Morally Permissible In The Criminal Justice System

The idea of taking race into account can become convoluted when discussing the distribution of burdens and benefits. However, the aim is to express an agreeance that not only is factoring race morally permissible in distributing benefits, but burdens as well. It seems that one cannot deem race factorization permissible in one but not the other. By doing so, it would only open an individual up to multiple objections and unfair solutions. I will focus only on America; objections and examples of other countries systems in how their system works is null and void. I will use the two arguments as a baseline: one from Elizabeth Anderson and the other from Mathias Risse and Richard Zeckhauseer. By using these arguments, I will not only make the case …show more content…
Ultimately, we of course want to provide a safe and secure country for it’s inhabitants. But, how can we do so when our justice system is distorting facts and leading police and the public to infer wrongful profiling? While the intent is to curb crime, we should focus more on curbing crime in respective areas by using area specific analytics rather than mass analytics. For example, using an idea from Micheal Levin, “Statistically, young black males are more likely to commit violent crimes than any other group – they represent a statistically significant danger”, is weak and a lazy execution of law enforcement if attributed to entire country as a whole. Police departments operate in the form of individual precincts, so as to cover a specific area. There should be no reason that a predominantly white area should profile the same as a predominantly black area. By doing such, law enforcement will end up magnifying (and profiling) the wrong crimes for their respective area. Essentially, my side is that racial profiling should be used for security purposes, but in just ways. If Precinct Thirteen’s has more issues with middle-aged white drug dealers in a certain area, then they should implement security measures that draw extra attention to these individuals. In the same sense, if Precinct Four has a rampant amount of burglaries by young aged black males, then they too should implement …show more content…
By partaking in profiling then law enforcement would be discriminating, but just like Risse and Zeckhauser stated, “profiling itself does not cause racism; rather, it expresses them.” Yet, this would coincide with their “underlying racism” theory. But, in objection with that idea, I would simply state that if they are policing in accordance with trends in their respective area, they will not be met by such conclusions. Any offender, or non-offender, for that matter will not be excited by being questioned by police, so that should be taken into account on the enforcement side. But more so, if it looks like unjust racial profiling (i.e. random stop of a black man in a white neighborhood), and follows a “you are not from around these parts” model, then an accusation of underlying racism is warranted. Just like in the idea of affirmative action, people should be willing to bear some burden for the sake of justice of social arrangements, same goes for law enforcement; their target as well. Going further, the objection that “profiling imposes unfair burdens on blacks”, would fall fail. On the grounds that proper profiling would only impose a burden on specific individuals of a certain race if analytical evidence is showing a security threat in their area. Also, it would result in being in the interest of the