Racial Profiling

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the concept of racial profiling, using race to profile criminals and how African-Americans and other minority groups have been unfairly targeted by law enforcement officials. It looks at how racial profiling taps into one of the irreconcilable conflicts of American society, liberty versus security, although with racial profiling, it has been shown that crime has been significantly reduced in major cities, such as New York City. It shows how ultimately, racial profiling has created a gulf between law enforcement and the minority communities it purports to protect and how all too frequently, innocent people are persecuted. In other situations, people from the minority community refuse to testify on behalf of law enforcement in trials against criminals because of the minority people?s distrust of law enforcement.

From the Paper:

"Against incriminating statistics that police unfairly target minorities is the reality that most of the criminals come from minority neighborhoods and communities. One of the statistics cited by the liberals is the 1998 statistic stating that 83 percent of the 27,000 "stop and frisk" incidents by a special police unit concerned minorities. However, according to New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, this statistic does not translate into the fact that policemen are deliberately harassing individuals from minority neighborhoods. Instead, these statistics reflect the reality that many suspects, whose ethnicities are described by their victims, come from minority communities (Getlin). According to national figures, blacks comprise 13 percent of the American population, but over 40 percent of the arrests for rape and car theft (Puddington 5)."

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