Racial profiling in nj and ny among 18 -32 year males - Essay Example

In the two states, the issue has been documented on several occasions. In New Jersey, law enforcement was shaken in 1999 when state police commanders admitted to using racial drug-courier profiles to stop motorists on the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway. In New York, incidents such as the beating and sodomizing of Abner Louima by Police Officer Justin Volpe and the police shooting of Amadou Diallo on the steps of his Bronx apartment building raised a public outcry from minority communities.

President George Bush addressed the issue before congress where he reported that he had asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to develop specific proposals to end the practice, Claudia Perry, (2008). My hypothesis for this research is that: Arbitrary police searches and investigations are targeted at 18-32 year-old males who belong to minority races in New York and New Jersey. The independent variable here is arbitrary police searches and investigations (racial profiling) while the two dependent variables are being an 18-32 year-old male and belonging to a minority race such as African America, Hispanic, Oriental or Arab.

Previous studies that have been carried out on racial profiling helped to expose the problem and focus attention on it. One such study carried out by Gene Callahan and William Anderson on the practice of racial profiling found that the practice is more prevalent in investigations involving drugs and victimless crimes in general. They found that most of those targeted by law enforcement agents for field and station interrogation were from minorities. The 55% of the victims were Hispanics with roots in South America and Mexico.

However, the main limitation of their research was that it only concentrated on drug related cases and suspicions, Gene Callahan and William Anderson (2002). Another study was carried out by Thevenot Chad of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in 1999. The foundation monitors abuses of the American legal