Cultural Diversity and Criminal Justice

QUESTION

For this assignment you are to write a brief five-page literature review, but not to exceed six pages, on a topic you will select dealing specifically with an issue related to diversity and multiculturalism in criminal justice. Times New Roman font, 12-point font, 1 inch margins, and double-spaced. The document must be a Microsoft Word document.
Multiculturalism, Crime, and Justice by McNamara, R. & R. Burns. NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 978-0-19-064263

ANSWER

Cultural Diversity in the Criminal Justice System

Many people do not like jury duty, but the fact remains that it is a common method through which the people of a country interact with the country’s justice system. The criminal justice system (CJS) is made up of various segments: the courts, the police, and the prisons. The main objectives of the CJS in the country are to ensure the safety of the citizens and to provide citizens with an avenue for voicing their complaints and receiving justice. These objectives are addressed differently by the three segments of the criminal justice system. The system is dependent on fairness to build the trust of the people. In any diverse country, however, cultural diversity is often an issue that can undermine the idea of an unbiased and fair criminal justice system. Since the various parts of the system are managed by diverse people, there are various problems that arise as a result of differences in how people process and act on any provided information. The various problems that affect the CJS, which are caused by cultural diversity, are discussed in this paper. This paper is a literature review of the various cultural diversity issues within the CJS.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY

People of different cultural backgrounds having different faiths, values, and beliefs live in the country and call it home. The United States, for instance, is home to people from all walks of life. Many other countries also have diverse populations, with many of them embracing diversity and viewing it as a source of strength and pride. Countries and governments strive to promote cultural diversity through policies and legislation such as the freedom of speech to promote communication between people from different cultural backgrounds. While cultural diversity, if properly managed, can result in increased efficiency and strengths in the justice system, improper management can result in many problems and inefficiency within the system.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY RELATED PROBLEMS

Behaviors such as stereotyping and bias based on cultural differences can result in many problems within the criminal justice system. Bias occurs when an individual has developed opinions about people from a different culture or background, preventing the individual from remaining impartial. Bias is bad if it is levelled against huge groups of people, resulting in the development of a stereotype. Stereotypes are oversimplified or exaggerated notions that are applied to certain groups of people. For instance, a person may expect people from a particular community to be dishonest or cunning. Stereotypes affect fairness and impartiality, which form the foundation of the CJS. Several problems that arise in the justice system as a result of cultural diversity have been discussed and investigated by researchers in the recent past.

Police and Profiling. The concept of profiling is most commonly seen in racial profiling (Novak and Mitchell 276), where the different stereotypes placed on people from different races are used to influence judgment instead of relying on facts. Novak and Mitchell (275) conducted research on the impact of an individual’s race or ethnicity in traffic enforcement and found that racial profiling occurs in law enforcement. There are many cases in which police officers, especially those in traffic enforcement, have profiled people of color and people from different cultures based on their past experiences and stereotypes (278). As a result of racial profiling, a person of color driving an expensive vehicle may be judged to be a drug dealer rather than a lawyer or doctor. This is because of the existing stereotype that people of color make money through illegal businesses such as drug trafficking. This results in a huge problem as a biased police officer may spend a lot of time asking questions and arresting an individual that is innocent.

Provine and Doty (270) look at the incarceration of immigrants in the United States as a racial profiling project, arguing that the policy responses to unauthorized immigration focus on economically marginalized and physically distinctive minorities. These minorities are often classified by law enforcement as the country’s immigration threat, which results in unfair treatment of people from different cultures. The authors examined various federal enforcement policies and found that the policies resulted in the development of a “landscape of institutionalized racial violence” (261) in the present United States immigration regime. Research conducted over the years in the United States has shown that despite policing policies and practices varying across the country, there exists a substantial disparity between races in regards to the traffic searches and stops (Rojek, Rosenfeld, and Decker 993; Novak and Mitchell 275). Nevertheless, whether this disparity is as a result of racial profiling or different levels of involvement in crime is a highly debated issue in the country.

