Racial profiling in New York Criminal Justice System
Abstract
Equality is a critical area of governance in the United States. However, racial profiling in the criminal justice system has been a major drawback. This article seeks to evaluate the state of racial profiling in New York’s criminal justice. Primary attention is given to the policing sector. This evaluation follows an explanatory research design in making the various inferences. This evaluation is through the use of crime rate statistics compared with the spatial distribution of the various races. Racial profiling is found to be existent in New York criminal justice system with the blacks and other minor communities being subject to discriminated. The paper also found that factors of high crime rate among the minority communities influenced racial profiling.
Introduction and Overview
The United States has made significant progress in various aspects over the years. The country has exhibited positive changes in reducing crimes and in ensuring equality. According to Weich and Angulo (2002), US has made significant progress in promoting equal treatment of its citizens. However, racism has continued to increase in the criminal justice. Criminal laws are required to be neutral to all the citizens. However, Banks (2012) accounts for the suffering of the minorities on a racial basis. Minorities have been segregated and excluded both formally and informally, in court decisions and legislation.
Racial disparity is a vice to the concept of equality in governance. The principle of equality is an essential component of governance. Equality concerns with equal and unbiased treatment and access to resources. Maintenance of equality in the criminal justice in America has experienced immense criticism. The criminal justice system has been questioned for the disparities exhibited in how it treats people of different races (McKinley, 2014). McKinley further explains that the issue of racial disparity is present in the New York criminal justice system especially in the program of stop and frisk.
The criminal justice system concerns with the apprehension and punishing of law breakers. It is one of the essential pillars in ensuring administration of democracy (Weich & Angulo, 2002). However, the criminal justice has deviated from its role in ensuring democracy. It has resorted to the victimization of the minorities in America. The interaction of the police and other law enforcement agencies is seen to be influenced by racial affiliations. According to The Sentencing Project (2014), such racial discrimination by organs administering justice is a violation of Article 5 (I) of the Constitution.
Racial disparity in the criminal justice system is a vice that should be discouraged by all means possible. Apart from the violation of Article 5 of the constitution as earlier mentions, it causes harm to innocent minorities. According to Weich and Angulo [2002], racial disparity affects both guilty and innocent minorities. The disparity exists in every stage of the criminal justice system [Hartney & Vuong, 2009]. Racial disparity is evident in policing tactics such as stop and frisk, arrests, sentencing, prosecution and capital punishment.
Racial Disparity in New York
New York has seen a drastic decline in crimes. However, racial disparity is still evident in the state. A report by Ridgeway (2007) reveals a pattern of racial disparity in the policing program in New York. Reports by the police department in New York also suggest discrepancies exhibited as the overrepresentation of the minority in various arrests. According to ACLU (2014), there is immense racial discrimination of the minorities in New York. ACLU states that 83 percent of all the stops and frisk instances between the year 2004 to 2012 African-American and Latino. On the contrary, only 10 percent of the stops were of the whites. Such representation reveals the underlying vice of racial discrimination in the criminal justice.
Golub, Johnson and Dunlap (2007) explains that the composition of New York is 26 % Blacks, 24% Hispanics and the whites comprise 43%. Similarly to ACLU, Golub and colleagues make an account of overrepresentation of the minorities in the policing program of stop and frisk. The blacks accounted for 51% of all stops. Hispanics accounted for 33% of the stops while the white accounted for only 13 stops. A similar account is made for arrestees in New York. In a study by Golub and his colleagues, 64% and 26% of the arrestees who were detained in New York were blacks and Hispanics respectively. Such statistics reveal a pattern of policing based on racial profiling. Courts have discredited the use of racial profiling to determine criminality of a person or a group of people. This paper seeks to explore the issue of racial profiling in New York. In achieving this, the paper evaluates whether racial profiling in criminal justice is existent and what are its causes. The policy of stop and frisk is used as the primary area of study for the research.
Main Thesis
The thesis statement for this study is;
‘Does racial profiling exists in New York criminal justice system and what are its causes?’
In evaluating this statement, the paper considers secondary data of crimes in New York based on racial backgrounds. Data on police-citizen encounters and arrests is evaluated. The data is used to determine if there are instances of racial overrepresentation in the criminal justice in New York. Moreover, an evaluation will be used on the data to determine what causes racial profiling in criminal justice.
Data
Various factors influence decisions by the police of arresting a person. Such factors include such as demeanor and neighborhood. Moreover, police decisions could be influenced by racial affiliations (Banks, 2012). Bank further explains that police were likely to arrest, use force or threaten suspects living in minority neighborhoods and areas of mixed races. In instances involving shootings, the blacks are more likely to be shot (Fyfe, 1982 as cited in Banks, 2012). The interaction between police and suspects and the underlying racial aspects can be understood through the consideration of the relevant data in New York police department. This section primarily considers the stop and frisk program data. According to reports by the police department in the year 2013, 55.7 % and 29.2% stops involved blacks and Hispanics respectively. Stops involving the white comprised 11.0%, while those by Asians were o.4% (Bratton, 2013). In a similar report for the year 2014, 54.6% and 27.8% stops involved the blacks and Hispanics respectively. On the other hand, stops involving the whites constituted 12.2%. As earlier mentioned, the composition of New York is 26% and 24% black and Hispanics respectively (Golub, Johnson & Dunlap, 2007). The white consists of the 43% of the total population in New York. The following table summarizes the various incidences of stop and frisk in the years 2013 and 2014.
Table1: Percentage of stop and frisk representation in New York
| 2014 | 2013 | |||
| Race | Stops | Representation of stops | Stops | Representation of stops |
| Black | 54.6% | 2.10 | 55.7% | 2.14 |
| Hispanic | 27.8% | 1.16 | 29.2% | 1.22 |
| White | 12.2% | 0.28 | 11.0% | 0.26 |
| Others | 5.5% | 0.79 | 4.0% | 0.57 |
Source: Bratton, 2013; Bratton 2014
The representation of stops among the various races reveals massive discrepancies along racial lines. Statistics on the representation of stops involves a comparison of the residential and the distribution of stops based on race. The data for the arrests made in 2013 and 2014 is as illustrated in the following table.
Table 2: Firearm arrests in 2013 and 2014 along racial affiliations
| 2014 | 2013 | |||
| Race | Arrestee | Representation of stops | Arrestee | Representation of stops |
| Black | 69.7% | 2.68 | 69.3% | 2.67 |
| Hispanic | 20.9% | 0.87 | 21.6% | 0.90 |
| White | 8.5% | 0.20 | 8.6% | 0.20 |
| Others | 1.0% | 0.14 | 0.5% | 0.07 |
Source: Bratton, 2013; Bratton 2014
Quigley (2011) continues to give more illustrations indicating racial profiling in the criminal justice system in New York. Quigley makes a comparison of the use of drugs by the whites and the blacks in which he explains that the rate of use of drugs is comparable in both cases. However, he notes that the rate of arrest of the blacks is comparatively high. The blacks are arrested at a rate that is 2-11 higher than that of the whites. He also notes that only 8% of the whites stopped would be frisked. On the contrary, 85% of the blacks and Latinos stopped would be frisked.
According to Quigley (2011), pretrial detention of the blacks is 33% more likely than that of the whites. The rate of illegal exclusion of the African-American is also at a higher rate compared to that of the whites. Racial profiling is also evident in the courtrooms. Quigley explains that the sentencing of the blacks is 10% higher than that of the whites. Moreover, 83% of the blacks are sentenced as compared to the whites despite being the most prevalent. Making useful inferences regarding racial profiling in New York criminal justice system requires understanding the general racial trend of crimes in the region. The following map illustrates the racial distribution of the whites and the Blacks in New York.
Fig 1: Map illustrating the distribution of the whites in New York
Fig 2: Map illustrating the distribution of the blacks in New York
Fig 3: Map illustrating the distribution of the American Indian and the Alaska Natives in New York
These maps reveal that the distribution of the of the whites is dominant in New York. The whites indicate the highest population density compared to blacks, American Indian, and the Alaska Natives. The overrepresentation of the blacks and other minor communities indicates the possibility of racial profiling in the region. The following figure gives the rate of crime among the various races.
Fig 4: A summary of crime rate for the various races
Conclusions
The high representation of blacks and other minor communities in various criminal justice systems indicates that racial profiling does occur in New York. According to Weich and Angulo (2002), racial profiling in criminal justice system does occur, and it starts with the investigation of criminal activities. However, considering crime distribution in the region, it is prudent to infer that the existence of racial profiling is highly influenced by crime distribution and the factors related to it. For instance, Fagan and Davies (2000) explain that the broken window policing was the primary contributor to the existence of racial profiling in the criminal justice systems. However, this policy requires high concentration of police in areas where social disorder rate is high (Kelling & Bratton, 2015). Social disorder is high in poor communities that happen to be primarily the blacks and other minority communities. Moreover, the statistics given in the results reveals a high crime rate in New York. Consequently, it is prudent to pay key focus to these communities (Weich & Angulo, 2002).
However, it is indispensable to infer that racial profiling does occur and is promoted by the criminal justice system. This inference stems from the fact that the various levels of government have played critical roles to ensure that residential pattern based on racial affiliation. Such segregation contributes to racial discrimination of the minorities (Bass, 2001). Moreover, the racial segregation enables inequitable service delivery and good distribution to the minority plants and hence promoting to high poverty levels that account for the high crime rate in these communities. Therefore, as much as minority communities may be targeted due to their association with high crime rate, racial profiling does exist in New York.
References
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