an essay on racial profiling

Racial Profiling Essay: Outline, Examples, & Writing Tips

Racial profiling is not uncommon. It’s incredibly offensive and unfair behavior that causes most of the protests in support of people of color. It occurs when people are suspected of committing a crime based on their skin color or ethnicity.

Unfortunately, most people are unaware that racial profiling is an everyday phenomenon that harms both the victims and society. Therefore, it’s crucial that we highlight this issue in as many ways as possible. One of the options is expressing your opinion through writing. A racial profiling essay can be inspiring and persuasive. All the power is in your hands, so let’s figure out how to use it! Keep reading this guide made by Custom-writing.org experts.

The article contains a writing guide, a collection of racial profiling essay topics, ideas, and examples, as well as the tips on making a racial profiling essay outline. We hope that it will inspire you to make an A+ argumentative racial profiling essay or even a persuasive speech on the topic!

🤔 What Is a Racial Profiling Essay about?

• 📑 Making an Outline
• 👌 Writing Tips

📝 Racial Profiling Essay Examples

🔗 references.

There is more than one objective for writing a racial profiling essay. First of all, it can be as simple as expressing your feelings about it. For example, you might consider pointing out how unfair and unjustified those actions are. Moreover, if you’re a law student, you should definitely back up those conclusions with the extractions from the Constitution.

You can then focus on describing the impact it has on society, which makes a fantastic cause and effect essay. There are so many more topic ideas, but if you’re feeling stuck, go ahead to the article’s next sections!

Argumentative Racial Profiling Essay

To write a successful argumentative racial profiling essay, you need to focus on investigating the topic to express your perspective later. Every statement you include in the main body of the writing should be supported by evidence. The essential part of such an essay is a clear thesis statement! And if you struggle to come up with a good one yourself, you can get help from a thesis statement generator online .

Persuasive Racial Profiling Essay

Unlike the type discussed above, a persuasive racial profiling essay should aim to convince your readers that your point of view is the only correct one. Instead of just presenting your point of view, you need to gather the most convincing facts that can influence your audience. It requires expertise in the topic of racial profiling.

Racial Profiling Essay Topics

Looking for a racial profiling essay topic ? Find a short and sweet topic collection below.

• The impact of racial profiling on the US society. For this essay, you would need to study how citizens react to racial profiling. You might also include some statistics from the previous years.
• Present your point of view on the issue of racial profiling. If you ever faced it yourself, your reflective essay would be even more powerful! Include as much evidence as you can.
• Racial profiling: are African Americans overreacting? Someone feels like people might be taking this issue too personally. Therefore, you should provide strong arguments to point out how discriminating those actions are. 
• Accepting racial profiling as a common practice. Express your opinion on this topic. Do you think police should be legally allowed to practice racial profiling? Why would it be a violation of rights?
• Racial profiling from a psychological perspective. Try to analyze this occurrence as if you were a professional psychologist. What do you think makes law enforcement act this way?
• Does racism impact the US immigration?  
• Discuss the definition and origins of racial profiling.
• Analyze the aim and values of the Black Life Matter movement.  
• Racial stereotypes in Disney films. 
• Examine the problem of workplace racism.
• How can racism in medicine be eliminated?
• What is the colorblind racism?
• Describe your personal experience of racism .
• Compare the ways South Africa and the US are handling racism.
• The goals of the Black Lives Matter movement. 
• Explain why racism is a persistent problem in modern society.  
• Explore the concept of racial profiling in the “war on drugs.”
• Childhood under the racist laws of apartheid in Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime .
• Discuss the effect of racism on child development .
• Is there a racial disparity gap in healthcare? 
• Describe the problems racism causes in American schools.
• How does racism affect modern society?
• Racial stereotypes in music video .
• The pros and cons of racial profiling in the airports.
• Describe the specifics of colorblind racism .
• Discuss the possible solutions of racial profiling problem.
• Terrorist attacs in 9/11, hate crimes, and racial profiling.
• Is institutionalized racism a real problem or a myth?
• Racial and ethnical prejudices in breast cancer treatment.
• Examine the cases of racism against healthcare workers and their consequences.
• Analyze the impact of racism on globalization .
• Describe and characterize the main types of modern racism .
• Racial profiling of minority groups in the US.
• Is racial discrimination issue completely eliminated from American society?  
• Evaluate the racial inequalities in the US judicial system.
• Describe how race relations are represented in Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward .
• Analyze the difference between individual and institutional racism.
• Investigation of the history of racism in The Case for Reparations by Coates.
• Is racial profiling a discrimination or a necessary evil?
• Ways of dealing with racism in American education .
• Examine the history of racial stereotypes in the US.  
• Explain why racial profiling is a violation of human rights.
• Catastrophic consequences of discrimination and racial prejudice in the film A Soldier’s Story .
• Racism as a global issue.
• Discuss the causes and effects of racism in America.
• What can be done to resolve the problem of racism at interactional level ?
• Analyze the issue of racial profiling of drivers.
• Describe the problem of racism and discrimination from the perspective of social psychology.
• Discuss the methods of solving the problem of policing racism .
• Examine the cases of racism in social work environment.

