Racial Profiling in America

Running head : RACIAL PROFILING

Racial Profiling in America

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Racial Profiling in America

Introduction

Theories of inequality in formal social control often attribute racial disparity in criminal justice outcomes to racial profiling , also known as racial stereotyping , arguing that the use of global stereotypes linking race-ethnicity to criminality results in more punitive treatment of minority defendants than white defendants . These theories contend that , as a result of these stereotypes , minority defendants are perceived to be more dangerous , threatening , and culpable than white

defendants , and are punished more severely than comparable white defendants (for example , Albonetti , 1991 , 1997 Steffensmeier , Ulmer and Kramer , 1998 Steffensmeier and Demuth , 2000 . Research in the organizational tradition , in contrast , suggests that the stereotypes most relevant to court actors are stereotypes about particular kinds of crime and criminal offending . According to this perspective , disparities in punishment arise when race or race-related factors are contained in decision makers ' stereotypes about "normal crimes (Miethe and Moore 1986 . The accumulated evidence of racial disparity in criminal justice though , has proven inconsistent (Daly and Tonry , 1997 . Thus understanding the effects of race in criminal justice continues to pose an important challenge for research and theory on inequality in formal social control

Racial Profiling Approach

The racial profiling approach to understanding disparity in punishment asserts that global , culturally derived stereotypes about race ethnicity link certain groups of offenders to notions of dangerousness culpability , and threat of criminality . This underlying notion is common to much contemporary research on race-ethnicity and sentencing outcomes Essentially , these theorists argue that harsher treatment of minority offenders arises because they are perceived as more culpable or dangerous than whites , or both (Albonetti , 1991 Kramer and Steffensmeier , 1993 Bridges and Steen , 1998 . As Albonetti (1991 : 247 explains , responses in patterns are developed by judges using profiling that link individual characteristics such as race , age or gender to expectations about criminal responsibility and dangerousness . Because minority defendants (as well as males and younger offenders ) are perceived as more dangerous and criminally responsible , and because these traits are viewed as relatively stable for these offender groups (Albonetti , 2002 , differential treatment of white and minority offenders is a logical result

Theories of racial profiling differ however , in their predictions about precisely when and under what circumstances decision makers are likely to invoke racial stereotypes . Some authors argue that the association of minority status with danger and criminality depends on other status characteristics associated with threat , such as the offender 's gender and age (Steffensmeier et al , 1998 ) or employment (Spohn and Holleran 2000 . Others argue that decision makers are more likely to invoke racial profiling in certain types of cases , such as when the appropriate sentence is ambiguous (Unnever and Hembroff , 1988 ) or when crimes are relatively non-serious (Spohn and Cederblom , 1991 . Although these theories disagree about when sentencing disparity is most likely , the underlying assumption about why it occurs is the same - racial stereotypes affect attributions of responsibility and perceptions of danger and threat . These arguments...