The perversity of racial profiling

[Propertarian]

I was going to put this post in Sklansky's thread on "is their something wrong with profiling", but he requested that people not post about profiling in that thread (it's a long story, just read the OP of that thread) so it is going here instead.

Yes, their is something wrong with profiling, namely, it just doesn't achieve its intended purpose, and that is why it shouldn't be done. The fact of the matter is, racial profiling leads to an increase in crime and a decrease in the efficiency of fighting crime.

Racial profiling stirs up ethnic conflict and alienates those who are members of the groups being profiled. Also, as As Prof David Harris put it when arguing against profiling for fighting terrorism , "By the time the threat is at the subway or airport, we're down to the last line of defense. You really want to catch these people before they go to the subway." You see turning members of marginalized groups against the police, the law, and the government decreases the willingness of "minority" group members to turn in criminals or ploting criminals as well. Most minority members are (at the very least) acceptable citizens. Racial profiling turns them into enemies when we want them as allies.

Another example from the article:

"Harris points to a study of New York's "stop and frisk" campaign in the late 1990s, when police were stopping people in the streets on a regular basis in an effort to confiscate illegal weapons and reduce crime. The campaign created tension between the police and minority communities, who thought they were being unfairly targeted for frisks. It turned out they were right."

Now stats: In a study of 175,000 police stops in New York city:

"Harris looked at what he called "hit rates" -- the percentage of stops in which the police found drugs, a gun or something else that led to an arrest -- and noted that the number of hits in general was very low for the number of stops that police made. But more interesting was that the rate for African-Americans was much lower than the rate for Caucasians. Police had a hit rate of 12.6 percent when they stopped Caucasians and only 10.5 percent when they stopped African-Americans. The hit rate for Latinos was 11.5 percent.

"You might say that we have a difference of 2.1 percent between blacks and whites. But it's actually a difference of 20 percent when you do the math right," Harris says. And "the difference between whites and Latinos is about 10 percent."


The fact of the matter is is that racial profiling increases crime and makes it less likely that police will catch criminals. Opponents of it often use the argument that it is demeaning and unfair to those who are incorrectly stopped, which is correct. But more importantly, the actual effect of racial profiling is the opposite of its intended effect.

P.S. The 2nd page of the article shows why what Harris calls "behavior profiling" is a better method than racial profiling.

[chrisnice]

Racial profiling for most crimes makes no sense. Blacks, whites, latinos, asians, etc. all do drugs, rob, murder, etc.

Not profiling racialy for some crimes makes no sense as well. If a cross is burned on a black families lawn it is stupid to give the same amount of attention to local whites and blacks. Likewise with terrorism. 99% of the terror threats come from the middle east. To give the same level of attention to hispanics and arabs at the airport is lunacy.

[hmkpoker]

Profiling is only useful if its implementation doesn't have any negative effects/self-fulfilling prophecies. It's pretty much the same thing with every socioeconomic policy.

[Dan.]

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Likewise with terrorism. 99% of the terror threats come from the middle east.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nevermind the Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, the shooting at the US Capital in 1954, multiple abortion clinic attacks, etc...You're right. Only Middle Eastern people commit terrorism.

[AngusThermopyle]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Likewise with terrorism. 99% of the terror threats come from the middle east.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nevermind the Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, the shooting at the US Capital in 1954, multiple abortion clinic attacks, etc...You're right. Only Middle Eastern people commit terrorism.

[/ QUOTE ]

There are 100 passengers, 90 white/black and 10 Arab. You have manpower/time enough to thoroughly screen only 10.

You would screen 9 whites/blacks and 1 Arab?

Screening just the 10 Arabs would be a poor use of your knowledge of behaviour, etc, but to totally ignore race?

[Dan.]

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Screening just the 10 Arabs would be a poor use of your knowledge of behaviour, etc, but to totally ignore race?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's fine if you want to be racist; I won't judge. But let's not try to hide it behind some random rationalization.

[chrisnice]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Likewise with terrorism. 99% of the terror threats come from the middle east.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nevermind the Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, the shooting at the US Capital in 1954, multiple abortion clinic attacks, etc...You're right. Only Middle Eastern people commit terrorism.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well you just pretty much named the other 1% minus some Irish, Puerto Rician and narco related terrorism.

Who you just noted are probaly responsible for maybe 50-100 terror acts over the last 20 years. Would you disagree that in that same span there were at least 10000 commited by folks from the Middle East?

And really your post proved my point. Terrorism by non Middle Easterners is so rare that you can remember allmost every instance of it going back decades.

[Dan.]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Likewise with terrorism. 99% of the terror threats come from the middle east.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nevermind the Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, the shooting at the US Capital in 1954, multiple abortion clinic attacks, etc...You're right. Only Middle Eastern people commit terrorism.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well you just pretty much named the other 1% minus some Irish, Puerto Rician and narco related terrorism.

Who you just noted are probaly responsible for maybe 50-100 terror acts over the last 20 years. Would you disagree that in that same span there were at least 10000 commited by folks from the Middle East?

And really your post proved my point. Terrorism by non Middle Easterners is so rare that you can remember allmost every instance of it going back decades.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not at all. How many middle eastern terrorist attacks occured on US soil over that time? 9/11, previous WTC attack, African embassies (if you count those as US soil). Compare that to the number of not middle eastern attacks. That's all I'm pointing out. Moreover, I have no idea the history of every country, but I'd wager that more terrorism has occured throughout the history of the world by non-middle easterns than by middle easterns.

Edit: of course, that'd be ridiculous to quantify. I mean: where does "terrorism" end and "war" begin?

[GBP04]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Likewise with terrorism. 99% of the terror threats come from the middle east.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nevermind the Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, the shooting at the US Capital in 1954, multiple abortion clinic attacks, etc...You're right. Only Middle Eastern people commit terrorism.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well you just pretty much named the other 1% minus some Irish, Puerto Rician and narco related terrorism.

Who you just noted are probaly responsible for maybe 50-100 terror acts over the last 20 years. Would you disagree that in that same span there were at least 10000 commited by folks from the Middle East?

And really your post proved my point. Terrorism by non Middle Easterners is so rare that you can remember allmost every instance of it going back decades.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not at all. How many middle eastern terrorist attacks occured on US soil over that time? 9/11, previous WTC attack, African embassies (if you count those as US soil). Compare that to the number of not middle eastern attacks. That's all I'm pointing out. Moreover, I have no idea the history of every country, but I'd wager that more terrorism has occured throughout the history of the world by non-middle easterns than by middle easterns.

Edit: of course, that'd be ridiculous to quantify. I mean: where does "terrorism" end and "war" begin?

[/ QUOTE ]

You aren't thinking this through. Think of how many more Whites there are in the USA than Arabs. Don't you think that might impact terrorism numbers a bit?

[Mickey Brausch]

Discussing Racial Profiling in abstracto

Racial profiling in action

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NEW YORK (AP) -- Police fired 50 rounds Saturday at a car of unarmed men leaving a bachelor party at a strip club, killing the groom on his wedding day. A veteran officer fired his weapon 31 times, emptying two full magazines. All the officers carried 9 mm handguns.
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The groom, who was driving, was identified as Sean Bell, 23. Joseph Guzman, 31, was in the front seat and was shot at least 11 times. Trent Benefield, 23, who was in the back seat, was hit three times.

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What is the probability that the shooting would have occured anyway if these were white men? Rhetorical question.