Profiling an Effective Tool for Law Enforcement

¶ … profiling an effective tool for law enforcement to use in policing society?

Racial profiling is the practice of law enforcement officers in stopping an individual of a certain race or ethnicity and investigating them based on their ethnicity. Such practices may occur in traffic routines or in matters connected with security. Racial profiling is forbidden in most states and in fact, as the article "RACIAL PROFILING LAW STRENGTHENED" (2012) by Keating, Christopher shows the Senate recently strengthened the state's racial profiling law.

On the one hand, as stated in Harcourt (2004), many of the people involved in traffic incidents do seem to be of a similar race. We have the same occurrence with security matters where, over and again, it seems to be most frequently people of Islamic extraction who perpetrate terrorist activities against the West. More so, Fundamentalist Islam has come out overtly against the West threatening the West with retribution and extinction. In this case, then it would make sense to place more focus on people of Islamic extraction as more likely - although not necessarily so -- to commit terrorism. There are many exceptions too. Timothy McVeigh for instance was a home-spun American and many of the recent cases of terrorism that occurred this year were committed by non-Muslims. Nonetheless, if one sees a certain probability happening enough times, the law of mathematical risks is that one takes precautions where it is most calculated to happen.

This is particularly important since America has only limited resources and cannot haphazardly fling them around in arbitrarily stopping every random individual. Time, economic resources, and the simple impossibility of randomly targeting a non-deliberate sample of people make this impossible. One has to take calculated risks based on history and experience -- this is the science of probability -- in order to prevent crimes form occurring, in order to deter drugs, in order to preempt further traffic death, and, in order to increase security. Alleged prejudice is a small price to pay for the relatively far larger and more significant flow of blood that will occur were officers to overlook those most likely to perpetrate the crimes.

In fact, economists argue that the fact that the police consistently find the same ethnicity involved in crimes does not indicate bigotry or racial profiling. Rather, there is a certain 'hit rate' that shows that time and again contrabands have been found by searching this particular race and not another. To economists, it makes sense.

On the other hand, civil liberty advocates protest that police deliberately focus on people of minority extraction to the almost total exclusion of White motorists (or White individuals in terms of security). The statistics, according to some, show no evidence that Blacks (or other similar minority races such as Hispanics) are more aggrandizing involved in drugs than Whites. Rather, it is these individuals who are singled out. The police can no more use race in deciding who to search than prosecutors can use race in deciding whom to charge. Both must be given their fair day in court and it is only because a large number of Blacks (let's say) have been stopped in the first place that they have been accused of violations. Had Whites been investigated, the 'hit rate' may have swerved in their favor.

There are three basic conditions for racial profiling, but Harcourt (2004) shows that current practices actually do not meet either of these. The three conditions are the following:

1. That racial profiling if done must reduce the amount of profiled crime

2. That it does so whilst using police resources efficiently

3. That it does so without producing a "ratchet effect" on the profiled population.

Apparently, racial profiling does not appear to be an effective tool for law enforcement to use in policing society, since drugs and other crimes have certainly not been reduced over the years but, in fact, seemed to have increased despite the once commonly practiced policy of racial profiling. More so, it likely seems to have produced a ratchet effect on the population which produces a significant cost to minority families and communities whilst Whites, who almost certainly perpetrate the same crime (e.g. drugs) but remain not, caught do not have to suffer this expense. This can engender hostility and dissention as in the case of the Rodney King riots of LA.

There is a more significant reason still: consistently associating race with particular crime tends not only to promote this association in the public eye (thereby reinforcing bigotry and stereotype)_ but also may lead to a self-reinforcing stereotype on the part of the minority group itself that begins to identity itself with this particular crime.

It is significant to note too, s in the case of the catholic priest where excessive force was used against involved Latino residents (Keating, 2012), that over and again racial profiling seems to be accompanied with excessive brutality on the part of the police. It is as though many of these officers seem to enjoy stopping these particular individuals and extending their punishment and humiliation as long as possible. One wonders whether the same excessive force would have been used in conjunction with Whites.