Introduction
There is apparent disparity in the rates at which juveniles from various ethnic backgrounds are incarcerated. For instance, Black teenagers are 5 times more probable to be convicted than their White counterparts (Mendoza & Parks-Stamm, 2020). The chances for an American Indian and a Hispanic youth getting jailed are 3 and 2 times that of Caucasians respectively (Kovera, 2019). According to Exum (2020), the frequency to which adolescents from varied backgrounds commit crimes is approximately similar. Therefore, it is someone’s race that predicates their likelihood to be imprisoned.
Relevance of the Study
The initial point of contact between individuals and the criminal justice system is with the police. The manner in which the officers utilize their discretionary powers determine who eventually gets incarcerated (Edwards et al., 2019). Schwartz (2020) argues that it is actually the police bias towards juveniles from certain racial backgrounds which causes the disparity in the rates of imprisonment. This is worrisome, especially considering that Americans are perturbed by the history of racism and the events of the Jim Crow era (DeVylder et al., 2020). Indeed, a significant number of people from minority communities believe that police officers are biased against them.
Knowledge Gaps and their Societal Implications
Police officers have important responsibilities of upholding the law as well as promoting public safety. Wilson & Wolfer (2020) asserts that by doing so, they facilitate the flourishing of individual liberty. This is a situation where an individual’s behavior, political views, and way of life are unimpeded. When the officers are biased, some people in the society are terrorized to the point where they are unable to flourish. Their socioeconomic wellbeing is imperiled, and the predicaments could become generational (DeVylder et al., 2020). A number of factors have been cited as the catalysts of police bias, but none of them sufficiently reveals the root-cause of prejudice among the officers.
Literature Review
There are several instances where routine events lead to juveniles being arrested. According to Chama (2019), cases of White citizens launching formal complaints against teenagers as the latter engage in such everyday activities mowing lawns and barbecuing have increased. These calls almost always lead to arrests as the officers already believe that the accused must have engaged in criminal activities (Kovera, 2019). Consequently, at least 67% of Black youths expect to be victimized by the police of the law based entirely on their race (Schwartz, 2020). They recognize the fact that the officers hardly presume them to be innocent until proven guilty.
The criminal justice system, and especially the police, routinely engages in criminal profiling. Exum (2020) asserts that this process is important as it facilitates the finding of unknown offenders. It is based on historical data from which patterns are drawn, and predictions made. Although characterization is helpful, the information upon which it is based could be inconsistent with reality (Edwards et al., 2019). The main sources of crime statistics in the US are the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). They detail the particulars of various incidences and arrests, and this is mostly on offences such as burglary, larceny, motor vehicle thefts, prostitution, and violation of weapon laws (DeVylder et al., 2020). If members of a certain racial background were arrested more often than those of another, the historical data will induce the police to continue targeting group.
The bias of the past is likely to influence future decisions, particularly where the subsequent police work is based on patterns discovered from previous arrest and incident records. Encounters between the officers and Black juveniles tend to escalate more often than is the case with Whites because the former already believe they are unfairly targeted (Chama, 2019). On their part, the police perceive their actions as justified, and a significant number of them respond to 911 calls with the mindset that they may need to use force (Wilson & Wolfer, 2020). With such an attitude, an arrest rather than de-escalation of the situation will often result.
Theories on Police Bias
Several theories have been developed in an attempt to explain the sources of ethnic and racial prejudices. These suppositions are categorized into sociological and social-psychological classes (Kovera, 2019). Social-psychological arguments are used to explain authoritarian personalities, and these are presumed to have developed in someone’s childhood (Mendoza & Parks-Stamm, 2020). For instance, harsh parenting is believed to cause individuals to demand obedience from others, and it also precipitate the unwillingness to accept those deemed to be from the outgroup. A domineering police officer who has a stereotypical belief that Black youths are prone to committing crimes will actually target them for arrest.
Another social-psychological argument is that bias emanates from an individual officer’s frustrations, and this is explained by the scapegoating theory. The reasoning behind it is consistent with projection, a defense mechanism outlined by Sigmund Freud (Mendoza & Parks-Stamm, 2020). In essence, individual police officers could be displacing the hostility they have towards such targets as bosses onto powerless victims (Exum, 2020). Black juveniles are already disenfranchised, and hence they are unlikely to retaliate (Edwards et al., 2019). An aggrieved officer is more probable to divert their frustrations towards those who have traditionally been oppressed than on to those who are already emancipated.
Sociological Explanations of Police Bias
Sociological explanations are about conformity with the culture of the people around where one lives. The social learning theory holds that prejudice is caused by socialization from one’s peers, parents, and even the media (Chama, 2019). The level of an individual’s bias is proportional to the extent of intolerance in the community where they live. In essence, behaviors are acquired and perfected through the imitation of others (Schwartz, 2020). Humans are social beings, and one knows that for them to have a relationship with others, they must agree with their life perspectives. Moreover, a child may observe that certain behaviors are rewarded as others are punished (DeVylder et al., 2020). They will ultimately desist from acts which cause them pain and persist on those for which they are rewarded.
