Racial demographics in police departments
There have been events that have made headlines in the recent past while highlighting the need for diversity within the police force following concerns related to the racial demographics in various police departments. This has caused a need by police agencies to fill ranks with a diverse police officer population to correspond to the community they serve. This has been inclusive of women and men from different ethnic, racial, religious backgrounds, and minority groups. While the number of officers from racial and ethnic minorities has been increasing in the state and local agencies over the last few years, there is still a need for active recruitment from these demographics (Wnkhadi 7). This is particularly important for officers who serve among great immigrant communities.
While the police agencies look into diversifying their workforce, they have also expanded their definition of diversity to comprise of religious, sexual orientations, age, familial backgrounds, occupations, and neighborhoods. The police would like to integrate some traits to improve their service delivery and relationships with the communities they interact (Stout 3). Such characteristics include empathy, practical communication skills, consideration, intellect, and interpersonal skills. This research paper seeks to shed light on an area of police workforce analysis that has been dimly lit and would go about offering information by performing an analysis on existing literature that includes books, scholarly articles, and news articles. The paper will then provide the best practice about police recruitment and interpersonal relations within the agencies and the communities. The research will have several sections that include the essence of diversity, barriers to achieving diversity, best practices for attaining diversity, and the traits of high-quality law enforcement.
Definition of terms
Diversity is a fundamental aspect of instigating and propagating trust between law enforcement and the community. Difference develops the workforce such that it adapts to changes. This research acknowledges the fact that there are issues that limit diversity. Such problems affect several stages, such as recruiting, hiring, and selection processes. These hindrances have made it difficult for equal representation of the minorities in law enforcement (Kazarian 6).
Best practices refer to measures that law enforcement should implement in a systematic manner that will result in greater diversity among their human resources. The police can readily achieve best practices by examining, reforming recruitment procedures and qualitative improvement of training exercises to comprise of law enforcement that reflects the wider community (Faulls 8).
Traditional measures instigated for training and recruitment provide a plethora of negative influences on the quality of law enforcement by undermining the ability of the police force to attract and recruit the best minds in the work pool (Wankhadi 9). By acknowledging the skills police seek, the agencies can design procedures that will bring the best individuals to their human resources.
Importance of Diversity
Police agencies that correspond with the racial demographics of the community serve the community in a better capacity by eradicating racial bias. This correspondence with the community demographics communicates a sense of equity with members of the public and particularly with the minority groups. Diversity raises the chances that the police agency will comprehend the needs of the minorities by getting their perspective on matters. Thirdly, diversity increases the chances that police officers get a realistic impression of the numerous racial and cultural perspectives courtesy of the close interactions with communities (Faulls 9).
The police workforce has changed considerably in consideration of race, gender, and sexual orientation, but the rate of change varies significantly from department to department. This research will comprise of a section that will analyze the potential impacts of altering the demographics of law enforcement.
Hindrances of Police Diversity
This research has established that diversity brings with it a range of cultural understanding and language skills that traditional measures cannot provide. Diversity is a crucial aspect of achieving community policing. The police would become legitimate in their efforts to fight crime if they bore close resemblance with the community in question. In some parts of the United States, there have been significant differences between the police and the resident communities leading to poor relations with the community hence incidents of civil unrest. With the aid of barrier analysis, the paper will look at career life cycles, including recruitment, hiring, promotion, and retention practices that hinder women and minorities from accessing the police agencies.
Barriers related to diversity in law enforcement arise at numerous points in the career life cycle. The first indicator of employment barrier is the relatively low number of minorities and women who actively seek employment. The small number of people seeking posts in law enforcement may be attributed to the unawareness or lack of interest from them. Unawareness stems from inefficient programs instigated to inform them, and the same scenario applies in the case of lack of interest and failure to qualify (Stout 19).
The law enforcement agencies can influence recruitment indirectly by sticking to the doctrines of policing such as ensuring security in towns while upholding high levels of professionalism, creating partnerships in the community and providing guidance for prospective job seekers through mentoring programs.
Hiring barriers often take the form of strict observance of recruitment policies through strict educational, medical, and background requirements, which pose obstacles for women and minorities. By identifying this as a barrier, does not imply an eradication of the same; however, it may set precedence for alterations necessary for increasing diversity. It is important to note that law enforcement agencies require high school diplomas and that there are considerable low numbers of minorities who graduate from school with these requirements.
Fitness and medical requirements present barriers for minorities, given that minorities suffer high chances of obesity and other health issues. Other hindrances related to hiring include citizenship and residency requirements, which limit a large number of minorities from the applicant pool.
The hiring process involves a background history investigation. The law enforcement agencies eliminate applicants owing to cases of contact with the law, convictions, and arrests. Provided with these hindrances, law enforcement may inculcate outreach programs by ensuring that the hiring requirements align well with job performance outcomes and do not result in the unnecessary elimination of potential candidates.
Promotion barriers in law enforcement agencies occur when they are presented with an adequate number of minority applicants with a low level of representation in the higher ranks. The promotion procedures comprise of formal examinations and informal assessments that could potentially eliminate some participants.
Reforms on Diversity of Policing
Barrier analysis is a useful tool in determining whether the barrier described in the above section exists in the police force. This entails five phases. The first phase involves creating a detailed flow chart of the workforce. This primarily consists of the development of maps that denote significant points in the career life cycle to establish potential barriers concerning diversity. This stage entails collecting information on the responsibilities, policies, and procedures at various locations during recruitment, hiring, and promotion (Stout 6).
