To return to this sets' summary click Overview. For the general product directory, click Directory. Articles Appellate Process Capital Punishment Criminal Procedure Forensics Murder & Homicide Public Defenders Racial Profiling Robbery Secret Service, U.S. Other Elements Table of Contents If you need help with products and ordering, setting up a new account or working with this website, call or email us: Phone: (800) 221-1592 Email: csr@salempress.com The seductive appeal of a racial profile lies in the belief that if members of group X are disproportionately more likely to commit a particular crime than other people, it makes sense to focus attention on group X. However, if only a tiny percentage of group X members commit the crime, then such a focus may be ethically questionable, as it would burden the overwhelming majority of law-abiding members of group X. It is instructive to consider the mathematics of profiling. If a particular crime that is committed by only 0.1 percent of the general population is committed by 1.0 percent of the members of group X, then any individual member of group X is ten times more likely to commit the crime than a member of the general population. However, 99 percent of the members of group X are law-abiding with respect to this crime. Moreover, if all the members of group X constitute less than 10 percent of the total population, then fewer than half of the people who commit the crime in question are actually members of group X.

Editor: Phyllis B. Gerstenfeld ISBN: 978-1-58765-427-5 List Price: $217 August 2008 · 3 volumes · 1,068 pages · 6"x9" Crime and Punishment in the U.S. Racial Profiling Definition: Police practice of using race or ethnicity as a primary reason for stopping, questioning, searching, or arresting potential suspects Criminal justice issue: Civil rights and liberties; government misconduct; police powers; search and seizure Significance: Increasingly recognized as a major problem in the United States, racial profiling is damaging to everyone it touches--from its victims to the police officers who employ it and society as a whole. Criminal profiling is a recognized technique of law enforcement that is used to help identify and apprehend criminal suspects. Police investigators establish "profiles" of typical offenders of specific crimes and then try to find suspects who match those profiles. The more variables the police consider in building a profile, the greater the probability that the profile is accurate. A central problem with racial profiling is that it is based on race, or ethnicity, and only a small number of other variables, such as sex and age. Racial profiling is based on the assumption that members of certain racial and ethnic groups are more likely than other people to commit certain types of crime. An example of a particularly common assumption is that because many young African American men commit drug crimes, young African American men in general are more likely to commit such crimes. Acting on that assumption, law-enforcement officers who see young African American men in neighborhoods known to be centers of drug crime might feel justified in stopping and questioning them, simply because they appear to fit a drug-dealer "profile." Such stops may sometimes actually help police apprehend drug dealers who might otherwise escape arrest. However, officers practicing racial profiling also stop many entirely innocent young black men whose only offense is being black. The central problem with racial profiling is that it tends to stigmatize whole groups of people, even though most members of the stigmatized groups are law-abiding citizens. As a consequence, members of the stigmatized groups may go through their lives feeling that they are something less than full members of society and that they are always in danger of being scrutinized and distrusted. During the 1990's, the practice of racial profiling gained so much national attention that it became an issue of public debate. Public opinion turned against the practice, which seemed unfair, undemocratic, and perhaps even un-American. Finally, in the first state of the union address of the twenty-first century, a U.S. president publicly spoke out against the practice. On February 27, 2001, President George W. Bush declared before a joint session of Congress that racial profiling was wrong and that it should be abolished in the United States. His message moved members of both parties to take action on the problem. The following June, a bipartisan bill, the End Racial Profiling Act of 2001, was presented to Congress. However, in September, before Congress completed action on the bill, something happened that turned public opinion on racial profiling upside down. On September 11, Middle Eastern terrorists hijacked four American airliners and killed thousands of people in attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. Because the terrorists involved in the attacks were Muslim Arabs, a cloud of suspicion of all Middle Easterners and Muslims--as well as many other immigrants and Americans of foreign descent--descended over the United States. In the new, post-September 11 atmosphere of fear, national sentiment swung back in favor of allowing law-enforcement officers to detain and arrest suspicious-looking people on the basis of evidence as limited as their physical appearance. As a result, the End Racial Profiling Act of 2001 was never passed. The Problem Numerous studies have shown that police in many jurisdictions stop and question or initiate investigations of members of racial minorities at rates fare greater than the minorities' representation in the general population would suggest is appropriate. Statistical evidence from across the country points to the conclusion that racial profiling, or racially biased policing, is a measurable and real phenomenon. An example of racial profiling on a large scale occurred in the California in 1999, when