Pros and Cons - Debbie Newman, Ben Woolgar 2014

Racial profiling
Section G. Crime and punishment

Racial profiling refers to the policing policy of focusing efforts in crime prevention on particular minority groups who are thought to be involved more often in certain types of crime. The policy is not about acting on specific pieces of intelligence (’There is a suspect, who is 6 foot 3 and Afro-Caribbean’), but about a more general approach to the use of stop-and-search powers, extra checks at airports and so on. Clearly, which minorities are targeted is a contextual factor; if seeking to prevent Islamic terrorism, it will probably involve searching South Asian men more often at airports, but if concerned about gun crime in inner-city Baltimore, it will focus on young male African Americans.

Pros

[1] Racial profiling is the best way of deploying scarce police resources. We cannot search everyone, so we should search those whom we can, based on factors which make them more likely to be involved in criminal activity. Nothing about this says that such relationships are innate, or that ’all of X minority are criminals’, but simply works off statistical facts that we know exist.

[2] This policy will catch criminals. Too often, gangs are based on race; in New York, for instance, many gangs divide along the lines of the African countries from which they first migrated. This makes it easy to identify specific types of crime, and catch the potential perpetrators and prevent them.

[3] This policy will not radicalise minorities. In fact, they will welcome it, as criminal acts often disproportionately affect the minorities from which they emanate. Ultimately, if we are able to reduce violent and drug-related crime among African Americans, for instance, that is something for which they will be grateful. That is particularly so as, often, predominantly minority areas are abandoned by the police altogether — an approach this policy reverses.

Cons

[1] It is unacceptable to tar whole groups with the brush of a particularly troublesome subgroup. No one should be treated unfairly just on the basis of their race, but this policy does exactly that; people are more likely to have their liberties invaded by being searched, merely because they are black or Muslim.

[2] Terrorists will readily be able to circumvent this policy, because terrorist groups represent ideological, not purely ethnic, causes, and so they will use nonstereotypical ethnicities to conduct their terrorist acts. For instance, the hijacking of an El Al plane from Israel to Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976 was conducted on behalf of Palestinian terrorists, but by white members of Germany’s Baader-Meinhof gang; such sharing agreements between terror groups will simply be revived.

[3] This policy will massively radicalise minorities. If we treat every member of a minority as though they are a criminal or a terrorist, they will rightly and understandably be hugely offended. That in turn makes them turn against the state, and so be less likely to co-operate with the police. But this becomes particularly problematic when people are falsely accused or convicted, cementing the impression of the state and police as evil, and driving people into the arms of terrorists.

Possible motions

This House would use racial profiling in the war on terror.

This House believes that the police should not have to waste time searching non-suspects.

Related topics

DNA database, universal

Police, arming of the