It has always been a mandatory lesson for criminal justice studies students to explore the issue of race as part of their coursework. They have to be taught how to keep an open mind regardless of their own ethnic perspective. This helps ensure that the legal system is able to serve people from different ethnicities fairly and equally. Today’s criminal justice courses exploring racial issues might involve study of the following topics.
Community Relations
If racial and ethnic communities ceased to exist, then there would be no racial issues in the first place. Students take a closer look in understanding how these communities exist as independently, as well as their relationship with other minority communities. Students will learn about the challenges that each community encounters and will work to understand why some actions against these communities can be classified as racial from alternate points of view.
Communities and the System
Criminal justice students will also learn how the justice system responds to racial issues filed by people from these minority communities. They will evaluate the extent to which the justice system protects these communities. They will also explore the effects that judicial decisions have on the communities, both positively and negatively. It is important for students to understand how communities, and the members within them, are shaped by the actions of the criminal justice system.
Racial Profiling
This is a very delicate topic since it is a very high profile topic in today’s media. Criminal justice students will learn how to remain unbiased in situations. They will also learn the legal implications that surround racial profiling, especially in creating a legal defense, and how to help a victim of racial profiling that they may be representing. It is also important that criminal just students understand that language perceptions can affect mixed-race interactions. A word that is harmless from one perspective, may be perceived as an ethnic slur to the other person.
Social Justice
Critically evaluating crimes that have previously occurred will help students identify fair solutions that give meaning to justice and fairness. In the different levels of justice, students will learn how and why some decisions have been made and the importance of evidence. They will learn how to combine racial related cases with other illegalities in the judicial system to understand the precedents set and chart new territory going forward.
Criminal justice students have the opportunity to examine the role played by race and ethnicity in crime and justice. During their studies, it is important for students to carefully discuss, assess, and understand the different contemporary issues regarding race and race relations, as they have proved to be current societal problems that will not be going away any time soon.