- by Warinya Rojanasuwan
The ultimate goal of police department is to prevent crime. They would use any methods that they found helpful in finding the suspects or prevent dangerous situations to occur. There are few theories that we have learned in this class such as broken window or community based policing, to name a few. Another method that has emerged and might be the most disturbing way of catching the suspect is racial profiling. Not only it doesn’t help prevent the crime, it also creates psychological effects to minorities, majorities and people in the society.
Racial profiling is defined as “a practice in law enforcement based on the belief that a person's category membership (e.g., ethnicity, national origin) functions as an indicator of criminal propensity”(sun). There are a lot of stop and frisks going on especially on the roads on the highway. With the innovation of technology, officers now able to use MDT to track drivers and record their profile. The data has shown only a small group of officers are using the machine results in higher level of stopping African American driver. It is not wrong that officers have a feeling about race and place but it’s resulted that, when the technology is available to them, they tend to use it to confirm their believes or conceptions more. (Meehan).
The problem is, not only it creates the inequalities and violate the fourth amendment, it also increase a lot of other problems such as rate of hate crime and make black people believe the place that they belong is jail or unpleasant place. This also creates what one of the researcher, Amy Hackney calls it reverse deterrent, the study that you could find in article below shows that racial profiling does increase the crime in white people because they believe they could get away with it easily. The study also shows that it didn’t decrease the cheating in black people as well. So what would be the advantages of racial profiling at all if the goal is to eliminate crime?
The good news is there’s still hope! Recently, the Chief police of Palo alto, Ron Davis has tried community policing method by sending his officers to the community, make them get to know each others and prep the police with the information he should know. Both the citizen and officers admitted that it changed their view towards each other. The citizens feel like the officers are trying to help and they response positively. It resulted in the decreasing rate of recidivism rate for about 40 percent in three years. Davis believed it has stopped his officer from stereotyping and encourage other city to follow.
Sources
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-inertia-trap/201308/how-stop-and-frisk-affects-white-people
http://kalw.org/post/psychology-racial-profiling-policing
http://atlantablackstar.com/2012/06/08/psychology-professor-explores-the-science-behind-racial-profiling/
I read this a few times, trying to get a main trajectory. So excuse me if my arguments are baseless. You definitely ambitiously covered a lot of ground in this post.
ReplyDeleteYou start us off with the "goal of policing" being prevention. Then do a run-down on multiple police measures, landing on racial profiling. And then moving to the psychological effects of racial profiling on marginalized populations.
Next paragraph you define racial profiling, run though a few examples of it. The next part I'm assuming the argument is that the police misuse of new technology is being used to falsely confirm preconceived biases. Or is it that you are saying that the machines are correcting for racial biases.
These seem like competing ideas.
Paragraph three you double-down on the negative effects of racial profiling. Then you move to reverse deterrence.
Then last paragraph you wrap it up with Palo Alto's efforts to correct for their police methods.
All around, I liked it. It was a fun read.
But I don’t know if I felt like I know more about the psychological effects of racial profiling. It seems like the definite psychological effect is people don’t like to be racially profiled, which seems obvious. Then the point about cops, I liked –tentatively- but I’m still unclear about.
My absolute favorite point was reverse deterrence (which is a great term, but I think could use a more appropriate name, I don’t know if I’m bothered that the term is a double-negative, or if I’m bothered that when I tried to find an appropriate term in a positive form, it seems as if other fields of studies have already named that phenomenon).
I wish this was a big post on just reverse deterrence, as opposed to a post about a range of issues loosely revolving around racial profiling. I feel like I was raced past all the cool stuff, to make room for overview.
Ok, so that’s sort of the summarization that I’m under.
If it’s wrong let me know, but that’s the basis for the rest of this.
I don't know if the ultimate goal of a police department is to prevent crime. I don't know if that's the objective of the police department.
