CJ 120 Module 8 Project 3

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Southern New Hampshire University *

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120

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History

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Jan 9, 2024

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docx

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Module 8 Project 3 Connie Molinaro Southern New Hampshire University CJ 120 Cultural Awareness in Criminal Justice Professor. Tramayne Young, J.M. August 19, 2023
Dear Board Members, I would first like to thank you for asking me to expand further on my initial presentation regarding diverse people struggling within the criminal justice system with your organization. This opportunity allows me to continue the conversation with all of you about these very relevant issues. Understanding how different cultures observe and interact with the various criminal justice participants, from the community police officer to the court prosecutors and judges, helps us to understand how some misunderstandings happen between these worlds and gives us insight into how to fix them. I am attaching a document I have put together that will address the issues you would like to discuss further. Thank you very much for allowing me to work with your organization in raising awareness about community diversity and how the criminal justice system can do better in representing the community they serve. Sincerely, Connie Molinaro
Differences in culture and how they impact society’s interactions with criminal justice professionals. 1) Describe different cultures’ or subcultures’ views of criminal justice professionals. This country has had a long history of police and communities of color, especially the African American community, where they experience the most contact with police, more than any other racial or ethnic group in America (Walker, A., Spohn, C., DeLone, M., p. 151, 2018). This increased contact pattern can be attributed to many factors: high crime rates in lower-income areas will increase the number of police patrols, and African Americans will seek out the police at higher rates than other groups either because they are victims of crime or because of problems that arise and they need the police to assist them, and because of policies like stop and frisks there will be a higher rate of interactions by police with African Americans. Because of some of these policies and aggressive contact, there is a long history of toxicity, animosity, and mistrust from the African American community and how they view law enforcement. Many feel they are being unfairly harassed and singled out because of the color of their skin, and young men feel the racial divide more in the number of traffic stops, stop and frisks, and arrests they encounter compared to young white men. Native Americans have also had many years of distrust of the police and how they perceive the treatment of crimes against Native American citizens and are widely felt to be the representatives of an oppressive system. Back in the 1800s, the police were on the reservations to help maintain order and reinforce laws that were established by non-Native American settlers. These federal troops were there to ensure the indigenous people didn’t interfere with the economic growth of the new settlers, ration food, and supplies, and ensure that the Native Americans did not cross over the reservation boundaries. Any crime that was committed on the reservation was basically ignored. Then in the 1860s, Native Americans were invited to police themselves on their own reservation lands (Redner-Verna, E., Galeste, MA., 2015). Because Native American tribes are legally recognized as
semi-sovereign nations, they have a broad range of powers to self-govern themselves (Walker, A., Spohn, C., DeLone, M., p. 152, 2018). It can get confusing who responds to what crimes when they happen on an Indian Reservation: you have tribal police, local sheriff or city police, federal authorities, and the five different tribal law enforcement agencies. So where the crime occurred, what type of crime it is, and to whom it was perpetrated factor into who has jurisdiction to respond and take care of the case. Remember, too, that some of these reservations can be thousands and thousands of acres. Many tribal police do not have the budget, manpower, or proper resources they need to care for their citizens. Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the U.S., and their views of how the police treat ethnic groups vary. From the multi-ethnic Asian Americans, Korean and Indo-Caribbean descendants who feel that racial and ethnic groups are not treated fairly to a percentage of the Cambodian Americans and Vietnamese-Americans who do feel police treatment is equal (Wang, H.L., 2017). And the generations are also divided on treatment by police: the younger population feels the police do not treat them fairly, whereas that sentiment in the population of age 70 and older drops significantly. More high-profile cases of interactions caught on video between Asian Americans and law enforcement have come to light, as in the case of Dr. David Dao, the Vietnamese American doctor that was forcibly dragged off an overbooked flight on a United Airlines flight in Chicago by security guards. Dr. Dao was struck in the head from the overhead compartments and suffered a concussion, a broken nose, and broken teeth. He has since suffered balance and concentration issues and can not run the marathons he used to. So as the Asian American population continues to rise in this country, so too will interactions with the police.
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