Racial Profiling In America's Criminal Justice System

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Seeing Beyond the Black and White in America’s Criminal Justice System Racial bias exists in the world of criminal justice; African American men are arrested at alarmingly high rates compared to white men. As of 2014, thirty four percent of the total prison population was made up of African Americans (NAACP). New footage seems to appear on social media daily, showing unjust killings and severe, unwarranted police brutality against African Americans. Although shocking, this is nothing new. Racial bias is a long standing problem in our country, and was referred to by President Obama during his presidency as, “a long history of inequity in the criminal justice system in America,” (Horwitz, Wesley). Racial bias and inequality exist in America’s …show more content…
The Fourth Amendment is supposed to offer protection against searches and seizures without probable cause, while the Fourteenth Amendment aims to require equal protection. Yet statistics show that these Amendments and rights are not being distributed equally. Let us consider the fact that we have all heard the term, “driving while black.” What that horrible phrase actually signifies is the fact that African Americans are stopped by police offers more often, with many reporting that they were stopped because of their race and no other reason. A statistic from Missouri in 2007 actually shows that though blacks were seventy eight percent more likely to be searched by traffic police than whites, contraband was found twenty five percent less often among black drivers (MacKinnon, Fiala). This helps to prove that though still used, racial profiling is not an effective way to measure crime; what it does help show is that racism is actively being used in our criminal justice system as a means to “catch …show more content…
We, as society, regardless of color or background, need to be more aware of our own perceptions and biases. In some cases innocent black men have been killed on the assumptions or accusations made by whites who over exaggerated or misunderstood a situation simply because of the color of skin. Uniform guidelines need to exist for prosecutors to help them prioritize justice instead of attracting attention to race in criminal prosecution. State and federal policy makers need to turn the focus of drug polices in a direction that would be better suited at addressing the abuse of drugs, versus harsher sentencing for offenders while also creating equality by giving equal access to justice for all. There needs to be an expansion in our court systems, reductions in sentences, access to better legal counsel and better job placement for those released after conviction to help break the cycle of crime which harms black communities and its
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