Judicial Bias. Unfair bias pegged on cultural differences usually occurs during the court process involving juries and judges. Juries and judges are supposed to practice impartiality in order to provide fair and just judgment. Any biases ruin impartiality and result in unjust judgment. Studies have shown that judicial bias against certain communities exists in many countries. In 2010, Gazal‐Ayal and Sulitzeanu‐Kenan (403) investigated whether ethnic identity affects the judicial process in Israeli courts. The authors analyzed the decision-making of Jewish and Arab judges in the cases of Jewish and Arab suspects to shed light on ethnic bias in the judicial process and its decisions. The study found concrete evidence of same ethnic group (in-group) bias in the decisions of judges on detention, but not in the length of the detention (407).

The federal guidelines on sentencing are in place in the United States to minimize unwarranted sentencing disparities among defendants. There has been increased levels of racial disparity in sentencing since the year 2005 in the United States. After conducting research on federal defendants, the Yang (75) found that “black defendants received 2 months more in prison compared with their white counterparts”. The question of whether an individual’s ethnicity or color influences the decisions of a judge or magistrate in court is contentious and has been discussed widely on social media and mass media platforms in the United States, with many people citing the fact that there are more people of color in prisons than white people as proof that bias exists in the American courts system. However, some people argue that this is as a result of the differences in the levels of involvement in crime between different cultures and groups of people (Clair and Winter 333).

In the judicial system and law enforcement, social and cultural diversity issues are more prevalent than in other social systems in the United States. African-American people face an incarceration rate that is more than five times that of white people (Pettit 2012). Male African-Americans have a very high likelihood of serving time in prison compared to Caucasian males or Hispanic males. In addition, despite African-Americans being less than twenty percent of the United States population, they make up more than forty percent of all the convicted federal offenders (Abrams, Bertrand, and Mullainathan 347).

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, cultural diversity has the potential of causing various problems in the criminal justice system if not well-managed. It is, therefore, important to ensure social awareness of cultural diversity and its challenges in the justice system to ensure that the people working in the system understand multicultural differences and how to effectively manage them to ensure impartiality. Ensuring impartiality and avoiding biases is important as it ensures that the justice system enjoys the trust of all citizens. When a certain race or group of people is alienated from the system or feels unfairly treated, the group distrusts the system, creating problems within the society (Peffley and Hurwitz 2010). It is important to ensure impartiality and unbiased treatment of people that interact with the justice system to ensure peaceful coexistence within a diverse society and the country. This can only be achieved by first understanding how cultural diversity can result in problems within the justice system, then working towards the elimination of those problems.

Works Cited

Abrams, David S., Marianne Bertrand, and Sendhil Mullainathan. “Do judges vary in their treatment of race?” The Journal of Legal Studies 41.2 (2012): 347-383. https://doi.org/10.1086/666006

Clair, Matthew, and Alix S. Winter. “How judges think about racial disparities: Situational decision‐making in the criminal justice system.” Criminology 54.2 (2016): 332-359. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/matthewclair/files/clair_winter_how_judges_think_about_racial_disparities.pdf

Gazal‐Ayal, Oren, and Raanan Sulitzeanu‐Kenan. “Let My People Go: Ethnic In‐Group Bias in Judicial Decisions—Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment.” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 7.3 (2010): 403-428. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-1461.2010.01183.x

Novak, Kenneth J., and Mitchell B. Chamlin. “Racial threat, suspicion, and police behavior: The impact of race and place in traffic enforcement.” Crime & Delinquency 58.2 (2012): 275-300. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011128708322943

Peffley, Mark, and Jon Hurwitz. Justice in America: The separate realities of Blacks and Whites. Cambridge University Press, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511760761

Pettit, Becky. Invisible men: Mass incarceration and the myth of black progress. Russell Sage Foundation, 2012. https://www.russellsage.org/publications/invisible-men

Provine, Doris Marie, and Roxanne Lynn Doty. “The criminalization of immigrants as a racial project.” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 27.3 (2011): 261-277.

Rojek, Jeff, Richard Rosenfeld, and Scott Decker. “Policing race: The racial stratification of searches in police traffic stops.” Criminology 50.4 (2012): 993-1024.

Yang, Crystal S. “Free at last? Judicial discretion and racial disparities in federal sentencing.” The Journal of Legal Studies 44.1 (2015): 75-111.