📑 Racial Profiling Essay Outline

Whichever type of racial profiling essay you choose to work on, the basic writing strategy remains the same. After you pick up the suitable title and finish your research, it’s time to reorganize the main ideas. The best way to do it is to create a racial profiling essay outline that serves as a foundation for your future essay.

There are three elements that any essay must have:

• Introduction

The main body should have at least three paragraphs in which you present your arguments supported by evidence.

Racial Profiling Essay Introduction

It is a good idea to start your essay with a hook – a statement that aims to grab your reader’s attention. In your racial profiling essay introduction, you could use some impressive statistics that illustrate the problem of racial discrimination or describe a real-life situation.

At this stage, it’s also essential that you think about composing a racial profiling thesis statement . It goes as the last sentence of the introduction and becomes the focal point of your whole writing. The thesis statement includes your opinion and a short description of your arguments.

Racial Profiling Essay Conclusion

In conclusion, you should summarize your arguments and paraphrase your racial profiling thesis statement. It is also a good idea to add some information about the most important findings. This way, your essay would be both informative and persuasive.

👌 Racial Profiling Essay: Writing Tips

Let us remind you of some basic rules you should stick to while writing:

• Introduce your position on the problem and, at least, three major points in the thesis statement of your racial profiling essay.
• Gather enough facts and pieces of evidence to support your points.
• Do not forget to study the arguments of the opposing side.

Before you get down to writing your essay on racial profiling, try to answer the following questions:

• When did racial profiling start?
• Why does it happen?
• What consequences does it lead to?

Try to find some statistical data to include in your essay on racial profiling. Be careful with sources and information. The point is that racial profiling is unconstitutional, which is why you will not find official data, something like police reports, etc. Thus, use only credible online and printed sources when writing your papers on racial profiling.

There is also a way to show your creativity in the essay on racial profiling. You may play the devil advocate’s role and support it in the paper on racial profiling. We are sure this unusual approach will impress your teacher!

Below you’ll find links to 3 racial profiling essay examples. We hope that they will inspire you to write an A+ paper on racism and discrimination.

The modern globalized society provides numerous opportunities for improved communication and increased mutual understanding. However, there are still such problems as discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, mentality, sex, or gender, biased attitudes to some minorities, and widespread stereotypical thinking.

Read the full text

The system of racism entails degrading and harmful actions and beliefs that are implemented and expressed by both groups of people. Racism over the years has been one of the reasons behind poverty and lack of access to social mobility in the United States.

Racial identity and racial socialization are proposed to promote the improvement of African American adolescents in the aspect of race-related difficulties. Current studies pointed out that discrimination is a condition that has harmful effects on the mental health of African Americans.

So, good luck with your papers on racial profiling! Do not hesitate to visit our blog if you have trouble with terrorism essays or any other written assignment.

• Racial Profiling: Definition | American Civil Liberties Union
• This is why everyday racial profiling is so dangerous – CNN
• Racial profiling – AP News
• Racial profiling: Germany debating police methods – DW
• Psychology responds to racial profiling
• Racial Profiling – Equal Justice Initiative
• Racial Profiling: Past, Present, and Future?
• Racial profiling | Independent
• Racial Profiling – University of Michigan Law School
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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Racial Profiling — Pros and Cons of Racial Profiling

Pros and Cons of Racial Profiling

• Categories: Racial Profiling

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Published: Mar 20, 2024

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Pros of racial profiling, cons of racial profiling, impact on society.

