Labeling causes Police Prejudice

Police build prejudices based upon experience of labeled minority groups, preferably Black and Latino. The labeling theory says that if you give a person a label for their initial act of deviance they will conform to the requirements that come with the label, therefore going back to the norm or more that they violated in the first place and violating it again, making this the secondary act of deviance. So if for years and years black youth are being brought up in a subculture of mixed types of deviance; and they are running into the law as juveniles, getting off on misdemeanors. Those same juvenile offenders according to the labeling theory will commit felony crimes after that initial misdemeanor offense that gave them the deviant label.

If police happen to realize the overwhelming numbers among the minority community and see who's being labeled what, they're obviously going to come to a prejudgment about blacks and Hispanics without knowing any, the prejudice is formed. And with that prejudice they will hit the streets looking for blacks and hispanics to commit crimes not commiting them, but assuming they will commit them because of that prejudice that has been developed due to labels. So they're going to be out there stopping nearly every not normal minority male they see and who knows what's normal to them.

And in them detaining more youths on petty offenses, giving them labels easier from young. Officers are just training an army from of adult offenders from young. Its like if you tell a kid they're stupid at toddler ages, that kid is going to grow up thinking that they're stupid, because you gave that child the initial label.Government officials need to come up with some alternative for juvenile offenders to avoid prosecuting and labeling them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory