Abstract
The paper is claimed to overview the policy of racial profiling in a particular city (here – Sacramento, California), and provide the research, based on the sociological conflict theory, including the information gathered by the means of survey and social analysis of the population.
Introduction
Race-grounded policing, from the southern slave perambulation to the contemporary alleged performance of racial profiling, has had a deep influence on society and police. These policing tactics may have donated to African-Americans being overrepresented in the criminal justice structure for more than a century. Minorities assert that the police unjustly subject them to unfair policing tactics have been maintained by the disproportional charges of arrests, accusations, and imprisonment of minorities. Actually, researchers declare that law enforcement agencies, courts, and modifications often make choices grounded on race or racial and ethnic typecasts.
Sociological Conflict Theory
Conflict theory highlights the function of compulsion and power, an individual’s or group’s capability to exercise impact and control over others, in creating communal order. It states that a community or organization acts so that every individual partaker and its groups struggle to exploit their advantages, which unavoidably divides up communal modification such as transforms in politics and upheavals. The hypothesis is mostly related to classifying resistance between social classes, proletarian versus bourgeoisie; and in principles such as capitalism versus socialism. It is the notion that a frequent struggle subsists between all various features of a particular community. The struggle that appears to do not necessarily have to entail physical hostility. It can concern an underlying struggle for every group or personality within a community to maximize its own profits. (Anderson, Laronistine, Brooks 2002).
Societal conflict hypothesis is a Marxist-grounded social theory which states that persons and groups (social classes) within a community have various amounts of material and non-material reserves (the wealthy vs. the poor) and that the more influential groups apply their authority in order to use groups with less authority. The two schemes by which this exploitation is executed are by the means of brutal power and finances. Earlier social conflict theorists dispute that finances are the mechanism that leads to social chaos. The theory also argues that community is created from ongoing social conflict between different groups. There are other hypotheses of deviance, the functionalist hypothesis, the control theory, and the injure hypothesis. It is also related to different forms of positive social communication that may happen within social relations.
Marx stated that by the means of a dialectic procedure, social development was regulated by the result of class divergence. Marxism stated that human history is all about this divergence, a consequence of the strong-rich exploiting the poor-weak. From such a viewpoint, money is made by the means of exploitation of the worker. It is stated thus, that in order for an industrial unit possessor to earn money, he is obliged to pay his workers less than they deserve.” Thus the social conflict theory argues that groups within an entrepreneur community tend to interrelate in an unhelpful method that allows no mutual advantage and little interaction. (Ramirez, Hoopes, Quinlan, 2003).
Conflict theory presupposes various types of conflict. One type of conflict theory is that of fighting and revolt. Fighting and revolt take place stages due to the rocky “feasts among a diversity of social classes.” An instance of warfare is that going on presently in Burma, where there is military versus inhabitants fighting for control over the country’s administration. Another type of conflict in conflict theory is that of smacks. The contemporary community has generated a key social separator among workers and managers. When employees feel they have been treated unjustly, they go on strike to recover their right to power. Another type of conflict, in theory, is that of dominance. Most social groups do not shape their ideologies the same. Various groups would struggle in divergence over what they regard as right, what the standards are, and their ideologies. Higher classes have more theoretical ideologies, while secondary classes are much less to their benefit but still reproduce the want in their own existences. The notions of the ruling class are the ruling plans, where the ruling substance power is the ruling academic power.
Research
Sacramento, California is one of the largest cities in the United States, a municipal territory with over four million people. In 2004, the city valued its enduring residential population at over 355,000 (City of Sacramento, 2004). In accordance with the 2000 census, 60% of the occupants classified themselves as white, 14% black, 18% Hispanic, and 8% as belonging to another ethnicity/race (U.S. Bureau of Census, 2001). The city’s inhabitants were evenly distributed between males and females, with nearly 72% 18 years of age or older. The average family income was $48,617, and almost 8% of the inhabitants live below the scarcity level. (Fauchon, 2004).
Police officers shall behave in a dignified and courteous manner at all times when contracting with the public. Two of the essential rights assured by both the United States and California foundations are equal guard under the law and liberty from unreasonable investigates and attacks by government representatives. The right of all individuals to be regarded uniformly and to be free from irrational searches and convulsions must be esteemed. Racial profiling is an intolerable patrol principle and will not be disregarded.
This regulation shall not prevent officers from providing help, such as upon observing fluids leaking from a vehicle, a flat tire, or someone who happens to be sick, lost, or puzzled. Nor does this policy exclude stopping somebody suspected of a crime grounded upon observed actions and/or data attained about the person.
Anyone who suggests that a peace officer engaged by the City has employed in racial profiling with esteem to that individual may give a protest with the City, and anyone shall not be disheartened, threatened, or coerced from filing such criticism, or be distinguished against as they have filed such a grievance.
The City shall take and examine citizen complaints on the matters of racial profiling by its officers. Such complaints shall be in written form, or the city worker, officer, or official getting the complaint should decrease the same to writing and should point the time, place, and details of the occurrence of alleged racial profiling, the individuality or account of the peace officer or bureaucrats entailed, and the character and manner of contacting the pursuer. (Fauchon, 2004).
Any police officer, city worker, or city official who gets a citizen complaint alleging ethnic profiling shall direct the complaint to the Chief of Police within 12 hours of receiving the complaint. Receipt of every grievance shall be admitted to the plaintiff in writing, all such grievances shall be regarded and examined by the Chief of Police or his assigned designee within a sensible period of time and the consequences of the review and examination shall be filed with the Chief of Police and with the plaintiff.
In studying a complaint alleging racial profiling, the assigned investigator shall search to define if the officer who is mentioned in the complaint has engaged in a prototype of racial profiling that entails numerous acts representing racial profiling for which there is no logical, plausible explanation grounded on stated police and law enforcement practices. A single act constituting racial profiling may not be regarded as a prototype of racial profiling, and shall not be the basis for corrective action.
In the case that a complaint of racial profiling entails an occurrence that was recorded on audio or video, the assigned investigator shall, upon the origination of the investigation of the protest and upon written demand of the officer, punctually offer a copy of the recording to the officer that is mentioned in the complaint. (Anderson, Laronistine, Brooks 2002).
Conclusion
The fact is that offered methodology has its own restrictions to even the best-held racial profiling research – especially the complexity of defining an appropriate baseline gauge for the contrast of the stop data – it is improbable that any offered research will totally satisfy the competing anticipations and wishes of all the study’s stakeholders or populations. For this motive, it would seem sensible at the start of racial profiling research for the stakeholders to start mutual planning for justice system developments to address the fundamental aim of racial parity within the justice system.
References
Anderson, James F., Laronistine Dyson, and Willie Brooks. Preventing Hate Crime and Profiling Hate Crime Offenders. The Western Journal of Black Studies 26.3 (2002): 140.
Fauchon, Christina. Counterpoint: The Case against Profiling. International Social Science Review 79.3-4 (2004): 157.
Ramirez, Deborah A., Jennifer Hoopes, and Tara Lai Quinlan. Defining Racial Profiling in a Post-September 11 World American Criminal Law Review 40.3 (2003): 1195.