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Racial Profiling is a Public Health and Health Disparities Issue

Cato t. laurencin.

1 Connecticut Convergence Institute for Translation in Regenerative Engineering, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, CT 06030, USA

2 Raymond and Beverly Sackler Center for Biomedical, Biological, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Farmington, Connecticut, United States of America

3 Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, Connecticut, United States of America

4 Department of Materials Science & Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, United States of America

5 Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, United States of America

6 Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, United States of America

Joanne M. Walker

Racial profiling is a public health and health disparities issue through its disparate and adverse health impact on those targeted by this practice, as well as members of their communities. We discuss six ways police profiling and racial discrimination adversely impact Black American health. We identify four direct and two indirect ways. Four direct ways are (1) violent confrontation with police that causes injury or death; (2) police language that escalates a confrontation through micro-aggressions or macroaggressions; (3) sub-lethal confrontations with police; (4) adverse health consequences of perceived or vicarious threat, i.e., the mere belief in potential harm by police injures health. There are two indirect ways: (5) through knowledge of or personal relationship with someone who directly experienced racial profiling; (6) through public events without a personal knowledge of the unarmed person threatened or killed by police as a result of racial profiling, but where such events cause both individuals and the community at large to perceive a threat. We support recognition of racial profiling as a public health and health disparities issue. We recommend support for community programs that address the clinical health effects of racial profiling. We also recommend widespread engagement of trauma-informed policing (TIP) that acknowledges the clinical effects of racial profiling.

1. Introduction

Racial profiling is the act of suspecting or targeting a person of a certain race on the basis of observed or assumed characteristics or behavior of a racial or ethnic group, rather than on individual suspicion [ 1 ]. Black Americans comprise 13% of the population and compared with White Americans are three times more likely to be shot and killed and five times more likely to be killed unarmed by police [ 2 , 3 ]. Black teens are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than White teens [ 3 ]. In Black American boys between ages 15 and 19 and men between ages 20 and 39, the leading cause of death is homicide. Homicide is also the second leading cause of death in Black American young boys between ages 1 and 4 [ 4 ].

Excessive police violence can affect an individual personally and vicariously as well as the community which in turn adversely affects health. The most influential case that launched the “Black Lives Matters” movement was the case of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old boy who was unlawfully shot and killed walking home from a convenience store in 2012 [ 5 ]. In 2015, while in police custody, Freddie Grey, falsely accused of carrying an illegal switchblade, was refused medical attention upon his request which resulted in fatal injury and death [ 6 ]. The refusal of medical attention and the mistreatment while in police custody of this unarmed Black young man caused public health harms that included medication crises linked to the destruction of dozens of pharmacies, opioids from the pharmacies entering the illicit drug street market, mental health trauma, and damage to the economies of neighborhoods already burdened by high rates of unemployment and premature mortality [ 6 ]. Another influential case was that of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old woman who was pulled over by a police officer for not using a turn signal. Sandra Bland was arrested for allegedly assaulting an officer during the traffic stop and later found dead in her jail cell. Her death was ruled a suicide [ 5 ]. The officer involved was later indicted on perjury charges and fired [ 5 ]. The arrest of Sandra Bland and many others like her shows bias excessive force by police against African Americans. Have the police become unconsciously biased towards minorities through social conditioning or professional training that results in excessive suspicion of Black Americas? Violence as well as excessive police violence can greatly affect the health of an individual as well as a community causing public health and health disparity issues [ 7 ].

The senior one of us (C.T.L.) has served as a member of the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition CTRP3 Task Force Advisory Board. The mission statement of the task force begins with the unambiguous statement of fact, “Racial Profiling has historically occurred, and continues to occur throughout America,” [ 8 ]. In this paper, we discuss several ways racial profiling causes’ adverse health effects in Black Americans ( Table 1 ).

Ways by which racial profiling results in health effects in Black Americans.

2. Six Ways of Racial Profiling Affecting Public Health

2.1. way 1: direct effect: confrontation with violence/injury by police resulting in death.

