As citizenship is restricted to the children of male nationals, female citizens are discouraged from marrying men of a distinct race or nationality because their children would be denied citizenship. Naturalization policies, too, may be wholly or largely founded on discriminatory grounds. Denial of citizenship on racial or national grounds may be a norm even for people who have established deep roots in a country and have retained no connections with any other. Institutional Prevention and Remedy Even more pervasive is the racist effect of Government policies and practices may have a racist effect even in the absence of discriminatory intent. Human Rights Watch is calling for special attention to institutional ways in which public policy can perpetuate or remedy racial discrimination and related intolerance.
Criminal justice has an enormous potential for discriminatory effect.
At the national or local level discrimination can arise from practices with racist intent, like racial profiling, in which one's race is the determining factor in falling under suspicion. The mechanisms of criminal justice can equally discriminate where there is no clear racist intent. Discriminatory impact can be shown in patterns of police abuse, arbitrary arrest, incarceration, prosecution, and sentencing. The de facto denial of remedies to particular groups within a criminal justice system or de jure disenfranchisement of members of one group may be evidence of disparate racist effect regardless of the intent of lawmakers and public officials. Discrimination in public administration.