Real draft for is there racial profiling/ discrimination in the criminal system?In this essay I will be exploring the topic of racial profiling in the criminal law system of the US.
To begin with racial profiling is using an individual’s ethnicity or race to suspect them of a criminal offence, this suspicion then leads to further unnecessary action such as: car searches, identity and nationality checks. This profiling is based on the concept that race collated to crime for example if there is a higher percentage of black thieves then police use this statistic as a direction of suspicion. In most cases the suspicion isn’t of appropriate standard, the authority figures use and extremely excessive use of abuse towards the suspect without any evidence other than their race. (oxford dictionaries). And racial discrimination is when a person is treated in a different way than another person in a similar situation because of their race, colour, or ethnic origin. (human rights). This essay will mainly focus on this problem in the united states as the media attention related to this is mostly predominant in the states.In USA the media, organisations and protesting citizens have highlighted the abuse of the polices authority in the presence of cases of people of colour.
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Cases such as the 2014 Michael brown shooting showcase the injustice in the united states criminal law system. The department o justice civil rights division show us that a person of colour has a higher chance of being stopped and searched whilst driving and being suspected of major crimes such as theft. Through the history of the us we can see racism starting with slavery, then segregation and now police violence.Most believe that police profiling started when police officials started to ‘fight back’ against the war on drugs. During the late to mid-nineties the drug issue was at its all time high due to this illegality the police with help of the drug enforcement agency started to take a more ‘attack’ approach against drugs.
This began with creating a profile that helped police men focus their attention towards potential drug distributors. They way they did this was to create a check list of things to look out for in a suspect, they were: African/Hispanic, acted nervous, made sure to prevent eye contact and whether they used rental cars. Although there was no coloration or evidence that people of colour were more likely to be involved with drugs the officers were still trained to recognise that as guide line. This lead to police aggressively suspecting people of colour and this method then became integrated into the criminal justice system permanently.
Although the current police injustice is concentrated in us sates such as Missouri and Texas doesn’t mean that a similar problem is not imminent in the United Kingdom. In 2011 riots broke out due to the police shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham. This single event lead to a spiral of events that combated the uk policed force