Racial profiling is indicative of the lasting prominence of institutionalization of racism in America. Many perceive police killings of unarmed persons or suspects as a manifestation of structural racism that implicitly assigns a lower value to Black lives [ 9 ]. These behaviors alienate communities from law enforcement, hinder community-policing effects, and cause communities to lose trust in law enforcement [ 9 ]. This negative interaction undermines effective community policing for public safety. Black Americans are three times more likely than White Americans to be shot and killed by police and five times more likely than White Americans to be killed unarmed [ 1 ]. Black Americans are also five times more likely to have a police intervention–related injury to take place [ 3 ]. According to a study by Gilbert et al., in 1994, 465 felons were killed by law enforcement officers in the line of duty, the killings were all considered justifiable homicides [ 10 ]. The number of deaths began to decrease over the next 10 years and surprisingly in 2013 were back up to 465 deaths according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports [ 10 ]. Throughout history, Black Americans have been portrayed as “monstrously aggressive and inhuman,” as was apparent in the testimony of the police officers in the killing of Michael Brown. The police officers involved portrayed Michael Brown as a “demonically aggressive, nonhuman monster,” and the media characterized him as a “thug” and a “gangster” [ 7 ]. Police violence and brutality can cause death which in turn affects the mental, physical, and emotional health of individuals as well as entire communities.

2.2. Way 2: Direct Effect: Confrontation Due to Police Language Micro-aggression/Macro-aggression by Police

The second direct effect of police racism is confrontation due to police language by micro- or macro-aggressions. Micro-aggressions are subtle, everyday verbal or nonverbal negative insults or messages to a person of a different race that may not be apparent or entirely understood to either party involved [ 11 ]. Macro-aggressions involve the act of racism towards every one of a certain race [ 11 ]. A number of reports have chronicled Black drivers perceiving more negative experiences in their interactions with police. An important study by Voigt, R., et al., focused on incidents captured on video involving police use of force on Black suspects. Voigt et al. completed an analysis using police body camera footage examined in the context of racial disparities. Officers were equal in formality between Black and White drivers but higher in respect with White drivers, with officers speaking with less respect to Black drivers [ 12 ]. A linguistic correlate from body camera footage data showed that White community members were 57% more likely to hear respectful utterances while Black community members were 61% more likely to hear a less respectful utterance from a police officer [ 12 ]. These factors lead to micro- and macro- aggressions that take place in the relationship between the police and the community.

2.3. Way 3: Direct Effect: Sub-lethal Confrontation with Police

The third direct effect is the sub-lethal confrontation with police that can involve anything from a police officer pulling a gun or yelling at an individual, to confrontations causing bodily injury. Several published studies have focused on exposure to police violence and the effects of that exposure on individuals. Police officers have the authority to stop individuals without any evidence of suspicion or wrong-doing [ 3 , 13 – 15 ]. “Terry stops” or “stop and frisk” rarely end with arrests and have been associated with adverse mental health effects such as stress responses or depressive symptoms due to police aggression [ 16 ]. Data from Geller et al. reported that ethnic minorities who have been stopped by police were more likely to have higher levels of anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); PTSD was higher in Black individuals [ 16 ]. Aggressive policing has major effects on the health of individuals and communities [ 16 ]. In the US population, police violence and aggression have been associated with distress, depression, anxiety, and trauma no matter the ethnicity or race of an individual [ 17 ]. Violence from racial profiling and discrimination was directly reported to cause depression in Black American boys and men, which in turn, is a mediator for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer [ 17 ]. Mental health of young Black boys was also associated with youth witnessed trauma regardless of proximity resulting in PTSD symptoms such as hyperarousal [ 17 ]. In recent studies, Oh et al. focused on the Black population and the effects of police mistreatment on individual health. The study showed police mistreatment of a Black individual was associated with worse mental health such as psychiatric, mood, and anxiety disorders, as well as PTSD and suicidal ideation, plans, and attempts [ 18 ]. Worse mental health can also be attributed to police killings of unarmed Black Americans and racial discrimination in communities not directly affected [ 3 ], causing stress, financial strain, and institutional oppressive practices [ 19 ]. African Americans (81%) who reported racial discrimination also reported having experienced PTSD [ 20 ]. Paired together, the data suggests, “law enforcement violence is a critical but nevertheless under examined public health issue” [ 20 ].

