Saturday, November 10, 2007
Racial Profiling in Law Enforcement
In a society where racial stereotypes exist, through the identification and realization of social traits that tend to characterize certain ethnic groups, individuals may use preconceived perceptions of a particular race to impose judgment on an individual before objective evaluation of the individual. A specific example that exemplifies this scenario is the issue of racial profiling by law enforcement officials. In particular, law enforcement officials have long been accused of stopping African American motorists on the premise that they fit the profile of most drug traffickers or law offenders. There is no solid statistical evidence to support the stereotype that African Americans proportionally break the law more often than Caucasians (although they may get caught more often because they are more heavily watched). Thus, while profiling may lead to more arrests by law enforcement officers, one must ask if the method is morally, or even constitutionally, sound. When it comes right down to it, an objective standard for police suspicion of an individual must be established. Even though law enforcement may be more effective if racial profiling is incorporated, the use of a stereotype as a basis for criminal suspicion cannot be deemed probable cause for suspicion as stated in the United States Bill of Rights.
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3 comments:
If there is no solid statistical evidence to support the stereotype then where did they come up with the premiss of the stereotype? Does it go back to slavery, or the general idea that African American's are dangerous( yet the same argument stands for this reason- what started that stereotype?)These are questions I am just curious about ^_^.
Also, what type of statistical evidence are you looking for...there are more African Americans in jail than any other ethnic group, we hear about African American deaths by other African American's almost every night on the news, the poor population which is where most of the drug traffickers are consist of more African Americans than Caucasions...
It could be that there are more African Americans in jail because they are watched more by officials and they don't have access to enough money to give them good attorney's...(you can justify all of the reasons for those statistics which would prove their is no solid statistical evidence...but I think you need to demonstrate what you mean before putting out your statement.)
At the beginning of your post, I think you are going to need to show some causation of how stereotyping exists today (My topic for the last project was exactly that). As far as racial profiling goes, regardless of whether you believe it occurs or not, I think you need some evidence and causality that it is occurring. Law enforcement is obviously not going to admit to profiling as it is a public relations nightmare and there are a lot of people who will deny that it is happening. Like the last comment said with the statistics, you can use the statistics to say anything you want depending on how you use them so I would agree with demonstrating it first before you make the statement.
I have to agree with Miss Turner. There are at least too sides to this issue both complex. Though poverty demographics may have something to do with it, this difficult to present on logical terms since it is so heavily dependent on statistics. But since the reason for crime is not your issue I think this could be avoided if you're clever about it.
Racial profiling is difficult to demonstrate as it is a very sensitive issue, often hushed up by officials and possibly exaggerated by alleged victims.
In your post I noticed a lot of speculation. Though many of the points you brought up probably should be taken into account, make sure you know why they should instead of a "well this probably has something to do with it"
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