An Assessment of
RACIAL AND CRIMINAL PROFILING
Cultural Diversity in Criminal Justice
RACIAL AND CRIMINAL PROFILING 1 As many issues and concerns arise in our everyday lives, it is often difficult to overlook many of the horrific and tragic situations of today’s law enforcement. Regardless of what profession you may be in there are always ways to make improvements to it. A few of the future and emerging issues that I feel that leaders in the criminal justice system need to address are racial profiling and criminal profiling which each can create a mistrust within a department and violate the civil liberties of citizens. When events such as these begin to surface in the media and within our communities, questions begin to arise about the tendencies of our police agencies. Racial profiling or racially biased form of policing (especially recently in the United States), is any police action initiated on the mere basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin of a suspect. This is a form of discrimination that is used to target the ethnic, minority communities. Profiling in law enforcement occurs when government agencies and officials decide to investigate a person on suspicion, and the detained suspect committed an illegal offense, based solely on their ethnicity and racial identity. Arrest should be determined and made on the behavior of that individual or on information that leads police to a particular individual that has been identified as being, or having been engaged in some type of criminal activity. Racial profiling was an issue that arose over 40 years ago and has resurfaced as a bigoted practice unworthy of the law enforcement professional. It has been and should continue to be widely condemned as contrary to the basic ethical principles. Furthermore, such particular type of action weakens the
References: http://criminal.lawyers.com/Criminal-Law-Basics/The-Criminal-Profiling-Process.html http://www.victimsofviolence.on.ca/rev2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=336&Itemid=26