Kumar, here is an article on a subject that you and I have kicked around. From "NRO"
November 15, 2002 9:00 a.m.
Profiling vs. Profiling vs. Profiling
Let's retire the verb.
The time has come to retire the verb "profiling." It has reached the point where it confuses more than it clarifies. Since the purpose of language is to communicate, a word that impedes communication rather than advancing it is less than worthless.
The problem is that "profiling" is now used to refer to at least three very different law-enforcement activities. First, it can refer to making a guess about the characteristics of the person who has committed a particular, notorious crime. Second, it can also refer to making a guess about the characteristics of people who are likely to commit nonspecific offenses. And, third, it can refer to the identified characteristics of a person or persons who committed a particular crime.
The last situation is the least problematic, so let's start there. Suppose that a person is mugged and gives the police the following description of the assailant: a young, black male with a mustache and shaved head, about six-feet tall and weighing around 200 pounds, with a scar on his left cheek, wearing a red windbreaker and gray sweatpants. Now, few people would find it objectionable if, immediately following the crime, the police focused on looking for someone with those characteristics, even those, black, male, that we might oppose weighing in other contexts.
The second situation is where the term became synonymous with bad discrimination. Suppose the police decide that, since young, male African Americans in poor neighborhoods are, statistically speaking, more likely to commit street crimes than old, Asian females in rich neighborhoods, they will target the former more often for traffic stops, and looking over the interior of the car and its occupants in the hopes of seeing evidence of more serious infractions, than the latter. That may well be an efficient practice, at least in the short term, but when government officials single out people for different treatment in part based on race, it is also offensive and raises significant legal problems.
The first situation has gotten the most publicity lately, in the context of the sniper manhunt. There are law-enforcement experts who, for particularly important crimes, will go to the trouble of creating a profile of the sort of person likely to have been the perpetrator. And so, for instance, we were told that the sniper's profile was of someone with military training, an interest in firearms, an unhappy and frustrated life since leaving the service, not too old, and likely male. All of which turned out to be true. On the other hand, some people, including some profilers, were surprised when an angry black man (with an accomplice), rather than an angry white man, was arrested.
Using the term profiling to describe all three situations is, as I said, confusing. There is a common denominator, all right, namely the fact that the police are looking for a criminal whose precise identity is unknown, but that's about it. What varies is more important: whether the person involved in a particular crime is being looked for, and what kinds of guesses it makes sense to make, especially when the guesses focus on race and ethnicity.
Worse, while the three categories are distinct, there is also some overlap among them. Consider, for example, our war against al Qaeda. It involves a specific terror network that has committed specific crimes, but it also involves efforts to prevent future crimes from being committed. The network is worldwide, but it has Middle Eastern roots and a particular religious and geopolitical agenda. So, if law-enforcement officials are looking especially hard at individuals who are likely to share those roots, religious fanaticism, and geopolitical outlook, and that means looking at those individuals' religion and national origin, is that category one profiling, or two, or three?
The answer, in my opinion, is that this fits best into category three, and is no more objectionable than police looking for the person with a scar and a red windbreaker. I would add that in any event sound policy requires, and the law permits, profiling based on ethnicity if the stakes are high enough, as they are in the war on terrorism. But whether or not you agree with all that, it's not enough to say, "That's profiling." That doesn't mean much anymore.
Roger Clegg is general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity in Sterling, Virginia. |
