How Diversity and Discrimination are Relevant Issues in Policing

With the increase of diversity in the country, comes a wide variety of issues facing all sectors. In the criminal justice sector we see issues such as racial profiling, discrimination amongst others.

Recently, it has been brought up that there is still institutional racism within the Police force, this, as well as many other reasons such as negative stereotyping, informal bias and assumptions from ethnic minority groups themselves are reasons why people from minority groups are less inclined to join. The Police have introduced a number of ways to try and create a more diverse workforce. Some of these methods include, improving the data collected on the age,

The objective of this thesis is to provide comprehensive information to all stakeholders who have an interest in enhancing minority recruitment and selection. The goal of this thesis is to address law enforcement professionals about the importance of diversifying police agencies; more importantly, is to address the underrepresentation of Asian-American police officers and the challenges of recruiting potential candidates from Asian communities. Through community policing, mediation, trust building, collaboration with stakeholders, and cultural diversity training, law enforcement agencies will achieve its recruiting and diversity goals. Targeting Asian cultural events, partnering up with higher learning institutions, and sending mass emails regarding job opportunities to criminal justice majors could produce students’ interests and desires to pursue a career in law enforcement (Castaneda & Ridgeway, 2010). Recruitment issues and needs will be examined; moreover, the importance of evaluating implemented strategies must be followed up in order to monitor community changes or problems that may arise (Tangel, 2015).

Ernest Duenez, Jr. was killed by police officer John Moody on June 8, 2011. When Ernest pulled into his driveway, Moody shouted to Ernest to put his hands up and drop the knife. However, Ernest had no knife in his hands. Moody fired thirteen bullets and eleven shots struck Ernest on his chest, back and head. His family was completely devastated; they searched for justice for Ernest, while helping his widow with her child, who was just seventeen days away from his first birthday. Tragedies such as this one can be greatly reduced by body cameras. For example, the Rialto study, where police officers wearing body cameras resorted to physical force 59 percent less than those who did not wear body cameras. When wearing body cameras, police officers would not behave negatively in a situation where they may incriminate themselves.

The diversity issue focused on in this paper will be racial disparity in sentencing. This paper will also focus on some of the reasons why racial disparity exists within sentencing. One of the research methods used in this paper will be case studies. In society today there are a diversity of citizens, of offenders, and leaders within in the court system. However, race still plays a big role in the Criminal Justice system especially during the sentencing portion. Although racial dynamics may have changed over time, race still exerts an undeniable presence in sentencing process. This ranges from disparate traffic stops due to racial profiling to imposition of the death penalty based on the race of

Diversity in law enforcement has grown to become a hot topic within the law enforcement community. The demographic of society has changed dramatically over the last 20 years and with that law enforcement has been changing, but have they been changing enough? Different law enforcement agencies have their own ways of implementing diversity in their practices and procedures, some of them are better than others, but with issues that happen today it is important that they do something.

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

With so many news stories and incidents surrounding the topic of race and the police these days, it is not surprising for people to come to the conclusion that racism may exist within the criminal justice system. We will be taking a deeper look into the problem to find out what other possible determinants may play a role in deciding how an officer makes an arrest or stop and continue to analyze what is happening in those contexts. The issues surrounding the topic of race is like the two faces of the same coin as there are usually two sides that we have to consider: reality and media portrayals. The reality side of situations is always there at the time, but it is so subtly hidden from society that nobody understands it unless they witness it firsthand and with the media spreading filtered information, it becomes even harder for us to identify the key issue; this is especially the case when dealing with the police and racial profiling. If you turn on the news and flip to a channel where it is reporting on the police and their arrests, you will most likely see more arrests pertaining to minorities than other ethnicities. In the news, we can often see a misrepresentation of ethnic minorities, usually African-Americans, being arrested when compared to others and this has caused problems around societies countless times. For this essay topic, I will be discussing the different issues surrounding race within the parameters of criminal justice and inequality; furthermore I will be

What is racism? Racism is defined as discrimination toward someone’s race or religion etc. As we know today, this is a big issue, especially in United State. This is important to me because it does not matter what skin color you have or what religion you believe in. All that matters are that a person follows the law. Police officers, for example, they are supposed to use the power that they have for the bad people, people that do crimes and our threat to our society. Using violence against people that haven't done any threat to our society is wrong. In Sweden there is some racism, but not to the extent that black people will get harassed because of their skin color. In Sweden, the law is for everyone and whoever breaks the law will get the punishment they deserve. We all know that it is always two side of a story for example what happened to Michael Brown on August 9, 2014. Michael Brown was robbing a grocery store. The police officer stated that “He shot Brown after the teen attacked him”, While brown’s family said, “Brown was surrendering when he was shot dead.” You are always going to hear two different sides but the justice will find out who is the guilty one and who is the victim.

As difficult as their job may be, and as big a toll as it may take on them emotionally, it is important to bear in mind that police officers are normal human beings with normal brains and mental processes. Consequently, they are prone to make the same stereotype-biased judgments the rest of us are. Because they are often operating under conditions of uncertainty, high discretion, and stress and threat, the pervasive stereotypes linking Blacks and Latinos with violence, crime, and even specifically weapons are likely to cause them to make misattributions in seeking to disambiguate the intentions and behaviors of citizens. This can lead to racially disparate rates of stops, searches, arrests, and use of force. Several interventions that aim to reduce bias or discriminatory behavior at the individual level warrant further investigation in the policing context. Nonnegative intergroup contact is especially promising given its strong evidence base and that it could be achieved through

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.

Today like never before organizations are hoping to fill their positions with a group of diverse law enforcement officers that mirrors the populaces they serve. As organizations search for officers who reflect their settings in which they serve in , they are additionally expanding their meanings of decent variety. From this point of view, assorted variety can incorporate race, ethnic gathering, religion, sexual preference, and age. Being a minority working in the law enforcement field can be very helpful for an agency however, that specific group may still go unrecognized. This paper will provide a brief review of the disguised minority achievements as it relates to the U.S. Marshals Service in the past. It will also be examined in

This paper provides an overview of the problems facing the police in their efforts to improve relations with minority communities in the United States, as well as a survey of previous research and existing literature on cultural diversity

"Relations between the police and minority groups are a continuing problem in many multiracial societies. Surveys consistently document racial differences in perceptions of the police, with minorities more likely than whites to harbor negative views." (Weitzer and Tuch, Race and Perceptions of Police Misconduct, 2004)

A survey of police officers in South West USA showed pattern of resistance to the employment of LGBT officers with 69% of their respondents reporting that these individuals do not belong in law enforcement and 85% asserting that gay men would not be able to perform their job as well as others (Mallory, Hasenbush, & Sears, 2015)”. Another reason most agency lack diversity is that the “recruitment efforts of police departments are often too broad and fail to