Essay On Racial Disparities

Introduction
Racial disparities in the arrest of offenders, has long been a hotly debated issue in the US. Police arrest of minorities is a subject that continues to evoke heated debate. It is now widely acknowledged that minorities, especially African-Americans, are more likely to be arrested for minor offenses than whites. This is a matter of concern, not only because it leads to feelings of prejudice, but police arrest of minorities also leads to a pattern of racial profiling.
This paper discusses police arresting of minorities in the US, a topic that has drawn widespread public interest. The paper argues that there is a strong and undeniable link between racial factors and police arresting of minorities. Hence, the paper begins by examining the racial factor in police arresting. Thereafter, the paper reviews some of the well-documented reasons for discrepancies in arrest rates. Finally, the paper closes with a brief conclusion.
Racial Influence
According to Handout, racial origin often influences police decisions about making an arrest. In the case of suspected juvenile offenses, police tend to consider the demeanor of the suspect in deciding whether to make an arrest.
When a suspected offender shows disrespect to the police, this most likely leads to arrest. However, police decisions about arrest or use of force are also influenced by the nature of neighborhood. In this regard, suspects in racially mixed or minority neighborhoods are more likely to be arrested or threatened by police.
That race is clearly a factor in determining arrests is highlighted when focusing on the interactions between the race of police officers and race of suspects. As Handout argues, in most cases, interactions involving black officers and black suspects lead to arrests, than interactions involving black officers and white suspects. It seems that black officers are more likely to use force with black suspects than white suspects. Handout concede that this differential arresting behavior is a subject that requires research, and further asserts that police use of force is influence by the race of a suspect. Handout also emphasizes racial dynamics in drug-related crimes. It seems that law enforcement tends to focus more on blacks and other racial minorities than whites. Fite et al. (2009) argue that when examining arrest rates, racial discrepancies are clear, and cannot be ignored.
As Whitehead and Lab (2015) argue, disproportionate minority contact in juvenile court decisions raises the question of possible unfair police action. If statistics are anything to go by, racial discrepancies in minority arresting are a matter of concern. In 2010, black youths accounted for 17 percent of the US population, accounted for 31 percent of arrests, 37 percent of youths petitioned to juvenile courts, and 39 percent of those detained. The overrepresentation of minorities in police arrest data, especially for violent offenses, emphasizes the role of racial dynamics. Siegel (2015) concurs with Whitehead and Lab by asserting that official data on crime highlights a higher involvement of minority group members in criminal activity. African-Americans account for 12 percent of the general population, but are linked to about 38 percent of violent crime arrests and 29 percent of property crime arrests. Thus, in both cases, these data are a clear reflection of racial differences in the crime rate. However, at the same time, it cannot be ruled out that these data are also a reflection of racial bias in the justice system. Evidence of racial bias in the arrest process is evident in the use of racial profiling to stop African-Americans and search their vehicles, without probable cause or reasonable suspicion. National surveys of driving practices indicate that young black and Latino males are more likely to be stopped by law enforcement, be searched and arrested as well as more likely to experience force from police officers, despite the fact that they are no more likely to be in possession of illegal contraband than white drivers.
Benekos and Merlo (2015) argue that data on self-reported crime have consistently shown a pattern of racial disparities relating to drug crimes, with the highest proportion of illicit drug use linked to whites, followed by Hispanics, and blacks at the lowest level. However, police arrest data indicate a contrary picture, with minorities accounting for most offenses connected to vandalism, theft and drug crime. Victimization data obtained from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) also indicate minorities as the highest number of offenders committing serious violent crimes such as sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault. When self-reported data and victimization data are combined, the picture that emerges is one that depicts black youths as more likely to commit crime than their white counterparts.
Whitehead and Lab (2015) note that race is definitely a factor in the policing of juveniles. This is partly seen in the fact that when determining whether a neighborhood is dangerous or may have suspicious persons, police largely consider race and class. The fact that high crime rates are generally observed in urban underclass neighborhoods causes police to devote more focus on such neighborhoods, during surveillance operations.