2.4. Way 4: Direct Effect: Actual and/or Perceived Threat from Police

The fourth area in which police brutality can affect mental health is the actual and/or perceived threat from police, the concept of vicarious threat. Several studies have examined the consequences of police violence and the effects it has on people who hear about the threat of violence [ 21 , 22 ]. Studies have focused on the mental and physical effects of vicarious threat. McFarland et al. focused on changes in waist circumference of Black Americans in Nashville, TN, who had been treated unlawfully by police [ 23 ]. The study showed that traffic stops occurred predominantly in low-income Black or Hispanic communities and that Black drivers were five times more likely to be stopped per year and two times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop [ 23 ]. McFarland et al. determined that Black Americans were two to three times more likely to have a larger waist circumference than White Americans. Black Americans in general are faced with higher stress burdens than White Americans [ 23 ]. Unfair treatment by police is a stressor that has not yet fully been understood in terms of health disparities research and in the medical field [ 23 ]. Unfair treatment by police has a large effect on the Black community vicariously and personally. In one study, 45.8% of Black Americans experienced personal or vicarious unfair treatment versus 18.5% of Whites, with men reporting more personal unfair treatment and women reporting more vicarious unfair treatment [ 23 ]. Waist circumference was higher in Blacks who experience unfair treatment and higher (12%) in Black women who experienced it vicariously compared with White women [ 23 ]. Vicarious exposure to unfair treatment by police may be a factor of worse mental health in the Black community [ 23 ].

2.5. Way 5: Indirect Effect: Case Where There Is Knowledge/Relationship of an Individual Who Has Been Racially Profiled by the Police

Indirect effects on mental health from police mistreatment can occur to someone who has knowledge of or a relationship with an individual that has been mistreated or racially profiled. Physiological effects can take place due to defending the character of a loved one after the police have killed them [ 3 ]. These actions can elicit negative emotions that can be damaging to mental health [ 24 ]. The mental health effect on the knowledge or relationship one may have to someone who has been racially profiled has also been evident in young Black American boys. Boys who were interviewed on police violence were all aware that they can be targeted by a police officer and killed without any legal consequence; the exposure to this violence causes trauma [ 17 ]. Young Black boys are taught to stay out of trouble, be respectful, and avoid any confrontation with the police for fear of being mistakenly targeted and racially profiled [ 17 ]. Most recently, a study published in Science Advances focused on birth records in California from 2007 to 2016 and showed that police killings of unarmed Black men were associated with a decrease in birth weight and gestational age of Black infants [ 25 ]. For a pregnant mother, the stressors of knowing someone or hearing about police racial profiling can cause stress and have negative effects on an unborn child [ 25 ]. These emotional stressors on Black women can cause physical health to decline and can be responsible for changes in birth weight and length of gestation, in an unborn child [ 25 ]. In general, studies show that stressors in an early prenatal stage can have damaging effects to an unborn child causing consequences on childhood and adulthood development [ 26 ]. The data suggests that the killings of unarmed Black Americans are linked to decreased birth weights in Black infants but not in other races, accounting for a third of the Black- White gap, indicating the effect is race specific and driven by perceptions of discrimination and structural racism [ 26 ].

2.6. Way 6: Indirect Effect: Case Where There Is No Relationship with an Unarmed Individual Who Has Been Killed by Police and the Effects on the Community

Racial profiling by police can have consequences on health even when there is no relationship to the person who has been racially profiled, but there is knowledge through the media and the community. When unarmed Black members of a community are killed, could it mediate adverse mental health issues within the community? Bor et al. focused on police killings and the effects on the mental health of Black Americans [ 3 ]. This study compared the mental health of Black Americans after a police killing of an unarmed Black American to the mental health before that event or 3 months after the event. The outcome variable that was measured was the number of days in the previous month that the respondent’s mental health was reported “not good” [ 3 ]. Killings of unarmed Black Americans were associated with worse mental health among other Black Americans, even if the Black Americans did not know the person who was killed, while no change occurred in White Americans. The killing of armed Black Americans was not associated with the mental health of Black or White Americans [ 3 ]. The effect of police brutality and mistreatment can be widespread and affect people who have only heard about the event [ 3 ]. This can trigger an individual to relive negative experiences causing stress and anxiety and can even cause the individual to worry about their safety and their families’ safety. Hearing about the event through the media or the community can also have adverse effects on an individual.

