To the extent that race and ethnic-specific strategies to fight gang activity have been embedded in the procedures of law enforcement, institutional discrimination is at least potentially in operation. That is because real-world experience tends toward the view that public safety suffers if criminal gangs comprising racial minorities identified with crime are not targeted. It seems impossible to be racially neutral in law enforcement in light of evidence that racial-minority gangs take a positive view of their antagonism to mainstream society. Arfaniarromo (2000) cites research showing that ethnic-minority gang members view gang activity as a social achievement, not deviance. Arfaniarromo references studies showing that gang members perceive delinquent behavior, or "deviant achievement orientation," as desirable, mainly on account of personal powerlessness and social marginality, reinforced by the institutions of culture.
A new dilemma arises, however, because institutional discrimination breeds contextual discrimination, or situations in which unjust targeting of individuals based on ethnicity becomes the norm of law enforcement (Munoz & Sapp, 2003). In other words, ethnic identity becomes the initial standard for targeting an individual rather than evidence or suspicion of an individual's gang activity. That is how a crime such as driving while intoxicated morphs into crime not because of driving behavior so much as because of who is driving. Result: a crime called (say) driving while black or Hispanic.
The positive perception of gang membership might explain crime in terms of deliberate bad acts. However, there is ample evidence that some bad actors are so because they are excluded from access to social goods on account of their racial/ethnic status. African Americans aged 10-17 make up 15% of the US population as a whole but also 26% of juvenile arrests, 32% of delinquency referrals to juvenile court, and 41% of juveniles det...