Management
The article has been written by presupposing that police award serious sentences for petty crimes so as to deter individuals from committing severe crimes. On the basis of this, data was collected and analyzed to find out whether selective treatment based on race is one of the main tenets for awarding severe sentences for petty crimes (Garcia, 4).
The independent variables in this articles are those of race, gender and age. On the other hand, the dependent variable form the extent of punishment meted out by the police for petty crimes. The level of punishment awarded is usually dependent on the race. This information has been found by collecting criminal justice and arrest information and then further analyzing the data.
The subject population forms all individuals who have been awarded punishment for engaging in low level and nonviolent criminal activities. This has been restricted to the races of Whites, Hispanic or Latinos and Blacks.
The study was conducted by submitting a request to access records under the New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act (OPRA). The researchers collected records for a ten year period beginning 2003 and ending 2012. The purpose of analyzing the data was to examine the rate of arrest among the diverse demographic population, by tracking and identifying arrest patterns. These patterns were traced to determine decrease of increase in arrest on the basis of race and mapping locations of occurrence of arrests. The study has only considered disparities in low level or nonviolent arrests. For this purpose, ratios were formed based on race in a particular jurisdiction. The study included determining racial disparities by considering the Whites, Latino/Hispanic and the Black population. Once the ratio is generated it is multiplied by 100,000 in order to get the rate of arrest per 100,000 individuals. In order to measure the racial disparity per offence, a comparison of the ratios garnered for Latino/Hispanic and Black population with that of the White population is conducted.
The study has found that heightened amount of racial disparity exists by comparing the arrest level of Whites with Blacks with respect to the cities of New Jersey, Millville, New Brunswick and Elizabeth. Another finding was that individuals engaging in petty crimes do not engage in conducting severe crimes. Also, there exists racial disparity between the Whites and the Hispanic or Latino population in every jurisdiction in which data was available. This is because some of the police departments refrain from tracking information on Hispanic or Latino population. Furthermore the law implementation department do not engage in maintaining reliable and accessible formats for record keeping (Garcia, 4).
It is essential for the police department to refrain from severely punishing individuals for committing low level and nonviolent offenses on the basis of race. Moreover, the law enforcement personnel should refrain from employing the number of low level and nonviolent arrests made to be linked with the performance appraisal of police officers. If this practice continues, then there will be an increase in the criminal activity of the White population especially by repeatedly engaging in nonviolent and low level crimes including possessing drugs like marijuana. The disadvantaged population may be arrested by the police for false charges leading to frustration among the youths. This further leads them to engage in anti-social activities as these people find it very difficult to garner employment and conduct their lives in a normal fashion (Garcia, 75).
Works cited:
Garcia, Linda. “Selective Policing”. American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey. 2015: 1 – 106. Print.
