Calculating And Measuring Racial Disparity

There is a large racial disparity with unjust arrests in America. African Americans are discriminated and racially profiled more than any other race within the criminal justice system (Slate, 2015). The main goals of the criminal justice system are to prevent and control crime and to achieve justice (Crime&Justice International, 1997). However, according to the ‘American Progress’, “people of color, particularly African Americans and Latinos are unfairly targeted by the police and face harsher prison sentences compared to other races, particularly white Americans (American Progress, 2015). Although the criminal justice is to provide equal justice to all of its citizens, African Americans tend to not receive the same justice. Specifically, African

Whites are less likely to encounter with the police compared to African Americans. African Americans are twice likely to be arrested and almost four times likely to experience the use of force during police encounters (Costly, 2011). As stated earlier, other sociological factors need to be eliminated to attribute the high number of Black arrests to race. Poverty is known to be a predisposing factor for criminal acts according to the strain theory of

Less is known about the extent of discrimination at the arrest stage, in part because underlying rates of criminal activity by race cannot be easily assessed. Some evidence comes from comparing the race distribution of offenders derived from victims’ surveys with the racial composition of individuals arrested for the same crime. Two studies have found that these distributions are roughly comparable for many violent crimes.

In order to understand the nature of the statistical disparity, the first aspect that must be examined is necessarily the statistics themselves. Recent data (1998) shows that more than two out of every three arrested persons are white (67.6%) and that African Americans account for only 30% of all arrests. More striking is the data adjusted per capita: African Americans are two and a half times as likely to be arrested as whites, and are even more over-represented in violent crimes, for which they are over three times as likely to be arrested. African Americans are five times as likely to be arrested in cases of robbery or murder (Walker et al., 39).

Policing and punishment in America is hardly colorblind. It is not a coincidence that minorities serve longer sentences, have higher arrest and conviction rates, face higher bail amounts, and are more often the victims of police use of deadly force than white citizens. When it comes to criminals, many people have a preconception of what a criminal is. Usually when people think of a criminal they picture a Black or Latino face. The thought of an Asian criminal is often related to Asian gangs. Interestingly enough, White people as a group are rarely associated with the thought of crime, even though they account for 70% of arrests and 40% of the prison population each year (Russel xiv). This seems to be

Besides enacting racial bias screening and training requirements, police departments need to change the way they operate, by changing poor police protocol currently in place. In other words, in some cases, this issue of racial profiling can stem from police chiefs who provide their officers with patrol assignments targeting minority neighborhoods due to implicit biases which they have. In Driving While Black: Racial Profiling On Our Nation's Highways, David Harris suggests, “Because police look for drugs primarily among African Americans and Latinos, they find a disproportionate number of them with contraband” (Harris). Certain police chiefs intentionally target minority neighborhoods and put a greater effort on catching the people living there for their wrongdoings, thus making those minority groups appear as higher threats to society. The picture of crime would be reversed if the police targeted White people rather than minorities.

Apart from periodically publishing stop and search records, supervisors and managers of police force are now required to closely monitor such statistics and take timely actions if something wrong is being observed. Also stricter rules on stop and search have since been imposed, along with the requirement of police officers writing a detailed report on spot about every single incident which subjects to review seems helpful in improving police conduct (Fyfe 1979; Skogan and Frydl 2004 in Miller 2010). While stop and search practice has been somehow improved, racial discrimination can still be seen in stop and search statistics. The notion of “Black and minority ethnic groups, particularly black people, have for many years been disproportionately at the receiving end of police stop and search—a fact associated with profound community resentment towards the police” (Bowling and Phillips 2002 in Miller 2010) still largely applies today. Miller’s (2010) analysis indicate that black people are about 6 times more likely to be stopped and searched, while it is about 2 times more likely for Asians. Similar idea is seen in Bennetto’s (2009) report, which draws on police statistics that shows in 2009 “black people are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched than white”, worse than Miller’s analysis with the most recent figures in 2008. No official explaination is provided by Police, but Bennetto (2009) assumes this may be caused by simply discrimination of

Mac Donald (2008) looks at the idea that cops over arrest blacks and ignore the crimes that whites commit. However, the races of criminals that are reported by the victims do in fact match arrest data. According to a research study as far back as 1978, “a study of robbery and aggravated assault in eight cities found parity between the race of assailants in victim identifications and in arrests--a finding replicated many times since, across a range of crimes” (Mac Donald, 2008, p. 15). It does not make sense to think why crime victims would be biased in the reports they give to the police.