It would seem that this sort of mindset, though very, very, very, well-intentioned (and I need to stress that), seems as if it could lead to a mal-adapted police goals. Personally, I expect a police department to police crimes that have already been committed, I think that police as a social institution, are designed as an ex-post mechanism to handle the effects of crime. And if you try and make them an ex-ante mechanism to prevent crime, it could lead to a lot of issues. Namely a lot of due process claims.
So first and foremost, the statement that their goal is to “prevent crime” I think deserves some amount of challenge. Even though prima facie it seems great.
The second sentence read almost "by any methods necessary", which in combination with my reserves about the first sentence, just set me up for a skeptical read. Which lead this to be more poorly received than it could’ve been.
It almost seemed like it was positioning itself to justify poor police techniques. And then you pivoted to racial profiling, and I was hesitant to see where you were going with this.
You positioned to the negative side effects of racial profiling, which was a nice point. But again, I had trouble with the wording in the conclusion of the new technologies portion.
Lastly, the point about Palo Alto.
Palo Alto is predominantly white, upper-middle, +60%. The second largest demographic being Asian, upper-middle, -30%. Hispanics +6%. Dividing the remaining +4% amongst the other 5 racial categories. A White-flight city.
http://www.city-data.com/city/Palo-Alto-California.html
http://www.fedstats.gov/qf/states/06/0655282.html
I have found no data to suggest that their racial profiling has decreased.
I did however find that Palo Alto has nominally increased it's number of total crimes.
http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/depts/pol/info/stats.asp
-Mark Sheppard
This post resonates with what our guest speaker today spoke about. The role of the police officer has changed, they're no longer simply "crime fighters" but now have responsibilities such as speaking and learning about communities. I definitely agree with you when you say when the community truly feels like you're there to help them, they'll respond much better. When you ask whether racial profiling is important if our goal is to prevent crime, it makes me wonder if their goal SHOULD be to help people (all people) or prevent crime (aka SEARCH for bad guys) in a way that leads to racial profiling.
ReplyDeleteWarinya, you draw upon course readings nicely to point out a form of profiling that involves the use of technology and that focuses on the duality of identity and place. You are right to argue that racial profiling is ineffective in crime fighting and produces a number of substantial negative consequences. As one of the other comments suggests, it is important to realize that law enforcement agencies are not only or even primarily about crime fighting, particularly when you look at how most police officers spend most of their time on the beat.
ReplyDeleteI doubt it is possible to completely eliminate racial profiling. It’s a part of human nature. We all discriminate. Discrimination is built into our genes. It’s how we choose our friends. It’s how we decide what to eat. It’s how we determine which university to attend. Discrimination is how we survive. When cops are on patrol, discrimination can sometimes mean the difference between life and death. Gangbangers with pants hanging down to their knees and spider web tattoos circling their necks probably pose more of a threat than two guys wearing white shirts and ties carrying Bibles and riding bicycles. It’s probably in the cops’ best interest to notice the difference. Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not trying to justify unwarranted and rampant racial profiling – I’m just saying that you cannot eliminate it, but perhaps we can control it. It seems to me that the best – maybe the only – way to limit racial profiling is Chief Ron Davis’ community policing method. When police officers are involved in the community and get to know the people they are serving, stereotyping is much less likely to occur, and racial profiling decreases naturally. The only solution, I think, is for police officers to routinely interact with the community they serve on a person-to-person basis. When people know each other, stereotyping vanishes.
ReplyDeleteJESSE RYCKMAN
Your post Warinya is very interesting! I appreciate that you approached the assignment from a psychological viewpoint. Oftentimes, the blogs focus on articles, and case-by-case situations, so I found this piece particularly appealing. In terms of racial profiling, I am not surprised at ALL that such behavior leads to psychological effects. I agree with your suggestion, that it creates inequalities, violates the fourth amendment, and may increase hate crimes. Such consequences are extremely sad and I agree that efforts need to be made to combat officers from racial profiling. Ron Davis’s approach sounds interesting and the results reflect positively. Efforts should be made by all police departments to encourage similar results.
