Racial Profiling by Law Enforcement

 Racial Profiling by Law Enforcement 

The definition of Racial Profiling on the National Institute of Justice website is “a practice that targets people for suspicion of crime based on their race, ethnicity, religion or national origin”. Obviously this brings up a lot of concern over civil rights and justice. Also according to the NIJ website, officers are put in training to avoid discrimination. However, it seems that arrests are still made under cultural, racial, and gender stereotypes.

I continued exploring this website and clicked on a link about racial profiling at traffic stops. Research confirms that more people of color are pulled over than whites. It’s far fetched to claim that this is completely based on driving patterns. Neighborhoods that have more patrol officers will pay close attention for any minuscule driving infraction and will still pull minority drivers aside without an infraction.

A group of trained observers ran a study in Savannah, Georgia where they joined policers officers on their patrols for upwards of 130 tours. These observers asked about the officers suspicions after each traffic stop. One statistic that came out of this study is that, out of all the people who were thought to be suspicious, 74% were male and 71% were minorities. Another study in Cincinnati, shows that black drivers were stopped for longer periods of time and searched more than white drivers. The NIJ appears to buy into that this was due to the “time, place, and context” of the stops. I couldn’t disagree more. This study must have had some bias, I’d be interested to see who specifically conducted this study. I think it’s conveniently coincidental that black drivers are in the wrong time, place, and context and that this what the higher stoppage rate is credited to. It’s certainly a scary system to be a minority male in.