It plays a crucial role in promoting criminal justice education, conducting research, and analyzing the policies and laws for educators, practitioners, and students. Therefore, the nation is condemning the deplorable actions leading to the death of many Black people. The injustice is vehemently opposed against all people from any background. It is because every other person deserves to be treated with equality, dignity, and respect. However, the present conditions represent an image of a systemic failure in addressing disparities within the criminal justice system and across the country.
It is affirmed that policy reforms at a large scale and academic empirical research help prevent future injustice. Also, it is crucial to conduct evidence-based research to bring out the best practices to the foreground and provide leverage to the practitioners that help them bringing the research into real-world change. Suffering the racial disparities at different steps is heart-breaking for communities of color. The matter needs more than research; it requires joining them to look for practical solutions that help endure and avoid problems. Moreover, the vicarious trauma and the fatigue due to ethnic battles are being faced by many communities of color after brutal incidents (Krohn, and Fox, 2020).
It is an active and immediate call of action across the country. It is strongly needed to pay attention to the problems causing disparity and discrimination in law enforcement officials and other criminal justice members. Hence it is essential to conduct research, teach, and train with empathy to prevent future loss of life and injustice in any form of life. The deaths of victims of African American descent served to grab the nation’s attention towards the underlying issues that have been contributing to horrific outcomes.
The issues of racism and the associated brutal incidents ask for focus on the ongoing and high-quality research in criminology on racism and the criminal justice system—also, the implications of research to address the problems through evidence-based policies. However, prior research has also been conducted, but it came up with no fruitful outcomes; it did not help eliminate the evil of discrimination from society. But still, hopes are alive, and people are looking for necessary changes to be made.
Racial discrimination and prejudice in the criminal justice system have been a focus of criminological research for decades. Another aspect of concern is that the studies might measure minor effects of discrimination in a domain which ultimately led to the conclusion that discrimination is unimportant. Measuring minor effects could cumulate into substantial differences. Nevertheless, discrimination negatively affects health, economic opportunities, and wealth communications that become the reason for diminishing opportunities in later generations. For example, parents’ employment status can be the fundamental cause that seizes the child’s education affecting his socioeconomic success later in life (Edwards, 2020).
References
Edwards, K. A. (2020). The Racial Disparity in Unemployment Benefits. The RAND Blog. https://www.rand.org/blog/2020/07/the-racial-disparity-in-unemployment-benefits.html
Krohn, M., and Fox, B. (2020). Causes and Effects of Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System. Justice Quarterly, 37(5), 761–762. doi: 10.1080/07418825.2020.1782615