Racial and Criminal Profiling: a Deductive Argument Essay

Erin Callihan, AIUSA, states that Increased national security should not equate to decreased accomplished liberties. All mint be entitled to due process and new(prenominal) basic human goods and constitutional protections (Amnesty internationalist). Racial Profiling, according to Amnesty International, occurs when wake is used by law enforcement or private security officials, to some(a)(prenominal) degree, as a basis for criminal suspicion in non-suspect proper(postnominal) investigations. The Constitution, which is arguably the most important document of the United States, clearly states that both person has the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.This document sets the American people away from many other countries in that it is supposed to give us agree rights. An issue that has risen in the United States time and time once again and has threatened this equality is that of race and racism. Now in law enforcement from the levels of your local anaesthe tic legal philosophy de placement to that of prestigious FBI units there is the specialization in profile, racial profile to be more exact. Racial compose has not sole(prenominal) proven to be largely unsuccessful, but it is violating our equal rights ending up in over representation in Americas prisons and distinction in the literal world. persist is a socially executeed form of miscellanea that has often been misunderstood, leading to different forms of racism. It is a set of shared interests, characteristics, and culture. Race is an illusion that has been created to construct individuality. Identity is not totally decided by you, but chosen for you by what people sire decided astir(predicate) you. The way that people see other people and things as right or wrong depends on the culture you, the individual, is living in. This then makes identity as something that is mostly cultural. Race is equivalent a stereotype, or over generalization, that is making prejudices that lead to racism. A prejudice is any preconceived intellection without correct or adequate information. Through something that is socially constructed by culture, like race,Race is difficult to measure and apply to people because it is self identified. gibe to Ailya Saperstein and Andrew M. Penner in their article The Race of a malefactor book How immurement Colors Racial Perceptions, roughly research on race in the United States treats race as an intrinsic characteristic of individuals, a frigid group membership ascribed at birth and based on wizs ancestry (93). This is difficult to rear into use in the real world because if you withdraw one idea of what each race is you bequeath find that people are different depending on where you are, the time s realise you are there, the amount of interaction with other cultures, and the hi composition in that reason among many other vari fits.An fashion model of this would be how I was considered to be rightfully Mexican at UCSB, yet I am considered White rinse by my family, and I consider myself to be a combination of both as tumefy as Colombian. As having been grown up outset generation American it is very hard on me to harbour been Latina. When I studied abroad last year in Argentina I was not considered Latina at all, but White. The Argentine had a different knowledge of race and insisted that it didnt matter where your parents were from, it only mattered where you were born. The majority of the population does not fit into only that one mold most researchers stir put them in.Race is affected by the population in power and as such can be seen as a form to throttle the status quo. The minorities in a society are often the ones that have a negative reputation and have to deal with the social construct others have make about them. Examples of minorities would be Blacks, Latinos and Muslims. The three races have approach a lot of scrutiny here in the United States. They have been accused of universe a large part of the annoyance population, being uneducated, and being terrorists. Although most are not this is the stereotype they have to rest with every day.When you are part of the majority you get to make up your own identity, which usually ends up being positive. When you are part of the majority, in the case of the United States this would White, it usually means you a doing well or better than others socially. Other things associated with Whites would be a higher education and the suburbs. As the dominant culture all the laws that are created have had them in mind. racialism is institutional prejudice and as such it is hidden. Therefore in outrank to be racist I would argue you need to be part of the dominant culture.There is a misrepresentation in the incarceration is an example of racial profiling as being unconstitutional. The majority of the population of incarcerated pass judgment is made up of Blacks and Latinos. Can it be that they are truly a crime committing ra ce and since Whites are educated they perform slight than half(a) the crime? The answer to this is no. African Americans have long been subdue to felons since the history of the United States began. They were seen as lowly and uneducated and convicted of crimes they did not commit. ineffectual to fight back due to the feature that no one would discover or care even if they knew they were wrong they had to endure punishment. It is a fact that if you are part of the dominant culture the punishment