Issues of La Raza

Main issues that are addressed by the national council of la Raza: Criminal and Juvenile Justice, Racial Profiling, Voting Rights, State/Local Police Enforcement of Immigration Laws.

Description

In reference to criminal and juvenile justice, according to the website of the National Council of La Raza, many Latin-Americans feel that the justice system in the United States at times treats many individuals of their race unfairly. They are also concerned by the disproportion of representation of Latino Youths in the juvenile system. The NCLR works the Latino Juvenile Justice network to address these types of issues. According to their website, in terms of the criminal system, the focus was brought attention to the council in 2000 due to: an absence of Hispanic influence in federal policy debates on criminal justice issues, the necessity of the Latino community to become more active in effective public policies and the need for support of the NLCR from both the state and the local levels to address this issue. The goals for the NLCR are to work on sentencing reform, alternatives to imprisonment and others. In terms of racial profiling, the council takes a strong stance against the profiling of individuals, so they work with officials, law makers and the community to eliminate the problem of profiling.

The council also understands the importance of voting, and the organization actively participates to ensure the right to vote as well as promoting voting to the Latin American community.

With this issue of state and local police enforcement of immigrant laws, the National Council of La Raza strongly opposes it. The council agrees that by allowing the state and local authorities to be responsible for these laws, there will be an increase of racial profiling and civil rights violations by the authorities, ultimately destroying the relationship between the authorities and the community.