Does Racial Profiling Reduce Crime?

These are dire times we live in; the media desensitizes us to graphic content while instilling an irrational fear of strangers. The 24-hour news cycle is dominated by instances of senseless brutality, bombarding us with explicit images of gun violence and horrific massacres, in the name of religion, politics, ideology or racial supremacy. When our very life and liberty are at stake, our willingness to accept intrusive and dehumanizing methods of scrutiny by the enforcers of the law is understandable. Whatever it takes to feel safe again, right?

The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, reassures us that the law makes no discrimination on the basis of race. While the law may grant us equal status, the application of the law involves human bias; invariably this is where prejudice rears its ugly head. Racial Profiling is a tool used by all law enforcement agencies, quite an effective tool when used in the right circumstances. But there is a potential to use it to further one’s own inherent prejudices, and violate the fourteenth amendment.

“Racial Profiling”, the term makes everyone uncomfortable, but taking a leaf from Machiavelli’s 'The Prince' (meant as satire, something many people don’t realize); “if the end justifies the means”. As any believer in the utilitarian philosophy will tell you, the discomfort of a few for the good of many is a small price to pay to keep us safe. In this essay, we will discuss the definition and background of Racial Profiling, its usage in the eyes of the law, and its efficacy.

Racial Profiling

For the collective good, the few will have to sacrifice; this makes sense in theory, but does it hold up in practice? Let us test our theory through a hypothetical situation, which we will call the “Patrick Plan”. The Patrick Plan was conceived when some statistic-savvy government officials noted that many cases of fatalities and accidents due to drunk driving involved people named ‘Patrick’ behind the wheel. They concluded that Patricks were more likely to be drunk and cause accidents. A law was passed that required all Patricks to have a clearly labeled ‘P’ on their car. In addition, they could be stopped and asked for documentation or to submit to a sobriety test, without any cause. They were banned from driving on certain roads, after hours, due to the abundance of pubs and bars. In order to boost Patricks' morale, billboards were put up, showing happy, smiling people, consuming alcohol, with a caption that said: “ Thank you, Pat, for making us a little safer”.

There are three possible reactions to this hypothetical situation; A) Object on the basis of fairness; just because some Patricks are irresponsible doesn’t mean ALL of them are, many non-Patricks will cause DUI accidents and fly under the radar because the resources are focused on Patricks. The name Patrick is prevalent in a certain ethnicity more than others, so it’s unfairly focusing on a certain race. B) They object on the basis of efficacy; what’s to stop Patricks from changing their names? A change in the name won’t change their propensity for liquor. C) Refuse to side with either party until the efficacy of the system can be proven. This is a hypothetical situation; any resemblance to current methods in use or actual events is purely intentional, it was meant to create uneasiness.

Police strategies that allocate enforcement resources on the basis of prior probabilities that individuals will commit crimes are called Actuarial Methods.¹ Actuarial Methods form the basis of a perpetrator profile; imputing criminal risk on the basis of the individual’s display of certain characteristics. These profiles can be helpful in maximizing output by the efficient allocation of investigative resources. When this profile bases an individual’s probability to commit a crime on their race, religion, or skin color, it becomes Race Profiling.

Even though statistics don’t show any credible evidence that ethnic minorities are more likely to commit crimes than white people, research findings from 2004 show, they are more likely to be suspected of having committed a crime:

● Black people are six times more likely to be searched by the police than white people. There are almost twice as many searches of Asian people than white people.

● Stops and searches under PACE of black people went up by 38 percent, Asians by 36 percent, ‘other’ ethnic backgrounds by 47 percent and white by 17 percent.

● Stops and searches under s.44 of TACT for Asians has risen by 302 percent from 744 to 2,989.14 ²

In an excerpt from Gillian and Quinton, Lord Hope states Common sense tells us that the nature of the terrorist threat will play a large part in the selection process. Typically terrorist acts are planned, organized and committed by people acting together to promote a common cause rather than individuals. They will have a common agenda. They are likely to be linked to sectors of the community that, because of their racial, ethnic or geographical origins, are readily identifiable. ³

It is imperative that law enforcement officers understand how to differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate uses of racial profiling during their law activities in order to continue to be seen as impartial upholders of the law.

Any citizen that feels racially profiled has two courses of action to fight unjust laws. They can either attack the statute itself for being racially biased or attack the application of the law for being racist. Even though the Supreme court has ruled “Legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect” ⁴ there are instances where such restrictions are allowed for the safety of the many. The court has further recognized; “ not all restrictions are unconstitutional. Passing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions; racial antagonism never can” ⁵ In order to understand this better, let us look at the WWII case of Korematsu v. the United States. Fred Korematsu challenged the executive order issued at the time, stating that after May 9, 1942, all persons of Japanese descent were to be removed from certain military regions on the west coast for security reasons. Fred was found in violation of this decree and challenged it in court, citing its racially motivated nature. The court denied his challenge because it had “a definite and close relationship to the prevention of espionage and sabotage” ⁶

There are countless such cases where the law has made exceptions, cases in clear violation of the fourteenth amendment have been thrown out of court; to uphold the utilitarian principle mentioned at the beginning of this essay. Does Racial Profiling produce results? Is it a smart strategy for the allocation of limited resources? The first thing to keep in mind is that the statistical data in such research will be skewed. “When all law-enforcement resources concentrate on one group, all arrests are in that group. Other groups appear statistically entirely law abiding” ⁷  in other words Harcourt’s “Rachet effect” occurs. In his paper “To catch a terrorist: does ethnic profiling work?” William Press has proved, through a mathematical equation that “Screening by strong racial profiling is no more effective than uniform sampling – and may actually be less effective” ⁸

In conclusion; even though fear makes for hasty decisions and emotions run high when our own and the safety of our loved ones is concerned, it is easy to give in to emotional rhetoric and look for someone to blame. But using logic and a simple mathematical formula, we will find that not only is racial profiling unfair it is also ineffective.

Work Cited

Kiron Reid, Race Issues and Stop and Search: Looking Behind the Statistics, The Journal of Criminal Law (2009) 73 JCL 165–183, 2009

Press, William, To Catch A Terrorist: Can Ethnic Profiling Work?, Dec 2010, The Royal

Statistical Society

Richard G. Schott J. D., The Role of Race in Law Enforcement; Racial Profiling or Legitimate Use?, Legal Digest, FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, Nov 2001