According to recent polling by the Pew Research Center, Latinos have a relatively low amount of confidence in the criminal justice system.
At a time when Latinos are interacting more than ever with police, courts and prisons, their confidence in the U.S. criminal justice system is closer to the low levels expressed by blacks than to the high levels expressed by whites, according to a pair of nationwide surveys by the Pew Research Center.
The poll looked at a number of areas in the criminal justice system, from the police to the courts. And in every category, the Hispanics’ views of the criminal justice system showed they have lower confidence than that of non-Hispanic whites.
Six-in-ten (61%) Hispanics say they have a great deal or a fair amount of confidence that the police in their local communities will do a good job enforcing the law, compared with 78% of whites and 55% of blacks. Just under half (46%) of Hispanics say they have confidence that police officers will not use excessive force on suspects, compared with 73% of whites and 38% of blacks. Similarly, just under half of Hispanics say they are confident that police officers will treat Hispanics fairly (45%) and that courts will treat Hispanics fairly (49%). In comparison, 74% of whites and 37% of blacks say they have confidence that the police will treat blacks and whites equally.
The report is based on two different surveys. The first poll was a bilingual telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 2,015 Hispanic adults. Interviews were conducted from June 9 through July 13, 2008, by the Pew Hispanic Center.