In analyzing the relationship between the criminal justice system and racial health disparities, Binswanger et al. (2011) note that racial minorities are more likely to be involved with the criminal justice system than whites. A large and high disparity population is evident when analyzing the US criminal justice system, and racial disparities in incarceration are striking.
Although minorities feature prominently in crimes, both low-level and serious crime, data indicates that amongst minority groups, African-Americans are the highest offenders. Binswanger et al. (2011) report that about 33 percent of African-American men will have a prison experience in their lifetimes, compared to 17 percent of Latino men. On the other hand, only 6 percent of white men will do prison time. These statistics emphasize the link between race and offending in the criminal justice system.
Reasons for Discrepancies in Arrest Rates In analyzing possible reasons for the discrepancies in arrest rates, it is necessary to engage with the subject of offending. According to Fite et al. (2009), early risk factors play a role in racial differences related to juvenile arrests. These factors also play a role in violence-related and theft-related arrests. Increased exposure to childhood risk factors plays a significant role in racial discrepancies in male arrests. Early conduct problems and low academic achievement are associated more with black boys, which is traced, in part, to poor parent-child communication, peer delinquency and neighborhood problems. This increases the risk of juvenile arrest. Siegel (2015) proposes that system bias could help account for the racial discrepancies in arresting. Unequal or biased treatment of suspects by the justice system could partly explain the race-based differences in arresting procedures and crime rates. Additionally, Fit el. (2009) hypothesize that increased exposure to risk models may account for racial discrepancies in arrests. Accordingly, environmental and societal inequalities, such as poor healthcare and educational systems, play a role in black youths exhibiting more adverse individual risk factors, leading to a greater probability for arrest. A strong link exists between risk factors and juvenile arrest, and more of these risk factors are noted among black youth compared to white youth. Nonetheless, it is important to stress that this does not mean that being black causes the development of problem behavior that leads to arrest. In explaining race differences in offending, Benekos and Merlo (2015) highlight a risk factor. They contend that minority youth are more exposed to contexts of risk than their white counterparts. These risks relate to socio-structural conditions that play a role in delinquency and crime. Thus, significant factors contributing to racial differentiations in offending include economic background of racial and ethnic minorities, effects of poverty and disorder on the family, and impact of neighborhood conditions on the development of crime and delinquency in urban areas.
Benekos and Merlo (2015) explain that this perspective is further linked to the social disorganization theory advanced in the 1940s by Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay, who spent several years in the 1920s and 1930s analyzing residences of youth referred to the Chicago juvenile court. According to their findings, rates of delinquency were highest close to the city center, and declined the further one moved away from the center of the city. The pattern of habitation was such that recent immigrants resided in high-crime neighborhoods as they could not afford to live in more pleasant locations. Shaw and McKay observed that as different immigrant groups became upwardly mobile and relocated to areas away from the inner-city neighborhoods, they did not continue with the trend of high crime rates. However, the inner-city neighborhoods continued to reflect high crime rates, keeping up with the pattern of previous years. Thus, they concluded that it was the neighborhoods rather than the inhabitants that contributed to offending. According to the researchers Shaw and McKay (Benekos and Merlo, 2015), structural features contributed to social disorganization in high-crime areas. These factors included high population density, poverty, unemployment, racial and ethnic heterogeneity, and highly transient populations. In the resultant social disorganization, formal and informal community ties, friendships and social organizations weakened, hence could not provide the supervision and regulation necessary for the effective socialization of children.
Conclusion
The link between race and crime continues to be a highly controversial and emotive subject.
It seems that police often racially profile members of minority groups based on suspicions related to race. However, in discussing police arrest of minorities, it seems clear that police largely rely on patterns of reported crime, such as they have occurred over the years. At the same time, police also rely on their knowledge and experience regarding neighborhood crime, a pattern which strongly suggests that high-crime neighborhoods, in most cases, are inhabited my minorities. While this, by no means, should be interpreted as certification of minorities being more prone to crime than the white US population, it does help in understanding some of the factors that inform police arresting of
minorities.