Business Daily (Nairobi)
James A. Goldston
6 July 2009
opinion
Several years ago, as terrorism, immigration, and unrest in suburban Paris were at the top of the news in France, a French police officer confided to a researcher: "If you consider different levels of trafficking, it is obviously done by blacks and Arabs.
If you are on the road and see a black man or a man with Arabic features, you say to yourself, 'He doesn't look French,' and then you might stop him to see if he has papers."
This police officer was describing a textbook example of "ethnic profiling": law enforcement officials use of stereotypes, rather than specific information about behaviour, in deciding to stop, search, or detain people. Ethnic profiling is illegal in Europe.
It is ineffective in apprehending criminals. It is counter-productive in the campaign against terrorism. But police officers across Europe continue to use it.
The inefficiency of ethnic profiling was highlighted in early May, when the British government released figures showing that, of the more than 117,000 police stops made between 2007 and 2008, only 72 led to an arrest for terrorism-related offences.
Other major European countries do not collect data on police stops broken down according to the targets' ethnic or religious background. But private research and anecdotal reports provide a frighteningly similar picture.
Stops and searchesA massive data-mining exercise in Germany from 2001 to 2003 trawled through personal information on 8.3 million people and failed to find a single terrorist.
Stops and searches conducted under counter-terrorism powers in Europe have produced few terrorism charges and no convictions. Separate studies in Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States have concluded that ethnic profiling wastes time and resources.
As a new report by the Open Society Justice Initiative shows, by targeting ethnic minorities, police alienate some of the very people on whom they depend for co-operation and intelligence.
And by pre-selecting fixed categories of people for heightened scrutiny, the authorities overlook those who do not fit the profile.
Given its failings, why is ethnic profiling so widespread? The answer is simple.
When the police use ethnic profiling, they project an image of being tough on crime and terrorism. This appeases public opinion, which demands robust anti-terrorism action.
By treating people as suspicious purely because of who they are, how they look, or where they pray, rather than what they do or have done, ethnic profiling threatens the very ethos of the EU, a union firmly rooted in values of liberty, democracy, and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Goldston is the executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative.
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