Racial Profiling In Law Enforcement

Racial profiling has been a long-standing issue in the United States in regards to law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels. It has existed in America since the first introduction of African-Americans, for instance, when slave patrols stopped and questioned any African-American unaccompanied by a white person. It continues to be a prominent topic covered by the media today. The media often covers stories on minorities being racially profiled and targeted by law enforcement not on their behavior, but on their personal characteristics, which debunks any argument that the United States is in a “post-racial era.” “Whites and some people of color point to the virtual lack of overtly racialized law- for example, Jim Crow statutes-

Law enforcement cannot be viewed as relatively neutral if there is still racial profiling covertly occurring. There are little to no positive outcomes that can be seen from this, but a number of negative effects are clear. Racial profiling in law enforcement is ineffective in fighting crime, leads to a loss of legitimacy in the police force, while also causing a diminished sense of citizenship for those who are being profiled. Despite these negative results, no bill has ever successfully been passed by Congress to try to end racial profiling, which is clearly demonstrated by the number of racial and ethnic minorities incarcerated compared to the number of Caucasians incarcerated. As of 2010, Whites (64% of the United States population) constitute 39% of the incarcerated population, while Hispanics (16% of the U.S population) account for 19% of the incarcerated population, and Blacks (13% of the U.S population) make up 40% of the incarcerated population (Prison Policy

It results in shifting attention from what counts to what does not count. Police should be paying attention to behavior when analyzing suspects, not to their physical characteristics. For example, a study in Minnesota in 2002 found that minorities were stopped and searched by police more often than whites, but contraband was found more often in the cars belonging to white drivers. If all cars had been stopped at the same rate, than “22,500 more Whites would have been stopped, while 18,800 fewer African-Americans and 5,800 fewer Hispanics would have been stopped” (The Leadership Council). When law enforcement is racially profiling people, they are enlarging their suspect pools solely based on what someone may look like, which will lead to more time being wasted dealing with people who most likely did not commit any crime. While police spend their time on these people, they are allowing people who simply did not look suspicious to them get away. Clearly, had law enforcement not been racially profiling the minorities, they would have saved time and been more effective in finding the contraband in the cars of the white