Racial Profiling by Police is Not Correct

In general, experience is very valuable and can aid in making decisions or judgment calls. This is especially true for law enforcement given the nature of their line of work. Police often need to make decisions based on little, specific information. In the same way experience can negatively affect an officer’s decision-making process. Likewise, experience can breed bias. Human’s all carry cultural baggage that may directly affect our actions and decisions. This by no means is an attempt to justify all the choices that an officer may make, but it may explain an inherent reason behind the decision. However, it is also important to remember that police have a variety of powers, such as authority, force and discretion. Each of these powers has a significant importance and at the same time creates a venue for abuse of those powers.

The definition of racial profiling clearly shows how it is discriminatory. Racial profiling is described as “any police-initiated action that relies on the race, ethnicity, or national origin rather than the behavior of an individual or information that leads the police to a particular individual that has been identified as being, or having been, engaged in criminal activity” (Ramirez, D., McDevitt, J., & Farrell, A., 2000). In general, officers will use profiles created based on race, as reasonable suspicion against an individual. Is race a better way to consider someone a suspect or is behavior that is exhibited a better option? It is not wrong to create suspect profiles. For instance, typologies are a way to construct criminal profiles, based on patterns of behavior and activity. Criminologists develop typologies from criteria “that are important in distinguishing one criminal from anoth...

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