Criminal Profiling - Research Paper Example

? Criminal Profiling This paper seeks to discuss the phenomenon of criminal profiling, which is, in essence, a strategy deployed by law enforcement wherein individuals coming from racial minorities are the target of investigation or scrutiny predicated on the assumption that certain racial groups are more likely to commit crime than others. In the context of stop and search investigations, it occurs when “the police use race or ethnicity as a factor in determining whether to stop someone.” (Worall, 2011). The foundations of criminal profiling Despite the United States being known as the country where racial discrimination is abhorred and any form of hate crime is penalized, racial profiling remains to be a prevalent practice by agents of the state. Indeed, it has been increasingly common in light of the perceived threats to the population by Islamic terrorists. Thus, in airplanes, Islamic-looking individuals are subjected to inspections and interviews of an intensity that white people are not normally subjected to. The increasing numbers of crime, and the associations by people that these crimes emanate from race-based communities such as Hispanic communities, are also responsible for the growing trend towards racial profiling. While racial profiling is never really legislated as a policy in its explicit sense, the ever-widening range of methods that a law enforcement officer are allowed to employ allow the use of racial profiling as a legitimate strategy. We now proceed to discussing the costs against the benefits of racial profiling. Those who support racial profiling believe that a utilitarian approach must be taken. The argument is that because it is true that there are crimes which certain racial groups are more predisposed to committing than other racial groups, “special efforts at crime reduction directed at members of such groups are justified, if not required.” (Risse and Zeckhauser, 2004). This basically means that law and order is a more important consideration than improving racial relations or fighting racial inequality. Because crime has such pernicious effects on society, so the argument goes, the order of the day is to end it. According to Holmes and Holmes (2009), one of the goals of profiling is to provide law enforcers with a psychological assessment of the offenders of a particular crime. In contrast, those who are opposed to racial profiling dispute the position that some races have a greater tendency to commit some crimes than others. Indeed, in a study conducted, the officers’ behaviour of racial profiling is not supported by any showing that the criminal acts in the predominantly white community were committed by African Americans (Meehan and Ponder, 2002). Of course, the deeper objection to racial profiling is that it does “curtail the enjoyment of fundamental human rights by millions of people who belong to racial and ethnic minorities.” (American Civil Liberties Union and Rights Working Group, 2009). The jurisprudence has also tended to support racial profiling. It has been held, for example, that when testing the constitutionality of a vehicle stop, the motivations of a police officer making the stop (e.g., if the motivations were driven by racial bias) are immaterial, the only question is whether or not the officer had cause to effect the stop. Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996). The impact on this on racial profiling is very much evident – it basically gives police officers unfettered rights to make stops, even if it targets specific racial or ethnic minorities. In the end, instead of educating the police forces to be race-blind, it condones discrimination on the basis of racial and ethnic differences. The role of geography in profiling predatory criminals Geography plays a major role in the profiling of criminals. Some parts of the world have been stereotyped as providing concentrated numbers of individuals engaged in similar crimes. For example, Latin America is known as a drug cartel haven. Many Americans assume that illicit drugs in the United States come from Latin America, without really understanding the dynamics between the drug cartels and the relationships of the players with each other. In truth, Colombian drug organizations and Mexican drug organizations have traditionally taken different roles in the drug trafficking chain. In the article by Lyman (2011), the relationship started with Mexican drug organizations acting as surrogates and partners of their Colombian counterpart drug organizations – taking advantage of the borders between Mexico and the United States to smuggle in cocaine from Colombia. However, towards the end of the 1980s the Mexicans were no longer satisfied with being mere conduits and wanted a share both of the drug loot and the U.S. markets. Lyman explained the consequence of this: Eventually, this arrangement with the Colombians not only resulted in dividing the cocaine shipments down the middle but in dividing