Discrimination Policy in the United States

Recommendations in Racial Policy

Note: see the entry about Racial Policy in this American legal encyclopedia. In the context of justice on trials in the United States, civilrights.org publishes the following: outlines several proposals to ameliorate the racial disparities that dominate the criminal justice system today. Recommendations include establishing accreditation for law enforcement, increased statistical compilation, the diversification of law enforcement, abolishing or suspending the death penalty, reforming sentencing guidelines, repealing felony disenfranchisement laws and repealing efforts to move juveniles into the adult justice system.

Neither in Chapter Seven nor elsewhere does this report propose less public safety or ineffective law enforcement. The issue is not whether to be tough on crime, but rather whether to be fair and smart in the course of being tough on crime. Contrary to the assertions of some politicians, it is entirely consistent with effective policing to treat citizens fairly and humanely. There is no contradiction between law enforcement and civil rights.

The policies advocated in this report are designed to enhance public safety by replacing current enforcement efforts that do more to breed crime than combat it. For example, over-reliance on incarceration as a means of addressing social problems in the inner city harms those communities by reducing the stigma of a criminal conviction and by siphoning scarce resources from needed health and education programs. It may sound tough to advocate more prisons and it may sound soft to advocate changes in the sentencing laws that would permit non-violent drug addicts to receive treatment instead of warehousing. But the opposite is true. Politicians who advocate more of the same, tired, lock-’em-up nostrums are taking the easy way out. The ones willing to confront the ineffectiveness and unfairness of current crime policies deserve to be called tough and courageous.

Regardless of how vigorously we choose to enforce our criminal laws, racial and ethnic neutrality is an imperative. Should two similarly situated but racially or ethnically different individuals – whether they be two innocent motorists or two marijuana dealers – be treated the same regardless of the color of their skin or their ethnic heritage? Our Constitution says that the answer to this question must be in the affirmative.

This report compiles and synthesizes a growing body of empirical evidence proving that our criminal justice system discriminates against minorities. But the goal of this report is not to identify intentional racism by criminal justice personnel. Overt bigotry is relatively rare, relatively easy to uncover, and, when uncovered, subject to public opprobrium. Although overt bigotry surely exists in pockets of the system, the report does not rest its condemnation of the criminal justice system on those grounds.

Instead, we seek to highlight a pervasive pattern of unequal treatment of black and Hispanic Americans throughout that process, and to describe the consequences of this pattern for our system of democratic government and for our people. Whether the unequal treatment we discuss is intentional is (almost) beside the point. Our civil rights laws are premised on the notion that disparate treatment of minority groups, whether identifiably intentional or not, is unacceptable given the guarantees of equality imbedded in our constitutional system.

As the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights celebrates its 50th Anniversary, it takes pride in its accomplishments and girds itself for the struggle ahead. Just as we worked together to meet the historic civil rights challenges of the late 20th Century, so the racial disparity that infects the criminal justice system demands our attention as a united movement today.

Resources

Further Reading

• Dominelli, L. (2008). Anti-racist social work. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Fix, M., & Struyk, R. (1993). Clear and convincing evidence: Measurement of discrimination in America (No. 00241).
• Jones, E. K. (1928). Social work among Negroes. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 140, 287–293.
• Leighniger, L. (1987). Social work: Search for identity (Vol. 4). New York: Greenwood Press.
• Spano, R. (1982). Rank & file movement in social work. Washington, DC: University of America Press.
• Wagner, D. (1989). Radical movements in the social services: A theoretical framework. Social Service Review, 63(2), 264–284.