The second phase entails the development of population benchmarks to ascertain whether certain groups of people are under or over-represented in the career cycle. The research proposes that the population benchmarks should represent the local labor market population by approximation of geographical distributions of likely applicants with the aid of geographic information system software.
The third phase involves determining discrepancies between the population benchmarks developed and the demographic representation in the agency workforce to verify points in the career life cycle where there are significant impediments to advancements in diversity.
The fourth phase is the identification of potential barriers. In most cases, once a diagram of the career life cycle and the management processes are there, barriers to diversity become evident. However, sometimes, the boundaries become less apparent. The last phase involves addressing and the removal of established barriers.
Literature analysis
The societies in the world have changed considerably, therefore setting massive demand on the personnel policies and the doctrines enshrined in local law enforcement agencies and hence the racial and gender composition of the police departments.
A diverse society comprises different sets of people from various races. Diversity, as proposed for law enforcement agencies, suggest acceptance and regardless of respect. In this sense, it translates to understanding the fact that all individuals are unique and comprises differences along the lines of age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, genders, physical abilities, socio-economic status, and religious background.
Diversity in law enforcement has been a significant cause for concern in the recent past. With the implementation of variety, it could transform society’s view of the police as an able body. Policing is a fundamental requirement of a non-violent society. It comes from the doctrine that society over-uses other members of the community to ensure the implementation of law and order. Therefore, the most significant role of law enforcement agencies has been to ensure public order and that citizens align with the law. The police have the grueling task of ensuring the imposition of law in society. They provide a platform where people with all their differences practice their rights and while implementing this, ensuring that those people do not obstruct others in their bid to exercise their rights.
Law enforcement agencies have the essential tasks of overseeing public relationships by serving the public at the capacity of making sure of safe transitions in the order of activities meant for the provision of a supportive atmosphere. In this regard, they take on crucial roles in managing and directing traffic, arresting law offenders, and punishing people found guilty of breaking laws.
With these facts in mind, it is clear that the community requires regulation by law enforcement agencies to be operational. This also means that they have to stay vigilant for them to address any issues that arise in society. Law enforcement must always ensure that police have the necessary equipment and can adapt to various environments should there be a need. Considering the diversity of the community in which the police interact with, it follows that enforcement agencies must equally be prepared to eradicate challenges comprised in its operations.
One of the ripest problems encountered by the police has to do with diversity in training and in their implementation of plans to address issues in society. Ineffectiveness is not the only negative outcome of lack of diversity; diversity problems compound the police ability to serve the people effectively.
Rudimentary research has established that operational breakdowns in the police force stem from problems of doubt and mistrust among ethnic groups depending on their perception of the amount of representation they are getting in law enforcement. In major cities in the world, there has been an increase in the number of confrontations between law enforcement and minorities for example, in the United States, there have been increased cases of violence involving the police, and black American youths who purport that they do not feel represented in law enforcement. Race plays a huge factor to the extent that it is a conflict happening between white police officers and minority victims. The black community, while contributing numbers on the minority list have received negative remarks from the media, politicians, and justice agents by association with social problems.
Such incidents often lead to reluctance by members of the public to provide vital information related to the state of the neighborhoods or crimes. This further undermines efforts of community policing. Consequently, members of the minorities may shun appearing as witnesses due to polarized relationships. Research has indicated that crimes conducted in low-income areas often take place because of marginalization because they are not represented well in law enforcement.
In the incident that marginalized communities feel left out in the scheme of things and have minimal or zero representation in law enforcement, they may resort to forming criminal gangs. This will lead to minorities failing to take orders from the police, as they do not feel represented by the whole society.
In other cases, it has been documented that minimal integration of minorities in the police force may cause civil anxiety and in extreme cases, riots. There have been incidents where minorities have felt sidelined, have been on the receiving end of police victimization, and would, therefore, rise against police on several occasions. Minorities have been known to create gangs that assume the role of the police because of a lack of representation. This raises the levels of insecurity in the neighborhood to create a mix of unlawful practices.
The diversity witnessed in modern society has been because of improvements in economic and social status, causing the birth of numerous classes of people. One of the outstanding problems in the current world has been racism and ethnicity. Racism has been a problem in the police force and the relationship between the police and the minorities. For instance, owing to racial profiling, there are certain classes of people who experience rampant searches by the police force. It has been evident that people receive police services based on their racial or ethnic profiles such that minorities receive less than satisfactory services, whereas the majorities receive services that make them contented.
In the ranks of law enforcement, there have been disagreements regarding the manner of promotions. The numbers of officers from ethnic minority communities who are constables and advanced are fewer than for others. Their numbers continue to dwindle as the ranks continue to rise. In numerous scholarly articles, it has been established that minorities endure through and twice as many formal warnings as compared to the majority counterparts. This is a testimony that the inadequacies of diversity not only affect the relationship between law enforcement officers and the communities but also comprises problems in the interpersonal relationships between law enforcement officers.
Another problem facing diversity in law enforcement relates to gender. Over time, there have been improvements in gender equality. Despite their inclusion into law enforcement, male law enforcement officers treat women as separate from the police force. This has contributed heavily to low numbers of women recruited into law enforcement with additional cases in rape. Rape has been a significant problem considering that female law enforcement officers have been reluctant to complain about this owing to further victimization and the fact that previous other cases taken to superiors have had little repercussions over time.
Benefits of Diversity
Conclusion
The relationship between minority groups and the police have always been strained.