Racial profiling: patterns, impacts, and policy considerations

Racial Profiling

When discussing law enforcement and crime prevention, one inevitably hits up against a philosophical impasse -- the rights and freedoms of the individual are inherently at odds with the purpose of the government which has its interest in controlling their actions. As law enforcement becomes increasingly tough-minded, it is increasingly true that the rights of the innocent must be sacrificed along with the rights of the guilty. So those who are more interested in the law than in freedom will inevitably be at odds with those who are more interested in freedom than in the law -- as there is no way to logically determine which is more valuable, so there is no way to logically determine which deserves the greater protection. The issue of racial profiling is one which falls into this area of debate quite naturally. It is generally inspired not by rabid racism but is considered to be a legitimate way to enforce the laws which, because of institutional racism, takes on a very racist nature -- yet it can be defended on the behalf of the lawful. On the other hand, racial profiling and other "preventative" measures which are based on future rather than past crimes inherently punish the suspiciously innocent along with the guilty, and may be tyrannical. I do not support racial profiling, because while it may be effective in reducing some crimes, it does so only by violating the rights of the innocent and contributing to the institution of racism. Though racial profiles do give law enforcement an excuse to ferret out crimes otherwise invisible, their limited scope creates a mythology of Caucasian innocence which leads to a lack of crime prevention among white people, while simultaneously encouraging mistrust and certain forms of lawlessness among minorities. "[Racial profiles] capture some who are guilty but at an unacceptably high societal cost. The practice undermines public confidence in law enforcement, erodes the legitimacy of the criminal justice system, and makes police work that much more difficult and dangerous." (Harris) Yet while racial profiling may be destructive both to individuals and to the system, there is still a degree to which it makes law enforcement easier -- and this is the degree to which it is dangerous.

Sources that defend profiling say that minorities commit more crimes than do white people, and so racial profiling is reasonable because it is only rational to target those most likely to commit crimes, if one wants to prevent those crimes. If minorities are more likely to be criminal, then preventative measures should be especially strict towards them. However, this is based on a tragic misconception. Though black minorities constitute "37% of those arrested on drug charges; 55% of those convicted; and 74% of all drug offenders sentenced to prison" (Harris) they represent only 13% of drug users. (Harris) Blacks are not more likely than whites to be users. In fact, "80% of the country's cocaine users are white, and the "typical cocaine user is a middle-class, white suburbanite. But law enforcement tactics that concentrated on the inner city drug trade were very visibly filling the jails and prisons with minority drug law offenders, feeding the misperception that most drug users and dealers were black and Latin." (Harris) In short, blacks are not more likely to commit drug crimes, but this is not apparent from arrest statistics or from prison statistics precisely because of racial profiling. The way in which racial profiling can make equal crime look like higher crime is evident from a source that is actually defending racial profiling. In this source, the author says that it is actually a good thing that "73% of those stopped and searched on a [Maryland] section of Interstate 95 were black, yet state police reported that equal percentages of the whites and blacks who were searched, statewide, had drugs or other contraband.' [because] If they were mistaken in their assumptions about black drivers, there should have been a lower percentage of arrest among the blacks searched." (Tucker)