much of the U.S. markets down the middle. As the arrangement evolved over time, the Colombians retained the wholesale market in the eastern United States as their own, and Mexican drug cartels took over the wholesale market in the Midwestern and Western states. According to Bagley (1988), the expanded role of the Mexicans in the drug trade had created, in his words, “an unprecedented wave of drug related violence in Mexico that seriously threatened the country’s fledgling process of democratization. (page 71)”. And this begins to answer the question as to whether or not these drug cartels are as much of a threat to the United States as traditional terrorist organizations. In fact, it may even be argued that drug cartels are even more of a threat to the United States than the terrorist networks that people have come to associate with Islamic fundamentalist groups and the like. For one thing, the scale of violence wrought by drug organization can perhaps rival that of traditional terrorist organizations. Colombia’s principal guerrilla organization, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucion de Colombia or FARC, has been known to be involved in drug trafficking activities to finance the insurgency – thereby creating a lethal combination of drug money and armed tactics. But secondly and more importantly, the impacts of drug organizations are more pervasive than terrorist organizations, if you count the lives that have been destroyed because of the proliferation of the illicit drugs in the market. These are not only the drug users themselves, but also victims of drug-related crimes, and even helpless family members and loved ones of those who are held in a vise-like grip by their addictions. Criminal theory synthesis: Labelling and Isolating of Illegal Immigrants Homeland defense and illegal immigration are inextricably intertwined, in that much of the Homeland Defense policy of the United States has targeted illegal immigration. Much debate has raged over immigration policies in the United States. In the past, the United States had reached out with open arms to immigrants coming from distant shores who want to make this country their home. As a result of this, we have seen America become a melting pot of cultures, offering its embrace to the poor and downtrodden. In many instances, however, social controversies had arisen as a result of the influx of immigrants. This is the current situation at hand. Conservative Americans say that the government has coddled illegal immigrants far too long, and given the current bleak state of the US economy, this is prejudicial to ordinary Americans citizens. Those of immigrant heritage, on the other hand, particularly the Latinos, call for less stringent immigration measures, and continue to go to the US to escape the poverty and desperation in their home countries. Immigration policies are hotly contested and draw divisive lines across the nation. Peak (2009) has colourfully described illegal immigration efforts by the US government: The UAVs use thermal and night vision equipment to spot illegal immigrants; they can detect movement from 15 miles of altitude, read a license plate, and even detect weapons. In 39 days of border surveillance, the UAVs led to the apprehension of 248 illegal immigrants and the seizure of 518 pounds of marijuana. The vehicles are waist-high, weigh about 1000 pounds, have a 35-foot wingspan, fly faster than 100 miles an hour and can stay aloft for 20 hours at a time. The general perception against the illegal immigrant population remains to be negative. They are perceived to be deviants. Certainly, they are going against their law by virtue of the fact that they are in a country when it is not legally permissible for them to be in it. However, the manner with which they have been portrayed or caricaturized by media and by the public at large goes beyond violation of the law. Indeed, stereotypes and labels are attached to them. But how did the labeling of illegal immigrants happen? It is important to note that the process of labeling begins at the behest of a ‘moral entrepreneur’ (Becker, 1963), who makes a claim that some behavior or action is wrong and then makes new rules or code of conduct in order to stop that behavior or action, and punish the actor. They package their efforts as a moral crusade, but what really happens is that “they add to the power they derive from the legitimacy of their moral position the power they derive from their superior position in society" (Becker 1963). In illegal immigration in the United States, the moral entrepreneurs were those who expressed objections to the unfettered entry of Mexicans into American soil, a phenomenon made complicated by the fact that many of the wealthy and powerful took advantage of the cheap labor provided by these immigrants. Bustamante (1972) presented a fascinating description of the beginnings or root of this labeling of illegal immigrants: The appearance of the Border Patrol in 1924 altered the