The Right People: The Purposive Policing and Correctional Control of People of Color

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

In 2013, an NYPD Deputy Inspector was recorded instructing a subordinate to improve his performance as a police officer by learning to better search and seize “the right people.” While there is some dispute as to what was meant by the inspector’s statement, legal and empirical examinations have consistently shown mechanisms of the state, especially the police, being disproportionately martialed against certain populations. This panel explores the ways in which different groups come to be identified as “the right people” to be targeted for police investigation and enforcement tactics; and, the social and legal consequences of such identification. The first paper explores the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Whren v. United States, specifically with regard to evidence suggesting that the ruling may have served to mask or legitimize selective enforcement based on race. The final papers examine three populations of “the right people” – minority probationers and parolees, Latino immigrants, and American Muslims – and provides critiques of the minority threat, petit apartheid and rational racism theories as explanations for the system’s disparately intense policing and correctional control of these groups.

Sub Unit

• Area VIII: Policing / 56: Policing, Race, Ethnicity, and other Dimensions of Inequality

Individual Presentations

• The Right People: Using Statistical Inference as Evidence of Discriminatory Intent - Yunho Yeom, City Universtiy of New York, Graduate Center; Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill, John Jay College / Graduate Center, CUNY

• The Right People: Neutralizing Minority Threat by Reducing the Protections of Probationers/Parolees - Victor St. John, Center for Race, Crime and Justice, John Jay College / Graduate Center, CUNY; Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill, John Jay College / Graduate Center, CUNY; Earl Thomason, Jr., Center on Race, Crime and Justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice / Rutgers University

• The Right People: Minority Threat and Punitiveness toward Immigration Populations - Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill, John Jay College / Graduate Center, CUNY; Jennifer Peirce, John Jay College of Criminal Justice / CUNY Graduate Center

• The Right People: Petit Apartheid, Rational Racism and the Use of Fourth Amendment Exceptions in the Investigations of Muslims - Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill, John Jay College / Graduate Center, CUNY

Chair

• Delores Jones-Brown, Center for Race, Crime and Justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice