Disparity and Discrimination Essay This essay will explain the differences between disparity and discrimination in the criminal justice system. This essay will explore law enforcement practices, racial profiling and what professionals and the community can do in partnership to reduce the amount of prejudice that occurs among ethnic groups. Disparity and Discrimination in Criminal Justice Discrimination is considered a behavior, one of prejudice against group membership in either a positive or negative manner (Collective & Jones, 2009). However, racial disparity does not necessarily mean that one is racially discriminated against. In the criminal justice system, legal, and extralegal factors are used to determine the seriousness of a crime, along with a person’s past criminal record.
Racism devalues specific members of the community. It promotes the idea that some people are better or more entitled to our nation's liberties by simple virtue of having a "preferred" ethnicity or race. If it is accepted that one race is superior, it must then be accepted that another race is inferior. As a result of these ideas, people are subjected to ridicule, harassment, racial propagation, vilification and even physical abuse. These attitudes are exclusive and exploitive.
This biased attitude toward minorities has and continues to lead to racial disparities in imposing the death penalty. In regard to racial disparities within the justice system, there are varied definitions that range from differences that may unconsciously imply unfairness to differences that result from overt discrimination. Where along this continuum
Discuss the factors that contribute to prejudice and discrimination and identify some techniques for reducing the development of prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice and discrimination have been prevalent throughout human history. Prejudice has to do with a negative attitude held by a person about members of a particular group, while discrimination refers to behaviors directed differently against people because of prejudice toward the social group they belong to. Prejudice is the attitude and discrimination is the behavior that can result from the attitude. Discrimination can be controlled by laws, but the prejudicial attitude can’t be easily controlled.
There are four types of discrimination, the first is individual discrimination. Individual discrimination is the behaviour of one person to another or a group of people, the next is institutional discrimination; this is when discrimination is built into the way the institution is run. Next is overt discrimination, this is when an individual or institution knowingly treats someone unfairly on the bias of race, gender, etc. The last is covert discrimination, this discrimination in subtle, for example applying criteria that people will be unable to meet, this type can be intentional or unintentional. Discrimination can be seen in practise with stereotyping, labelling, disempowering, abusing, bullying, abuse of power, infringements of rights and over-riding individual’s rights.
There are several causes for discrimination, which are the same for prejudice and stereotyping. Race is regarding a persons skin color or where they are from, ethinicity is the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition. Age is people discriminate people because of their age, usually older adults, gender are people discriminating against males and females and sexuality are people that discriminate others based on their sexual orientation such as; transgender and transsexual individuals. • How is discrimination faced by one identity group (race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, gender, sexual orientation, age, or disability) the same as discrimination faced by another? How are they different?
Crime can affect the way individuals perceive others generally creating bias and prejudice within a person’s frame of thought; hopefully we can make someone think a little differently. Social structure theories generally put forth that the disadvantaged economic class is a primary cause of crime. It states that neighborhoods which are “lower class” create forces of strain, disorganization, and frustration that lead to the action of crime, they have used these to put them into classes; social disorganization, strain theory and cultural deviance. Social disorganization theory suggests that slum dwellers violate the law because they live in areas where social control has broken down. The origin of social disorganization theory can be traced to the work of Shaw and McKay, who concluded that disorganized areas marked by divergent values and transitional populations produce criminality.
Brooke Simunjak Sociology Final Paper May 9 2013 Although gender is not as simple as may seem, Gender comes into play along with a number of different aspects such as sex, gender and gender roles. But what is social inequality? Social inequality is characterized by the existence of unequal opportunities and rewards for different social positions or statuses within a group or society. It contains structured and recurrent patterns of unequal distributions of goods, wealth, opportunities, rewards, and punishments. Sexuality has been evoked in multiple ways in the study of gender inequality.
Discrimination- unlawful discrimination occurs when a person is harassed or treated arbitrarily or different because of their membership in a “protected class”. A protected class is a group of two people who share common characteristics and are protected from discrimination and harassment by the law. Prejudice refers to negative judgments and/or views about a group formed without knowledge, though, or reason. A stereotype is a (often negative) generalization about a group based upon samples that do not represent the group, in which the generalization becomes so well-known it becomes a “conventional image” for the group in question., often accepted as the truth by the illogical bunch. Stereotypes could be a form of prejudice if they are negative generalizations.
There are many different types of social inequality. In order for something to be considered inequitable, there must be differences in benefits based on some perceived different. Inequality may be based on gender, cultural practices, or race. Some sociologists believe that social inequality leads to crime. Let us explore the various types of social inequality and see what crime, if any, it might lead to.