primary deviance of the illegal entrant by crystallizing a new social reaction to the violation of immigration laws. The new police force was to reveal these primary deviants, violators of immigration laws. In this process, the term ‘wetback’, previously purely descriptive, acquired a new meaning. It became the ‘label’ or ‘stigma’ by which the illegal immigrant was made visible. At the same time, the label ‘wetback’ also became the symbol by which the illegal immigrant was able to identify a new ‘me’ for himself. (p. 708) It was not difficult to see how the immigrants had become treated as deviants. There was rising resentment caused by their presence because they were taking away jobs from the local people, since it became more economically efficient to hire those who do not refuse work even at very low wages and subhuman conditions. It is also argued that the labeling of deviancy has the tendency to be a self-fulfilling prophecy – with the labeled party assuming the label as his identity and perhaps experimenting with other forms of deviance. In cases of alcoholic deviancy, Roman and Trice (1968) wrote that, “the mere process of labeling and sick-role assignment may serve to aggravate and perpetuate a condition which is initially under an individual’s control.” An analogy may be drawn here to the case of illegal immigrants. Because they are pushed to the side, because they are treated not as human beings but as burdens, the human tendency is to lash back. There is also a tendency to retreat to social groups where deviant activities are accepted (Bernburg, et. al. 2006), and this can push the immigrants into an even deeper web and a life of crime. They may not have been criminals or deviants in their home countries but because of the stereotypes that have been assigned them, they find themselves adopting these stereotypes. This becomes especially so when there are public announcements of the deviancy (Wilkins, 1964).Where illegal migrants are concerned, this can take the form of public raids, humiliating arrests by border patrols, even media reports where immigrants are subjected to derision and ridicule. It creates in the illegal immigrant a sense that he or she is being labeled as deviant and criminal by society, and this defines them and determines future actions. What is the future of the racial profiling debate, ten or twenty years down the road? These are trying times for the United States – the economy is at a downturn, joblessness is a reality for many ordinary Americans, there is a global right-wing trend sweeping over the world as a result of the recession that is making governments erect higher borders. There is reason to believe that the policies will tilt persuasively against illegal immigrants and there will be a stricter implementation of immigration policies as well as racial profiling among law enforcers. This might mean more border patrols, greater penalties for illegal immigrants, greater penalties for those who hire them. But alongside this, it must bear repeating that we have to reexamine our penchant for labeling people as a result of our fears and our need for “sameness”. It is valid to push for law and order, but it is never valid to judge people on the basis of race or culture, or to make “illegal immigrant” the core identity of the Mexicans, Peruvians, Filipinos and others who enter our borders because this is akin to labeling them. This can cause problems not only for the labeled but for the country as well, and can bring about social consequences with irreversible damages. Citation American Civil Liberties Union and Rights Working Group (2009), The Persistence of Racial and Ethnic Profiling in the United States. New York: ACLU. Bagley, B. (1988) “The New Hundred Years War? U.S. National Security and the War on Drugs in Latin America”. Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 30 (1). 71-92. Becker, Howard. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press. Bernburg, J., Krohn, M. and Rivera, C. (2006). “Official Labelling, Criminal Embeddedness and Subsequent Delinquency: A Longitudinal Test of Labelling Theory”. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. Vol. 43, pages 67-88. Bustamante, J. (1972). “The Wetback as Deviant: An Application of Labeling Theory”. American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 77(4), 706-718. Holmes, R., & Holmes, S. (2009). Profiling violent crimes: An investigative tool (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Lyman, M. D. (2011). Drugs in Society: Causes, Concepts and Control. (6th Ed.), Burlington, MA: Anderson Publishing.  Meehan, A. and Ponder, M. (2002). Race and Place: The Ecology of Racial Profiling African American Motorists. Peak, K. (2009). Justice Administration: Police, Courts, and Corrections Management. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Risse, M. and Richard Zeckhauser, Racial Profiling, 144, (2004). JWorrall, J. Criminal Procedure: From First Contact to Appeal, 169, (4th ed, 2011). Read More