Ministerul Afacerilor Interne Romania

Academia de Politie “Alexandru Ioan Cuza”

Facultatea de stiinte juridice si administrative

Grupa: 201

Nume: Bostan George-Alexandru

RACIAL BIASES AFFECT HOW THE POLICE

ENFORCE THE LAW

Racial biases or “hate crimes” means an term that refers to all those crimes
committed by the perpetrator on the basis of a discriminatory motivations(eg
bullyng in schools basis of colour of the skin of the kids wich can continues on
others illegal facts like cruel fightings between the kids, or killing someone basis
of his regilion like Christian, muslims or other religion). Discriminatory motivation
in commiting crimes has been introduced for the first time as an aggravating
cirmustance in our romanian penal law through the law no. 278/2006, even the new
penal law(penal law was changed in 2009 in Romania)has kept this legal approach
and, in addition, opened the list of criteria that can be taken into account in
determining discriminatory motivation.
I am against about those racial biases from several perspectives. In the
beginning, hate crimes make the work`s police more harder because those kind of
crimes put in danger groups of people who were not passive subjects of crime(like
terrorist attacks). Since the perpetrator has chosen his target basis of its social
indentity, it means that anyone could have fallen victim to the crime for so long
how much he shares the same characteristic with the injured person. Basically,
they are endangered more individuals than those directly affected by the criminal
act and, consequently, a reaction from the police is needed to protect groups at risk
of falling victim to hate crimes.

Secondly, injured people in the hate crimes are the target of perpetrators on a
certain basis characteristics related on their identity. The perpetrator considers the
feature right proof of inferiority or as unacceptable and commits the crime
conveying these messages of humiliation. So, those people are put in the position
to accept that they were the target of the crime only because of their identity and
that they or their family risk being targeted again, respectivly loved ones who
share the same identity characterisitics(eg ethnicity, race, sexual orientation) or
fundamental(eg political views, religion).

Finally, in my opinion, to stop those racial biases, help police and other
authorities to easly enforce the law and preventing and combating them is a list of
good practices wich includes strategic approach, police training, management
activies of diversity at the police level, the creation of specialized structures for
comabting those kind of crimes and online mechanism for anonymous reporting of
hate crimes and racial abuses.