What contemporary criminal justice issue is important to modern society?

Racial Profiling in Law Enforcement Student's Name University Course Tutor Date Racial Profiling in Law Enforcement Racial profiling is the process of arresting individuals based on their race, ethnicity, or nationality rather than on activities and behaviors. However, this is a practice that continues to affect citizens of color, particularly African Americans, Latinos, and other related groups, which leads to racial discrimination and constant conflict between the police and the communities they serve. This essay aims to define racial profiling as one of the modern criminal justice concerns, investigate how it affects vulnerable populations, and discuss potential solutions to injustice, such as implicit bias programs, community-oriented policing, and answering for every misconduct. Racial profiling has taken root in the United States (US) criminal justice system, evident in policed behaviors, such as police officers stopping, searching, and arresting people of color. For example, blacks and Hispanics are more frequently searched by the police than whites, even though they do not hide illegal imports more often than the white population (Wilson et al., 2023). In addition, Wilson et al. (2023) concurs that racial profiling in Black communities does not lack evidence. The tradition can be traced back to such times when the blacks were taken to America to be converted into enslaved people. Racial profiling has passed through such policies as the ‘stop and frisk’ policy and the ‘broken windows’ policing, which predominantly affected blacks and Latinos. According to Plümecke et al. (2023) statistics, racism is very much rampant in cases of police profiling. In many cities in America, black people are searched by the police at a rate that is disproportionately higher than the rate of their population. For instance, a study conducted by Christia et al. (2023, p. 12) revealed that 54% of all stops affected Black people, although they only constitute 24% of the city's population. Likewise, while Latinos comprised 33% of stops, their population share was only 29% (Christia et al., 2023, p. 12). These disparities are indicative of the fact that racial prejudice affects how the police interact with minorities and engage in selective policing of their neighborhoods. Additionally, it is evident that racial profiling is not only detrimental to individuals but becomes toxic to the entire population. Racial profiling has tremendous social consequences, as it undermines the relationship between police and society. The minority groups, because of this issue, develop a negative attitude towards the justice system. They are targeted in disproportionate numbers and thus consider it unfair to them (Wilson et al., 2023), leading to reduced cooperation among citizens with the police, hence hampering the ability of police to investigate and prevent crime. For instance, when community members perceive that they ...