will be less severe.The thing about the Rodney King incident that enraged people was not whether he was guilty or not it was the manner in which he was prosecuted. He was beaten severely unfairly without being able to have a trial to see if he was guilty. In the heart and soul of the law you are innocent until proven guilty, and Mr. King was neer given a fighting chance. Another example of discrimination wear downe racism would be the immigration law in Arizona that requires police officers, when practicable, to detain people they reasonably suspect are in the soil without authorization and to verify their status with federal officials according to Randall C. Archibold of the NY times (par. 22). How is a person reasonably suspect of being an illegal? This is applye those animal(prenominal) features. The fourteenth amendment provides protection against unreasonable searches based on race. Is this law not an example of that?Saperstein and Penner argue that racial profiling, through incarceration rates, affects the individuals, families and communities (93-94). If we start from the top we see that Latinos and Blacks do not constitute even half of our government activity making it misrepresentative of our population. One way racial profiling affects the individual is by making it harder for them to obtain a line of business, let alone a well paying job. Sometimes the individual has to work at a modern age to help their parents with rent and other necessitie s. This is why we see and whence associate Latinos and Blacks in low income neighborhoods. Once you are part of the minority and have been incarcerated the odds of you succeeding in life get importantly slimmer.According to Saperstein and Penner if you have been incarcerated for something narcotics related then you are disqualified for a lot of the aid the government offers. In your FAFSA application you are asked if you have been convicted of any drug related felony. If you press yes then you are not eligible for financial aid. Since most of these families cannot afford to send their children off to college that option completely diminishes. As a result you have communities with low income, who are most educated to the high school level, if that with high unemployment.Lets put aside the fact that racial profiling goes against the constitution and go steady to see if it actually works. According to sources the FBIs use of criminal profiling has a low success rate. Their success rate can be equaled by that of psychics some would argue. Captain Ron Davis of the Oakland Police Department said it beaver in September 9, 2003 to NOBLE when he stated that Racial profiling . . . is one of the most ineffective strategies, and I call it nothing less than lazy, sloppy police work.Its basically saying you dont want to keep an eye on about your community, you dont want to learn about peoples behavior, you dont want to do your job, and dont want to investigate, you just want to stop a lot of people and see if you can come up with some statistical number at the end of the evening. . . .. (Amnesty International) There has been criticism on the process because essentially what you are is forgetting about the hard evidence and snap up a picture of what the perpetrator looks like. Profilers have forgotten was fieldwork is and have become armchair professionals that dont need to go to the crime moving-picture show to get insight. In Macolm Gladwells What the pass over S aw he describes the job of a profiler as relying on typology to paint a picture of the killer.Most of reasoning behind this technique is that of homology, the relationship between the culprit and the action. Gladwell discover that there were two categories of killers, organized and unorganized. The organized chose their victim carefully and went through great measures to not be caught. The disorganized killer chose their victim haphazard with usually high stakes of being caught.Gladwell finds out that people dont fall strictly into one category therefore crimes dont fall into one category. You can have the same crime done for different motives. By relying on connections they are making up based on theories they have made up that have made this guessing game that Gladwell calls a party trick (354). The moral of his story being in a way like Einsteins in that if you get enough wrongs you eventually get a right. However, there is too much a stake, one of these being peoples lives, to play a guessing game at that level.Racial profiling and Criminal profiling are unconstitutional and frankly a wipe out of time. Racial profiling opens the door and accepts discrimination to uphold the status quo. Criminal profiling is a waste of time, tax dollar money and obscured by racial profiling. Lets stop with these erroneous short cuts and actually take the time to evaluate what racial profiling actually does to others. whole kit CitedAmnesty International Working to Protect Human Rights. Amnesty International USA, 2011. Web. 20 Mar. 2011. Archibold, Randall C. Arizona Enacts Stringent Law on Immigration. New YorkTimes 23 Apr. 2010, New York ed., A1 sec. New York TImes, 23 Apr. 2010. Web. 21 Mar. 2011. Gladwell, Malcolm. Dangerous Minds. What the Dog Saw and Other Adventure Stories. Camberwell, Vic. Allen Lane, 2009. 336-56. Print. Saperstein, Aliva, and Andrew M. Penner. The Race of a Criminal Record How Incarceration Colors Racial Perceptions. Social Problems 57.1 (2010) 92-113. JSTOR. Web. 20 Mar. 2011.