Challenges of Criminal Justice in Multicultural Society
Since the beginning of criminal justice, the differences in the races in involvement in crime have been important topics. Since the 1960s, there have been questions about whether or not there have been racial incongruities in the litigation system that are important. There has been previous literature that focused on police racial differences and profiling in the sentencing, imprisonment, and the aspects of processing juvenile justice. Some studies report that the racial differences in criminal justice are not significant, yet others report substantial differences. The United States criminal justice is not post-racial. It is common for one to hear explanations such as ‘the prosecutors are racist and minority receive harsh treatment’ or ‘the minority just commit disproportionate crime amounts.’ Such statements do not reflect the sophisticated problem of racial disparity in the judicial system (Jones, 2012). Some criminologists say that although the statistics show a significant difference in the judicial systems, it is not enough to make a significant difference in real life; a lot of research is available on this subject.
During the antebellum period, the U.S. criminal justice had racial disparity; however, it seemed different. An examination of the records of the U.S. Census shows that one could not study imprisonment and law above the Mason-Dixon line (Crutchfield, Fernandes & Martinez, 2010). In other areas of America, the people of color were not enough to warrant a study. Most of the blacks were not sent to the Southern prisons before the Civil War. The people who populated the prisons were all nearly white. An explanation for this pattern could be that the Southern states did not very much use imprisonment as a means of punishment. Slavery was another reason for more whites being imprisoned in the South. Freedom was not available for a good number of African Americans. It was considered a punishment for the master when their slave was locked up, a situation which deprived them of labor.
In the postbellum period, there existed a convict lease system where the black convicts were leased to the owners of plantations to work before emancipation. There were also private industries that had dangerous mining tasks and building of railroads; some of the black convicts were sent to such industries. In the 1960s, there were first signs of racial conflict, which criminologists recognized (Crutchfield, Fernandes & Martinez, 2010). For instance, there was a publication by Rudwick where he said that the departments of police could be fair and better when dealing with the “Negros. ” He added that there was a need for the Southern cities to have black police officers to ensure adequate policing of the Negro neighborhoods.
Another publication was made by Cross, which was titled “Negro, Prejudice and the Police.” Here, Cross called for the police to exercise fair treatment of individuals and recognize that blacks had different social circumstances. A new classic paper was published by Pilivian and Briar, which reported demeanor, which was related to race. It helped in discovering when policemen applied the discretion for formal arrest. A report by Reiss and Black followed which pushed that the demeanor was important but not more than the victims’ wishes and that there were differences in preferences according to the victims’ race (Crutchfield, Fernandes & Martinez, 2010). Blacks demanded arrest more.
The debate about the difference in ethnicity in the criminal justice proceedings started by Christianson. In his state, he enumerated the rates of white and black imprisonment and realized that the percentage of black persons that had been imprisoned was more than their proportion in the overall population. This showed that there was disproportional imprisonment and, therefore, the criminal justice had disparate treatment. Kleck contrasted this by reviewing the studies of individual imprisonment and found that there was modest disparate treatment in the jurisdictions while others did not have it. He concluded, therefore that there the evidence of the unfair racial difference in the sentencing of the defendants was not substantial.
According to the Criminal Justice Fact Sheet, African Americans were 34% of the total correctional population in 2014. Their rate of incarceration was five times more than that of white men. Nationally, the children who were arrested and were African Americans represented 32% of arrested children (NAACP, n.d.). Hispanics and African Americans constituted about 32 percent of the population in the U.S., yet they made up 56 percent of all imprisoned people in 2015.
Discretionary power may as well be the main cause of racial disparities in the criminal justice system, the people who are granted the power, and the way they utilize it to administer the criminal laws (Jones, 2012). Most of the officials in criminal justice have a wide ability to make decisions that are at their discretion, and that can affect a lot of things that can range from whether a person will be arrested, stopped, strip-searched, or frisked to the determination of whether a person will be detained prior to trial, offered a plea bargain, placed in a diversion program, or charged with a serious felony. During the post-trial stages, the judges also make decisions at their discretion; other people who make discretionary decisions include the correction officials, community supervisor, and correction officials on the confinement location, whether a person should be sent back to prison or given parole for a minor technical violation.
Most people agree that to achieve justice, the officials of criminal justice should be flexible in considering a particular case’s circumstances. The authority that the officials have at their discretion is a good thing when those using it engage in a decision-making process that is fair and free of bias and in the application of practices and policies that do not have a discriminating impact on the minority population. The problem, therefore, lies in most of the discretionary decisions that fuel the adjudication of crime being made from informal policies and practices. Additionally, there is no criminal justice system, neither inside nor outside, that has the role of examining whether those decisions made produced a racial disparity pattern.
A defendant would not likely prevail against a police officer if they claim that they were a victim of racial profiling because their vehicle was stopped for a minor traffic infraction and searched during the routine of the police. In 1996, a defendant who was an African-American driver said that he was stopped by police and that the stop was pretextual (Jones, 2012). He also added that the police used a minor traffic infraction to stop their vehicle to investigate crimes that were not related. The defendant’s claim was rejected by the Fourth Amendment, where the Supreme Court maintained that as long as the police officer had a reason to believe there was a traffic violation, the vehicle was subject to the officer’s search.
The potential for disparity starts with arrest and is mostly connected with traffic stops. Although most of the traffic stops lead to either a ticket or a warning, the interactions between the police and the motorists can serve as a justice system gateway. Studies have shown that minority ethnic and racial groups have a higher likelihood of being stopped for minor infractions by police officers. The evidence is anecdotal, so much so that there is a street phrasing that the media now use: “driving while black,” which assumes that the traffic stops are not a result of driving behavior but a result of skin color. The people seen as the major targets are young Latinos and African Americans. This is due to the fact that police officers think that they have a higher proclivity for criminal behavior. Scant evidence has been found by research for the hypotheses of deferential offending. Evidence, both quantitative and qualitative, has shown that these groups have more probability of being subjected to searching, yet, compared to white men, they have a lower likelihood of having contraband in the vehicles.
References
NAACP. (n.d.). Criminal justice fact sheet.
Crutchfield, R. D., Fernandes, A., & Martinez, J. (2010). Racial and ethnic disparity and criminal justice: How much is too much?. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), 100(3), 903-932.
Jones, C. (2012). Confronting race in the criminal justice system. Criminal Justice, 27(2), 10-15. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy1.ncu.edu/docview/1027592969accountid=28180
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African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities are subjected to the criminal justice system at much higher rates than the white majority. African Americans represent 13 percent of the general population; however, they account for 1 million of the 2.3 million of the prison population. African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months) (NAACP, n. d.).
Challenges of Criminal Justice in Multicultural Society
Based on the readings and your own research, include responses to the following in a paper:
- Determine if there is a racial and ethnic disparity in the criminal justice system and explain why. Support your answer with a recent case from the news, newspaper, or your community.
- Identify reasons for such disparities.
- Police have the discretion to make vehicle stops and can later justify the stop, explaining they saw evidence in plain view in the vehicle. Explain whether or not this type of behavior is a form of racial profiling.
Support your assignment with at least three scholarly resources. In addition to these specified resources, other appropriate scholarly resources, including older articles, may be included.