Unraveling Injustice: Bias, Racism, and Obstacles in Forensic Psychology

Bias is an unfair amount of liking towards something, in comparison to something or someone else. Everyone, in their own way carries their own biases, however, this is a serious matter in society. The two types of biases are unconscious and conscious bias. When the captain came in to talk to us during one of our lectures, he discussed bias and diversity within sheriff’s departments and within law enforcers, and how they practice mindfulness of everything inside and out of their office.

Forensic Psychology is the crossover between the law and psychology. In forensic psychology there are different branches in that represent and assist the police departments, and in courtrooms. Forensic is a fairly new and upcoming area in psychology, they have many important roles which help police find their suspects to assist families.

Racism is discriminating against people because of their race or beliefs because the person thinks more highly of themselves than the other person. Yes, racism can play a part in forensic psychology.

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News in recent years have shown innocent people being shot by police because they were “taking out a gun” when they were just grabbing something else. Secondly, there can be a forensic psychologist or even law enforcement who may may discriminate against someone because of their background. Lastly, another example can be through unconscious and negative bias. For example, if something in the past has happened with someone or something that was negative, it may be carried over towards someone else or something else.

The central park 5 boys were named Antron, Corey, Kevin, Youssef, and Raymond. These boys were going to hang out in the park at night, at the same time a rape of a jogger had occured. The boys were later accused of the rape and assault, and were interrogated by the police and detectives as minors. Not all the boys in this group know each other, and you can see this clearly when they showed the scene of the boys in the same room when they were being locked up. The boys are roughly around the same age, but were at a different location in the park. They could be looked at as suspects of convenience because they were the only people found in the park at the time of the rape.

What are some of the obstacles that have been discussed in class or that you see to the Central Park 5 getting a fair trial-so far? These boys were minors, and were forced into signing “what they did” without a parent or guardian to be there. This was the first obstacle they were facing, because those documents were essentially what was going to be used in court against them. The other reason why they gave into the signing was that they were almost forced and interrogated into saying “what the cops wanted to hear”. They were given false hope that they could go home if they told the “truth”.

Although the boys did not know each other, they were interrogated to tell the detectives what the other boys did during the rape. As they were being interrogated, the detectives became aggressive towards the boys, causing the boys to become more scared than they already were. Not only did the detectives interrogate the boys, but also were being hostile towards parents and guardians, and did not show any sort of empathy. All the detectives were looking into doing was “locking these boys up”, even though all the evidence presented by their defenders were accurate and truthful. There was a sock that was found with semen, which the detectives were not going to bring up.

That in itself is untruthful. The evidence which was found: no blood on their clothing, no mud on their pants, and no actual evidence that they were at the scene was enough evidence that the detectives kept arguing against. Instead of listening to their truthful story, they told “the police what they wanted to hear”. When one of the boys, Corey, was on the stands for trial, he specifically said he cannot read, but during the trial he was interrogated and yelled at by the detectives.