Figures show that in 2006/07 the arrest rate for blacks was 3.6 times the rate for whites. By contrast, once arrested, black and Asians were less likely tan white to

As previously discussed, the calculation of racial disparity is not quite straight forward. In many times, it entails other factors to be taken into consideration. In this context, we wanted to confirm the above racial disparity calculation by using multivariate analysis. Such analyses are vital for any jurisdiction in order to clearly understand the driven social/economic force(s) behind the racial disparity gap. Given this context, the rest of the study will be related to the results of Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM).

Evidence of the disproportionate percentage of minorities incarcerated is readily available. According to Katheryn Russell, author of Color of Crime, blacks make up 12% of the overall U.S. population. Yet they represent 30% of arrests and 50% of those incarcerated (28-29). The most amazing statistic comes from Marvin Free, Jr. whose research found that African Americans living in cities with a population of 250,000 or more have a 51% chance of being arrested (African Americans..., 8). Russell listed many of the ridiculous reasons minorities have been pulled over by police officers: 1) Driving a luxury car, 2) driving with a white woman, 3) driving in a white neighborhood, 4) driving late at night and several others. The reasoning behind many traffic stops of blacks were so ludicrous that Russell believed a new charge should be established: DWB or "Driving While Black" (Color...,33).

Minorities are also affected by the statistics of the Uniform Crime Report. When looking at minority arrests, the composition of the community really affects the numbers used. Overall in the United States the racial compositions for juveniles according to Puzzanchera (2009) showed that 78% of juveniles were white, 16% were black, 5% Asian, and only 1% Native American. These figures can be severely misleading in that Hispanic juveniles are classified as white for these studies. However, using these numbers and the reporting by agencies, violent crimes committed in 2008 were done by 47% white youth, 52% black youth and a mere 1% were committed by Asian youth, leaving the last 1% to have been committed by native American youth. As a result, black youth are more likely to commit violent crimes and be entered into the juvenile justice system.

Since the 1960’s, male and female arrest statistically contributed to the worries of the population. As years past, juveniles began to contribute to the statistics. But, since the days of slavery many people pointed fingers towards the African American communities. Modern day statistics, depicts African Americans as a higher arrest rate, compared to White Americans. Many Americans believe that there is a racial bias, which targets minorities in an effort to blame to cause of crime is great in part conducted by African Americans. Statistically documented, African Americans are depicted as the majority in arrest. Many people argue that statistics does not prove accurate.

In certain aspects most people believe the media’s viewpoint is one sided. There are always reports or stories about how police are biased against black people. Evidence reveals that negative stereotypes like those associated with black men and boys predict both realistic and symbolic intergroup threat, as well as intergroup anxiety (Hall, Hall & Perry, 2016). There is lots of information on racial disparities at many levels of law enforcement. In the prejudiced history of America, people of color has always been profiled as likely to commit crimes and because of this credence data show that people of color are most likely to be stopped by the police. The most recent phenomenon is a video in a Philadelphia Starbucks of the police arresting two black men based off what an observer or worker said. Although black people account for 3% of the residents in that police sub district, they made up two-thirds of the people stopped by the police…according to figures collected by the American Civil Liberties

According to O’Brien (1985) The Uniform Crime Reporting system (UCR) was developed in the 1920’s in order to create a system that would report crime uniformly across the many different jurisdictions in the United States. For the purpose of this paper I am going to discuss the debate between the relationships of the overrepresentation of minorities in crime statics and if the results are biased based on race. There is a debate regarding the accuracy of the statistics provided by official data resources such as UCR and NIBRS in regards to racial disparities. The fact that racial or social class bias does have an impact on what crimes are reported and the neighborhoods that have the highest police presence does lead inevitably to an