Racial Profiling and Unlawful Searches by Law Enforcement (original) (raw)

Ethno-Racial Profiling in Law Enforcement: Concepts and Recommendations

2009

The question of ethnic and racial discrimination has became an extremely important point in legal discussions relating to the proliferation of new law enforcement authorizations employed in the “war against terrorism”. The old desire within law enforcement to minimize human decision-making and to deploy automated investigating or screening processes brought a revitalization of formerly discredited measures such as profiling. Also, the fast development of informational technology enables the interconnection of various commercial and law enforcement databases, and also the melding of formerly independent immigration, criminal etc. data-sources. The IT sector in the security business brings lucrative opportunities, thus the private sector is no longer only an innocent victim of excessive government legislation, on, for example, reporting requirements, but also a keen partner. In connection with these developments, we can witness a renewed debate over preventive measures based on ethno-racial profiling. Some commentators emphasize that ethnic profiling is in principle unacceptable. The result, according to these critics, is the harassment of the innocent minority middle class, which is subjected to a kind of “racial tax” that affects all aspects of people’s lives. A further unwanted result is the strengthening of racial/ethnic essentialism, reductionism to black and white/Muslim and non-Muslim/Roma and non-Roma/immigrant and non-immigrant, etc.). Another, straightforwardly pragmatic criticism has been calling attention to the practical ineffectiveness of racial profiling: inherent in the prima facie plausible reasoning based on statistics there is a profound (and provable) error, since racial profiles are, both over-inclusive and under-inclusive – over-inclusive in the sense that many, indeed most, of the people who fit into the category are entirely innocent, and under-inclusive in the sense that many other types of criminals or terrorists who do not fit the profile will thereby escape police attention. The essay's scope is limited to clarifying some of the crucial concepts and definitions and enumerating some possible legislative remedies to its problems.

Racial Profiling: A Persistent Civil Rights Challenge Even in the Twenty-First Century

Case Western Reserve law review, 2016

is an urban sociologist that teaches classes in Public Safety & Justice Management , Contemporary Urban Issues, and African-American Images in Film, and a research associate in the Criminology Research Center at Cleveland State. His research interests include issues affecting minorities and the urban poor, with a specific focus on race, crime, and the criminal justice system. His particular area of expertise is racial profiling, as reflected in his 2011 book, Racial Profiling: Causes and Consequences (Kendall-Hunt Publishing Co.). This research led to the use of traffic cameras in the city of Cleveland, which was intended as a means to reduce the racial bias in traffic enforcement. His recommendation to then-State Senator and current Board Commissioner Nina Turner, calling for a statewide commission on policing, led to Governor Kasich's establishment of The Statewide Taskforce on Police-Community Relations, to which both Dr. Dunn and Commissioner Turner were appointed. He also p...

Racial profiling and searches: Did the politics of racial profiling change police behavior?

Criminology & Public Policy, 2009

Scholarly research has documented repeatedly that minority citizens are disproportionately stopped, searched, and arrested relative to their baseline populations. In recent years, policymakers have brought increased attention to this issue as law-enforcement agencies across the United States have faced allegations of racial profiling. In the 1990s, the politics generated by accounts of racially biased policing placed heightened pressure on law-enforcement agencies. However, to date, few studies have explored whether the increased social and political scrutiny placed on police organizations influenced or changed their general pattern of enforcement among black and white citizens. Using data in the search and citation file from the North Carolina Highway Traffic Study, this research specifically examined whether the politics generated by the media coverage of racial profiling and racial profiling legislation in North Carolina influenced the search practices of officers of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol's drug interdiction team. The findings suggest that media accounts and the passage of new legislation were particularly powerful influences, which thereby reduced racial disparity in searches. Declines in the use of consent searches and an increased probability of finding contraband also were influenced by the politics of racial profiling. 343 \\server05\productn\C\CPP\8-2\CPP204.txt unknown Seq: 2 5-JUN-09 8:30

Race and Racial Profiling

Oxford Anthology on the Philosophy of Race ed. N. Zack

Philosophical reflection on racial profiling tends to take one of two forms. The first sees it as an example of ‘statistical discrimination,’ (SD), or when, if ever, probabilistic generalisations about group behaviour or characteristics can be used to judge particular individuals.(Applbaum 2014; Harcourt 2004; Hellman, 2014; Risse and Zeckhauser 2004; Risse 2007; Lippert-Rasmussen 2006; Lippert-Rasmussen 2007; Lippert-Rasmussen 2014) . This approach treats racial profiling as one example amongst many others of a general problem in egalitarian political philosophy, occasioned by the fact that treating people as equals does not always require, or permit, us to treat them the same. The second form is concerned with how racial profiling illuminates the nature, justification, and reproduction of hierarchies of power and privilege based on skin colour and morphology. This form of reflection on racial profiling is therefore less about the justification for judging people based on the characteristics of the group to which they (appear to) belong, and more concerned with the specific ways in which the association of racialised minorities – and, in particular, black people – with crime, contributes to, and reflects, racial inequality, unfreedom, and oppression.(Kennedy 1998; Zack, 2015; Lever, 2005; Lever 2007). Both approaches to profiling have much to recommend them and, taken together, they form an essential component of the political philosophy of race. The statistical approach has the merits of linking racial profiling, as practice, to a body of other practices that generate and justify inequalities based on factors other than race, but it typically offers little by way of insight into the role of racial profiling itself in sustaining racial inequality and injustice. The racial construction approach, for obvious reasons, is rather better at the latter task, but its insights tend to come at the price of a broader understanding of the ways in which inequality is reproduced and justified, or of the ethical dilemmas raised by our competing claims to security. As we will see, insights from both approaches can be synthesized to clarify what, if anything, is wrong with racial profiling and what broader conclusions for equality and security follow from the study of profiling.

On the Use of Racial Profiling as a Law Enforcement Tool

Staff General Research Papers, 2005

Abstract. The “End Racial Profiling Act of 2001” (ERPA) states that “no law enforcement agent or law enforcement agency shall engage in racial profiling” and mandates states to “collect detailed data on stops, searches, seizures, and arrests.” We develop a stylized dynamic model of ...

What's wrong with racial profiling? Another look at the problem

Criminal Justice Ethics, 2007

some terminology before getting under way, however, it might be helpful to recapitulate some terminology. the first is about racial profiling. i am happy to accept risse and Zeckhauser's definition of it as "any police-initiated action that relies on the race, ethnicity, or national origin and not merely on the behavior of an individual." 5 as they say, there are several different forms of profiling, so described. the

The Art of the Unseen: Three challenges for Racial Profiling

The Journal of Ethics, 2011

This article analyses the moral status of racial profiling from a consequentialist perspective and argues that, contrary to what proponents of racial profiling might assume, there is a prima facie case against racial profiling on consequentialist grounds. To do so it establishes general definitions of police practices and profiling, sketches out the costs and benefits involved in racial profiling in

Racial Profiling, Security, and Human Rights

Neighborhood Watch coordinator George Zimmerman's February 2012 fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, 17-year old African American in a gated community in Sanford, Florida, has raised serious questions concerning racial profiling (Yancy and Jones 2012). Racial profiling can be defined as: Any action undertaken for reasons of safety, security or public protection that relies on stereotypes about race, [color], ethnicity, ancestry, religion, or place of origin rather than on reasonable suspicion, to single out an individual for greater scrutiny or different treatment. (UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent 2008). Racial profiling is a violation of the 14 th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which recognizes "the principle of equality before the law" (UN Special Rapporteur 2009). The amendment states that no State shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" (Ibid.). The immediate persons to who...