that involves a different race as oppose to his or her own. This begins to shape the perception of the residents that witness these actions. It has been shown that an officer’s attitude and behaviors when dealing with a minority is harsher and unfair. Several situations like the Rodney King story and police brutality where a minority was the victim is viewed by the public and discriminatory behavior solely caused by a person’s race or ethnicity. This creates distrusts and suspicion with regard to the way a police department handles these issues. The public is disappointed and reluctant to construct a relationship with his or her fellow officer.

The criminal justice system’s high volume of contact with people of color is a major cause of broader perceptions of injustice in many communities.

Recently, there has been much in the media about clashes between African Americans and the police. Two such cases, being the shootings of Michael Brown and Laquan McDonald - both incidents resulting in public outrage. These cases result in questions about racial profiling by police. Through research, it is clear that African Americans are the target of racial bias by many police departments in the United States; in order to remedy this situation, law enforcement agencies need to (and are beginning to) undergo scrutiny on their interactions with the public and, additionally must receive training on diversity.

The bias in the American criminal justice system is first reported in the first stages of the system, which includes the (act of asking questions and trying to find the truth about something) and arrest of the suspected people by police personnel (American Civil Liberties Union, 2013). These police personnel discriminately target the minorities as criminal suspects, which eventually skews the racial population of the people arrested, charged, put in jail or convicted (Cole, Smith, & DeJong, 2013). One of the key problems suffering (from sickness) the U.S. criminal justice system is (assuming certain races of people are more likely to commit crimes) (Cole, Smith, & DeJong, 2013). This involves the identification of criminal suspects on the basis race or (special way of speaking/mark that shows emphasis). According to Cole, Smith, & DeJong (2013), (assuming certain races of people are more likely to commit crimes) is widespread because the police agents enjoy a large amount of (ability to make wise decisions) as to who they think about/believe as a suspect. For example, in Baltimore, African-American car/truck drivers are discriminately stopped for minor traffic offenses because they are believed to be more likely tobe start/work at more serious criminal activity than whites (Saad, 2011). This results in a large percentage of innocent African-Americans and other minority drivers such as Puerto Ricans, Colombians and Cubans to be illegally subjected to the embarrassment (in

A police officer is a law enforcement official whose job is to protect and serve the people, not to abuse their power. Due to the fact that the U.S is consisted of many different races and ethnic groups, the ongoing conflict between police officers and citizens of color is at a constant rise. Although policies today no longer directly target those of colors, the policies applied by law enforcements in African-Americans communities are discriminating. Officers sometimes abuse the policies resulting in citizens viewing it as discrimination. By changing the way laws and regulations that unfairly impact Black and Brown communities can improve the justice system (Policy 5).Racial impact has changed the view of the government resulting in more inclusion of people of color in the system. Policies that are not racially excluding anyone of color should be used within police departments to evaluate the impact of different policing.

Many researchers have conducted numerous studies analyzing the police interactions and arrest records of African Americans to see if there is a discernible disparity between the number of African Americans and Caucasians arrested. Studies conducted by researchers has led to the disclosure of many out of important stats including on which states that African Americans believe police do a poor job of handling their fellow officers accountable for misconduct and treatment of racial and ethnic groups equally (CQ Researcher,373). Addition research has shown that 57 percent of African Americans believe police use excessive force when detaining suspects while only 25 percent of white

Today there is a lot of negative response when it comes to police department agencies and their officers. When you look at drug offenders it is estimated 13% to 20 % of the total of black and white drug offenders which they, should constitute a roughly similar proportion of the total number of blacks and whites who are arrested, convicted, and sent to prison for drug law violations. But all other things are not equal. Some people say that some research has clearly and consistently shown that blacks have been and remain more likely to be arrested for drug offending behavior relative to their percentage among drug offenders than whites who engage in the same behavior. There are many reasons for the racial disparities in drug

Weitzer and Tuch depicted that “African Americans will see police misconduct as both a general problem and one that is primarily targeted towards blacks” (Weitzer and Tuch 1011). A test was given to a sample group to decide whether minorities believe police in their city treats them worse than whites. Results show that minorities are virtually treated worse than whites. When testing the white sample group, results displayed that police in their city treated whites

In the year 2018, there are still numerous signs of racial bias that’s evident throughout the criminal justice system. The way in which policing tries to serve and protect the major population is sometimes seen being done in discriminating ways. Racial profiling is another key contributor to racial bias throughout America especially towards African Americans. African Americans are noticeably given harsher sentences than whites in situations where the offense was the same for both. There are deviant and corrupt agents throughout much of the criminal justice system and it still hasn’t been addressed properly in a way that everyone starts to understand the negative impacts that are being done together. Some police officers may feel the need to

African Americans are being unfairly targeted by the police force and other intolerant individuals. There are numerous cases in which African Americans are perhaps intentionally being targeted by the police due to their race. The case of Michael Brown is a perfect example of police misconduct. Officer Darren Wilson saw Brown near a liquor store and felt that he fit the description of another suspect. Brown was frightened by the initial gunshots fired by Officer Wilson when he confronted him, so he began to run away. He eventually stopped to face the policeman and was then shot a few more times and found dead at the scene.

The police are able to get away with taking African Americans into custody without much of a cause, and then later they the police will make up the reason. They get away with this because of the biases towards African Americans. “Institutional bias against African-Americans is well-documented and contributes to the racial disparities in how laws are enforced.” These bias towards African Americans creates an unjust system that makes it hard for them live their daily life. When at any time they can be stopped and taken in for no reason or because they fit “description” of a suspect. At this point it becomes alarming on how often this is becoming, even more so how much of it have become the norm. To think that it has become such a norm that when Brocks was taken to the hospital to be put into the psych ward they did not question why she was there. All they had to do was use three questions to keep her lock up in there for eight days, Or until she would admit that all three of these were lies “…that she owned the BMW, that she was a professional banker, and that President Barack Obama followed her on Twitter.” They did not care for the truth at all, for them excepting the truth would require them to put aside their bias views. The fact that they are unable to put these aside and do their job without discrimination of any kind is concerning. For it is doctors that cannot look passed their views

The author argues that black citizens are more likely to perceive police as racially biased for both of the police organizations – the city police and the highway patrol police. The data for this study are taken from North Carolina Highway Traffic study of 2920 black and white licensed drivers. The findings from the study conclude that on average black trust the city police and the highway police less than do whites. Three percent of blacks compared to one percent of whites reported about the disrespectful treatments by the local police in the last year. Blacks reported more disrespectful treatment by the highway patrol police officers and the local police officers when compared to white counterparts. In terms of vicarious experience, 3 percent of blacks compared to 2 percent of whites reported hearing stories of disrespectful treatment and police bias from their family members and friends. Eighty-one percent of blacks versus only 33 percent of whites perceived police as racially biased in their report. Therefore majority of the African American citizens believed that the police are racially biased against them. They also reported about their lower levels of trust in police across the city (local) and the state police because of their negative and vicarious experiences with the police. The paper concludes by stating that police organizations need to monitor the policing practices in order to bring back trust from the African American citizens and to build an unbiased and fair policing system across the country (Warren, 2010). This paper is particularly relevant to my paper because it is a major paradigm of inequality of race and criminal justice system, which include

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”(Rev Martin Luther King, Jr). No one should be treated differently no matter the color of one's skin. Have you ever wondered why african americans face more injusticeness when arrested then any other race? When african americans are arrested they are almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police and are more likely to serve higher sentences than white americans for the same offense. There was “robustus evidence” found that “black male federal defendants were given longer sentences than comparable whites”. Black men's sentences were on average, ten percent longer than those of their white