ReplyDeleteI think this post is interesting because it focuses on the psychological repercussions of racial profiling. In class we often cover the fact that minorities feel profiled and begin being distrustful of the police. But rarely do we focus in on the further effects of racial profiling, such as a psychological reconfirming that the minority groups targeted are just "supposed" to lead a life of crime. It creates a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. We also never pay attention to the effects of racial profiling of minorities on the "majority" groups. Has anyone bothered to measure how much crime has increased by white offenders because they're not being watched as heavily as minorities?
ReplyDelete-Colleen Johnson, Discussion 102
I think that racial profiling will always be a small part of law enforcement considering the fact that people will always feel they are being targeted for their "race". It does not have to be a white vs black people kind of racial profiling. It can just be the case where a Latino person is being profiled in a predominately African American neighborhood. I have mentioned this many times before in other blog posts, but I really do think that community relations with the police have to improve before any major problem such as racial profiling can be somewhat solved. Yes I do believe that there is hope, not to completely get rid of racial profiling, but to lessen it. In my personal opinion, racial profiling will always be there to target people.
ReplyDelete- Jordan Ho
I see your point about the psychological effects and I agree. It is unfortunate that racial profiling has caused many kids to believe that they are not good enough or are bad kids. Labeling is a very big issue and it causes many problems for kids growing up. Once someone believes they are in a negative category in society, it is difficult for them to believe that they can get out of it or do something productive in life. I like your part on racial profiling being a reverse deterrent because I think it is true. -Brooke Arthur
ReplyDeleteI agree with the idea of reverse deterrence because once labeled individuals believe they are inferior or superior and so does the rest of society surveillance on certain groups is increased or decreased. A disproportionate increase or decrease of surveillance on groups can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy; that one group is more likely to commit a crime and another is not when in reality everyone is as likely.
ReplyDeleteFor me, my biggest gripe with policing whether it be community or professional policing is racial profiling. The whole concept for me doesn't make sense, racial profiling only usefulness is in marginalizing minorities. Racial profiling has no real benefit to society. Practices such as stop and frisk are the epitome of racial profiling because it dominates black and latino communities.
ReplyDelete-Jarred Boone
Your take on the effects of racial profiling on the psyche' is powerful. The effects of which can be felt not only on the people they attempt to describe but the officers themselves. By perpetuating these stereotypes, the officers deteriorate the legitimacy of their agency. As we move forward as a society, it is my hope that law enforcement will acquire new methods to curb crime.
ReplyDelete-Alejandro Castellano
I agree with the part of your argument which states, “officers tend to use [technology] to confirm their beliefs or conceptions,” since that is a convenient tool to justifying race-related decision making. While it is true that officers make decisions with the intent to subdue law, we have also seen (within the citizen-agent narrative) how front line workers continually make decisions based on moral and character evaluations. Racial profiling is an unfortunate part of culture and as we have learned in class, is reinforced within police departments. What I find frustrating is that statistically, racial profiling is misleading and ineffective, so why continue to implement a form of social control that does not work and only generates distrust? Your closing paragraph was a great example of how effective community policing can be as a solution to the negative psychological and communal effects produced by hard policing tactics.
ReplyDelete-Chelsea Goddard
DeleteIt’s difficult to stop racial profiling, mostly because people have ingrained prejudices and stereotypes forced on them from birth, essentially. Even the most liberal and open minded person has hidden judgments that might not be conscious, but are still there. This is not just present when it comes to racial judgments, but other judgments such as with sex, age, and ability. Community policing can help. The more people try to understand others, try to empathize and think fairly about them, the less likely they are to make possibly harmful judgments. This won’t stop racial profiling, by any means. But it is a first step that can be taken.
ReplyDelete~BriAnne Lynn