Racial Profiling

Here's a no-win subject: race and crime. But let's talk about it anyway.

The latest manifestation of our intractable racial divide is DWB: "driving while black." Cops allegedly stop black motorists more frequently than whites, looking for illegal drugs and other mischief. The motive? Bigoted cops just like to do this stuff.

It's not that simple, of course. Directing the Attorney General to study the problem, President Bush has put profiling high on his agenda, saying "it's wrong and we will not do it in America. We will not hinder the work of our nation's brave police officers. But by stopping the abuses of a few, we will add to the public confidence our police officers earn and deserve."

No trade-offs to worry about here at all. We'll repair the perception that blacks are being singled out, yet maintain vigorous law enforcement.

In cities like Los Angeles, however, active policing has fallen to zip because every officer is worried about whether his history of arrests is racially correct. Crime has taken a predictable jump up, largely at the expense of black victims.

A Disastrous War

There's some truth to the black perception of police harassment and injustice. The handy explanation of racism is faulty, though. The root of the problem traces back to the disastrous war on drugs. Cops aren't out to get blacks but to get drug dealers, creating collateral damage for black motorists.

Study after study supports the proposition that the criminal justice system, overall, is not systematically racist. With occasional exceptions, virtually everyone gets a fair shake in the U.S. justice system. It's a malicious myth that our modern legal system is discriminatory. Increasing the numbers of black police officers and black judges has not reduced the racial disparities in our prisons and elsewhere in the justice system. Studies find that if anything, black felony defendants are more likely than their white counterparts to be acquitted in jury trials.

There is, however, a real problem of disproportionate stops of black motorists. In a new study, three economists at the University of Pennsylvania, led by John Knowles, demonstrate that cops stop black motorists at a higher rate than white motorists not because of racism, but because it's the best way to get a lot of drug arrests and convictions.

How do the authors know this? They studied the 1990s data on highway stops by the Maryland State Police. Black motorists were stopped at a rate 3.5 times that for white motorists.

Traffic studies and police testimony show blacks and whites are not distinguishable by their driving behavior. Despite the relatively high stop rate for black motorists, the police found contraband at the same rate for both races, about one in three searches. So there is "statistical discrimination," we might say, rather than race prejudice at work.

The unpleasant fact is that blacks are disproportionately involved in the drug trade, and good police work takes this information into account. So at one level, it's all fine-'n'-dandy: the evidence says the Maryland cops were not racially motivated.

Improving Race Relations

But even if the study is right, all is not well, because it means that two of three stops are criminally unproductive for both races. More important, innocent black motorists are stopped 3.5 times more often than their white counterparts. That's the real problem . . . and a justified beef of the black community.

While the law is currently unsettled, it does not prohibit the use of race in police work, provided there is a reasonable linkage between race and likely criminal involvement. Yet such "statistical discrimination," innocent of prejudice though it may be, is under attack. The ACLU, among others, demands an end to racial profiling in police work. That would make the police less efficient, and thereby increase crime.

The President and the rest of us want to improve "the just and equal administration of our nation's laws." A good place to start would be the whole war on drugs.

We've been at it for decades and to what end? Futility and disaster. The harassment of black motorists is just one of its evil consequences. As government power and police corruption has advanced, civil liberties receded and cynicism intensified.

The more we suffer from the government's war, the more pressure for government to retreat, at least on softer drugs like marijuana. That would de-escalate the DWB problem and improve race relations generally, to the surprise of many.

Morgan Reynolds is director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis

For more information ...

Racial Profiling Charges: How Should Texas Respond? Read more on the legal and political controversy of this police tactic. (Texas House Research Organization, October 2000, 9pp.)

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