Crime and Justice

Crime and Justice

An increase in criminal activities leads to increased police disembarkment around the area. This is the reason why the New York Police Department adopted a similar strategy. The program named stop and frisk was aimed at reducing criminal activities in the city. Research has indicated increased police disembarkment in an area serves order. For instance, in New York State, the program led to a drastic decrease in criminal activities. Data from statistics held that crime rate decreased significantly.  However, this program by the New York State did not serve equal justice. This program ad several disadvantages and served justice discriminatively. This paper focuses on analyzing the stop and frisk program and seeks to shed insight on the effect of such a program on the rendering of justice.

The stop and frisk was a policy initiated by the NYPD. It involved the police stopping, detaining, and questioning pedestrians. They would search for anyone who seemed capable of carrying out an attack as long as the police have reasonable suspicion. According to studies carried out in the state, 70%of the stops were made to blacks and Hispanic. (Matthews, 2013).  Precinct stops seemed to be more in Brooklyn. Interestingly enough, the areas with significant whit occupants did not receive many stops. In contrast, the areas occupied mostly by blacks had the most stops. The Fagan report indicated that racial identification influenced the number of stops made by police.

Racial identification has a marginal influence on the number of stops over and above the contributions of crimes uniquely. The relationship is curvilinear other than linear as it is supposed to be. This was the assertion of Yale professor of law. This openly suggests racial bias is deeply embedded in the implementation of this program by the NYPD. Studies done by RAND confirmed that black pedestrian was more likely to be stopped as compared to their counterpart. However, though, it did not account for what kinds of crimes prompted the stop and frisk. One would ever wonder whether the program reduced crimes. Research indicated a diminishing effect on crimes such as car theft, burglary, and robbery. However, it did not impact crimes such as rape, assault, or grand theft.

According to the criminal justice of America, the justice department is made of five components. These are prosecutors, police, courts, prisons, and noncustodial measures. (Harrendorf, Heiskanen,  & Malby,  2010).  The police are the issue of analysis in this paper. As indicated earlier, the police department of New York came up with a policy meant to reduce crimes in the state. This policy required the police to stop and frisk pedestrians. This could be done if the police had reasonable suspicion.

Racial identification barred the application of justice in the New York state. The policy adopted by the NYPD is overly discriminative. From researches, most of the pedestrians stopped for frisking were black and Hispanic. White folks were rarely arrested. This indicated that blacks and Hispanic were taken as criminals. This undermined justice since American justice is supposed to be served equally too every one regardless of race. The black was taken as criminals; they observed how they were treated. This ruined their relationship with the police and ultimately affecting how they perceived the American justice system. This program did not serve justice in the parameters it was supposed to. Instead, it perpetrated other forms of crimes which were disguised in the constitution.

Overly, the stop nd risk program was worthy of trying, but its effect is too severe. It ruins the relationship between the public and the police, especially the black folks. This is after observing significant racial discrimination being perpetrated by the program. Therefore, the NYPD needs to make changes in the program to serve justice equally.

Reference

Harrendorf, S., Heiskanen, M., & Malby, S. (2010). International statistics on crime and justice.

Matthews, D. (2013). Retrieved 1 February 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/08/13/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-stop-and-frisk-and-why-the-courts-shut-it-down/