the state's Highway Patrol conducted a drug interdiction program called Operation Pipeline. The program utilized a profile provided by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to make more than 34,000 traffic stops, only 2 percent of which resulted in drug seizures. Meanwhile, well over 33,000 motorists--most of whom were members of racial minorities--were detained and temporarily deprived of their rights. In 2000, a federal General Accounting Office (GAO) study of the practices of the U.S. Customs Service revealed evidence of racial profiling by federal agents. The GAO study found that during 1998, individual white women entering the United States carried with them contraband goods at a rate that was twice that of black women. Nevertheless, the black women were X-rayed for contraband at a rate nine times greater than the rate for white women. A general finding of the study was that the rates at which women and members of minorities were selected by customs officials for intrusive searches was inconsistent with the rates at which members of the same groups were found to be carrying contraband. U.S. Department of Justice studies of law-enforcement treatment of suspects have found similar patterns and inconsistencies. For example, one study found that African American drivers were 20 percent more likely than white drivers to be stopped by police and that individual African American drivers were 50 percent more likely than white drivers to have been stopped more than once. Moreover, among all drivers who were stopped by police, African Americans and Hispanics more than twice as likely as whites to be searched. Effects of Racial Profiling Individual citizens, communities, police forces, and society in general all suffer when racial profiling occurs. Individuals subjected to racial profiling can be injured in a variety of ways. They may experience anxiety, anger, humiliation, cynicism, fear, resentment, or combinations of these responses. Racially biased policing can cause psychological trauma and racial profiling can violate an individual's constitutional rights. Racial profiling affects communities in several ways. The faith of communities in their local police tends to decline when the police engage in racial profiling because it humiliates and degrades all minorities. Profiling also degrades the legitimacy of the criminal justice system by breeding distrust between minority communities and the police. The police tend to lose their effectiveness when the communities they are entrusted to protect lose confidence in them. Even when racial profiling is practiced only by a minority of police officers, the public is apt to lose confidence in the entire force. One reason that racial profiling exists is that it reflects deeper societal attitudes about race. In fact, it tends to reflect the attitudes of members of all races about race. Support for this observation can be found in studies undertaken in the general population. In one such study, for example, subjects were shown two similar pictures. The first picture was of two young African American men, both in unkempt clothing, standing on street corner in a run-down neighborhood. One man was pointing a pistol at the other man. The second picture was exactly the same, except for the fact that both men were white. When asked what was happening in the first pictures, must subjects--both white and black--thought that the man with the gun was either holding up the other man or was about to kill him. By contrast, when asked about the second picture, most subjects--both white and black--thought that the man with the gun was an undercover police officer. Tests such as that one show that the assumptions about race underlying racial profiling go well beyond police departments. Progress By mid-2004, nine states had passed legislation prohibiting racial profiling. Meanwhile, in February, 2004, Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Representative John Conyers of Michigan introduced the End Racial Profiling Act of 2004 in both houses of the U.S. Congress. The new bill was designed to do five things: prohibit racial profiling by all federal agencies require state and local police agencies applying for federal assistance to have policies that discourage racial profiling offer grants to local and state law-enforcement agencies to create programs that ensure racially neutral administration of justice require all government law-enforcement agencies to submit data to the U.S. attorney general data on the racial composition of the persons whom the agencies stop, investigate, or arrest require the U.S. attorney general to process the data collected and submit to Congress annual summaries on the use of racial profiling throughout the United States Vic Sims Further Reading Cole, David. No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System. New York: New Press, 1999. Introduction to the problems of racism in the American criminal justice system. Davis, Kelvin R. Driving While Black: Coverup. Cincinnati: Interstate International Publishing, 2001. First-person account of a man who was unfairly arrested and eventually incarcerated because of racial profiling. Harris, David. Profiles in Injustice: Why Police Profiling Cannot Work. New York: New Press, 2002. Powerful critique of racial profiling that may be the best general overview of the subject yet published. Meeks, Kenneth. Driving While Black: What to Do If You Are a Victim of Racial Profiling. New York: Random House, 2000. Critique of racial profiling that offers practical advice to victims and potential victims. Mutual Respect in Policing: Lesson Plan. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2001. Federal government report on the progress made in ending racial profiling. See Also Police civil liability; Police powers; Probable cause; Psychological profiling; Search and seizure; Stop and frisk.

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