Theoretical Contribution
Statistics are important in human activity, and hence even if they occasionally mislead, it is impossible to work without them. Most of the scholars are only critical of how biased crime data seems to be. However, they fail to recommend ways and means of improving data collection and analysis so as to enhance the approximations made about reality. They may have, for instance, recommended that only credible accusations and justifiable arrests become part of crime statistics. This would help avert a scenario where succeeding officers continue being misled by information which was originally generated in a biased fashion.
There are gaps in the way theories on police bias are formulated. For instance, it is unclear whether prejudice comes from someone’s nature, or it is the environment which prompts them to become intolerant towards others. Theories fail to explain how officers who grew up in a loving home and in families with no history of bigotry become prejudiced and start targeting juveniles from the minority groups.
Viewing the issue of police bias from an objective standpoint shows that it is a deep-rooted challenge, and the officers often exhibit it unconsciously. Nonetheless, it must be addressed because it deprives members of certain communities their liberty, and also increase their rate of incarceration. The confidence that the citizens have in their police department’s ability to maintain law and order wanes. In that case, the knowledge gaps which currently exist ought to be addressed. It is possible to analyze data and, for instance, find out what percentage of 911 calls were eventually found to be credible. There should be a method of expunging the discredited incidences from the records as they have an undue influence on the officers’ attitude.
Methodology
The fact that crime statistics are maintained under programs such as UCR makes it possible to access the kind of information which would necessitate the determination of the rate at which unwarranted 911 calls are made. It may also help to determine what percentage of juveniles of each major race is ultimately incarcerated upon being arrested by the police. Those two sets of statistics are important because officers often argue that their decisions to detain an individual is significantly influenced by the historical crime data available to them.
Data from programs like UCR would be supplemented with the information gathered through phenomenology. This is a research design which facilitates the understanding of respondents’ lived experiences (Chama, 2019). It would avail the opportunity for the members of the minority communities to share their views about how they perceive police bias as impeding their liberty. The same method would be used to get the officers’ perspective. The working hypothesis is that prejudice is what results into disparity in incarceration rates among juveniles from various racial backgrounds.
Proposed Outline of a Study
The proposed study is qualitative in nature, and indeed, the information gotten from programs like UCR is categorical, and hence fits in this kind of inquiry.
Data will be collected using two main approaches. These are:
Document review:
- In depth interviews.
Analysis will be informed by the observations, images, and by language. The specific methods for doing this will include:
- Content analysis, and this is where words and phrases will be categorized and their meanings discussed.
- Thematic analysis, which involve a close examination and coding of data in order to identify the patterns.
- Discourse analysis where meanings and communication will be studied in respect to their social context.
This approach will facilitate the development of original theories, and is in fact based on the assumption that situations change with passage of time. Old theories may not explain the current scenario in an effective manner because different issues and new meanings have emerged (Wilson & Wolfer, 2020). Unfortunately, data gathering for the purpose of completing a phenomenology study could be time consuming, and the respondents may provide unreliable answers.
Conclusion
Someone’s racial background influences their probability of getting arrested and ultimately incarcerated. In essence, if two juveniles, one White and the other Black, follow the same routine in life, the latter would still be more likely to be imprisoned than the former. Scholars have blamed unreliable crime data, the personalities of the police officers, and even the influence of the media. They have, nonetheless, failed to make recommendations on what should be done to improve the quality of the information held in data bases. The current theories do not explain why officers without dogmatic backgrounds are still affected by prejudice. If these two issues are disregarded, disparities in the rates of juvenile incarceration are bound to continue.
References
Chama, B. (2019). The Black Lives Matter movement, crime and police brutality: Comparative study of New York Post and New York Daily News. European Journal of American Culture, 38(3), 201–216. Web.
DeVylder, J., Fedina, L., & Link, B. (2020). Impact of police violence on mental health: A theoretical framework. American Journal of Public Health, 110(11), 1704–1710. Web.
Edwards, F., Lee, H., & Esposito, M. (2019). Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex. PNAS, 116 (34) 16793-16798. Web.
Exum, J. J. (2020). Sentencing disparities and the dangerous perpetuation of racial bias. CRSJ, 26(2). 491-522. Web.
Kovera, M. B. (2019). Racial disparities in the criminal justice system: Prevalence, causes, and a search for solutions. Journal of Social Issues, 75(4). 1139-1164. Web.
Mendoza, S. A., & Parks-Stamm, E. J. (2020). Embodying the police: The effects of enclothed cognition on shooting decisions. Psychological Reports, 123(6), 2353–2371. Web.
Schwartz, S. A. (2020). Police brutality and racism in America. Explore, 16(5). 280-282. Web.
Wilson, B. L., & Wolfer, T. A. (2020). Reducing police brutality in African American communities: Potential roles for social workers in congregations. Social Work & Christianity, 47(3), 66–84. Web.