This week’s text centered on the tough subjects of racial profiling, prejudice in law enforcement, and the effects these issues have on legitimizing the law enforcement profession. We cannot ignore the destruction racial prejudice has reaped across our country for decades. When racial profiling and prejudices creep into the law enforcement profession, agencies and the criminal justice system lose legitimacy and the public’s trust. While efforts are continually in play to counter this issue in a proactive manner, the roots run deep and the statistical data has not showed a hard shift away from public concerns on whether racial profiling is still proliferating the streets.
The Three Pillars of Legitimacy
Legitimacy throughout the law enforcement profession is vital in maintaining the public trust and ensuring officers are supported by the community in exercising their authority to maintain order, protect, and serve. The California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) has a clear image of what legitimacy is and how agencies should be conducting themselves in order to maintain legitimacy as an agency, which in turn supports the greater law enforcement profession. California POST speaks to legitimacy as being supported by three main pillars of focus. The first being public trust and confidence in the police. This pillar recognizes the importance of maintaining the public trust in that officers are honest, they are passionate about doing their jobs to the best of his or her abilities, and they have a sincere investment in caring for and protecting the community they serve in against violence and deviancy. The second pillar is built upon the tenant that there must be a willingness for the community to defer to the law and to police authority. Lastly, the third pillar of legitimacy it built from the position that law enforcement conduct is moral and justified throughout their duties. After reading the California POST information on police legitimacy, I concur with these three tenants and have a greater understanding of how difficult it can be to maintain legitimacy in our social climate where bad apples are given the media representation of being members of a greater bad barrel. We can see through these readings just how crucial transparency and proactive efforts are for agency administrators as they work to preserve legitimacy and the public trust (California POST, 2018).
Consensus on Legitimacy in Law Enforcement
When analyzing the current opinion and national position on law enforcement legitimacy against our reading this week I think it is important that we understand racial profiling is only one aspect the public considers when assessing their trust in law enforcement. While it is a critical element and concern, it should not dominate the national dialog on how the public accepts and supports police authority being practiced on the population as a whole. With that said, the National Institute of Justice published an article on how racial profiling and disparity concerns fell into the national opinion on law enforcement. The results were transparent on the fact that statistics still support the presence of racial profiling and that it remains a real issue law enforcement is continually trying to address; the quality of interactions the public has with their law enforcement professionals are positive and the majority are supportive of law enforcement actions within their community regardless of race, age, income, or education (National Institute of Justice, 2013). Racial Profiling & Legitimacy 3
Disparity in Law Enforcement Contacts
In chapter fourteen of our text we read about the presence and issues surrounding the Ratchet Effect. The Ratchet Effect occurs from the use of statistical information to drive the position of deviancy amongst a certain population. The statistical information collected however, feeds into the disparity between African Americans and other races through hard numbers. This effect generates a ratchet that has additional consequences throughout the justice system. While we have a position to abolish racial profiling, the statistical supported actions are still affectually supporting racial profiling through the different name of statistical profiling. Law enforcement contacts when addressed through a purely statistical lens can generate a conclusion that one specific race is more deviant than the other, this is the issue with utilizing statistics to dispel racial profiling; instead of dispelling the issue it is exasperating the problem (Sage Publications, 2014).
Building Legitimacy though Correctional Agencies
Legitimacy is not built and maintained solely through the actions of the patrol officer responding to calls for service and his or her interactions with the public. Correctional agencies have a role to play in exhibiting actions that generate public trust and support as well. Legitimacy is supported though providing proactive and humanistic approaches toward probation and parole programs that seek to reduce recidivism and invest in offenders so that they might return to being positive and contributing members of society. It is important for the public to see that institutionalization is not the intent behind the justice system and that agencies maintain a responsibility in protecting its citizens from dangerous offenders, while also providing rehabilitation programs for those capable of returning to society (Sage Publications, 2014).
Connecting my Audit and Research to Building Legitimacy
The findings from my audit have the potential to identify best practices in the hiring and selection criteria of police officers. If a specific hiring policy is generating higher population of quality officers, than these best practices will be looked at in recommending adoption of similar policy. Currently, I have completed the audit in policy and there is a clear difference in the stringency of selection criteria between the federal government and state agencies. The main contrast being that the federal government does not specifically require a psychological exams or any polygraph test. I am curious on what the statistical information will be between federal and state agency retention and numbers of adverse actions to see if there is any relationship between selection criteria and long term professionalism within each agency. These findings can help build legitimacy through the understanding of what selection criteria generates the most professional work force amongst law enforcement. Racial Profiling & Legitimacy 4
Reference
California POST. (2018, December 19th). Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy. Retrieved from California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training: https://post.ca.gov/procedural-justice-and-police-legitimacy
National Institute of Justice. (2013, January 9th). Race, Trust and Police Legitimacy. Retrieved from National Institute of Justice: https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/race-trust-and-police-legitimacy
Sage Publications. (2014). Chapter 14: Henry Louis Gates and Racial Profiling. In B. E. Harcourt, Law Enforcement Ethics; Classic and Contemporary Issues (pp. 295-324). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Alessandro Volta
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