3. Discussion

Police violence experienced by racial minorities can cause adverse health consequences through stress, trauma, and anxiety [ 26 ]. Public health officials and policymakers need to treat racial profiling and adverse policing as true public health issues and recognize the scenarios in which medical effects can take place in Black Americans and minorities. There is a significant need to implement programs that mitigate the adverse mental health spillover caused by harmful police acts. The value of educating the public is important because Black Americans and other minorities are encountering clinical medical effects and many do not understand why [ 27 ]. We have two major recommendations. First, adequate public health resources need to be utilized to understand, diagnose, and address the health implications of racial profiling. Second, for police, while most traffic stops are lawful and do not involve racial profiling in our view, the 6 ways in which racial profiling produces medical effects will inform subsequent traffic stop interactions. We, therefore, need to educate law enforcement on the importance of Trauma Informed Policing (TIP) [ 28 ]. Trauma Informed Policing is defined as a framework for police officers to recognize and appropriately address the complexities of trauma experienced by survivors, to acknowledge symptoms and to use response tactics accordingly to prevent further individual trauma [ 28 ]. Several approaches have already been implemented in the use of trauma information such as the Trauma Informed Approach, referred to as Trauma Informed Care (TIC) which we can learn from and adopt in TIP [ 29 ]. The four Rs framework from the Trauma Informed Approach can be implemented for TIP. Officers can be trained to Realize the widespread impact of trauma and the different effects it may have on certain racial populations; Recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma; Respond by fully integrating experiences and knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices; and Resist retraumatization [ 29 ]. Police officers with TIP training will have the skills to approach situations with caution and care as well as awareness that many racial ethnic groups have a history of trauma and will be able to respond to agitated people in a nonjudgmental and supportive way. Relationships with police may trigger a response based on past experiences, personal or vicarious, that are not related to a current stop triggering PTSD, trauma, or stress causing an adverse reaction at the time of the police stop. Officers with TIP training will be able to recognize trauma and approach situations safely and be aware of cultural sensitivity as well as historical trauma that may impact entire communities [ 29 ]. In sum, the major focus needs to be on reducing disparities in health and promoting a culture of health. It is imperative for police and the community to understand the dynamics of racial profiling and its effects on public health.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge support from National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH BUILD (RL5GM118969) and NIH PIONEER (DP1AR068147) for funding this work (C.T.L.).

Conflict of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Ethical Approval This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Informed Consent Not applicable.

Racial Profiling: Past, Present, and Future?

Criminal Justice, Vol. 34, p. 10, Winter 2020

U. of Pittsburgh Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-08

10 Pages Posted: 5 Mar 2020

David A. Harris

University of Pittsburgh - School of Law

Date Written: February 24, 2020

It has been more than two decades since the introduction of the first bill in Congress that addressed racial profiling in 1997. Between then and now, Congress never passed legislation on the topic, but more than half the states passed laws and many police departments put anti-profiling policies in place to combat it. The research and data on racial profiling has grown markedly over the last twenty-plus years. We know that the practice is real (contrary to many denials), and the data reveal racial profiling’s shortcomings and great social costs. Nevertheless, racial profiling persists. While it took root most prominently as a tactic for finding drug couriers on interstate highways and in airports, law enforcement at many levels has made use of it to combat other problems, such as terrorism and illegal immigration. This article surveys the history of racial profiling and the various efforts to take it on, and the voluminous evidence that it fails to secure public safety even as it erodes public confidence in police. It ends with ideas for sharpening efforts to bring profiling under control.

Keywords: racial profiling, profiling, race, police, law enforcement, public safety, community policing, policy, data, data collection, police behavior, crime, crime control, traffic stops, Whren v. U.S., profiling by proxy, Suspect Citizens, End Racial Profiling Act, public safety, terrorism, immigration

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David A. Harris (Contact Author)

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Solving racial disparities in policing

Colleen Walsh

Harvard Staff Writer

Experts say approach must be comprehensive as roots are embedded in culture

“ Unequal ” is a multipart series highlighting the work of Harvard faculty, staff, students, alumni, and researchers on issues of race and inequality across the U.S. The first part explores the experience of people of color with the criminal justice legal system in America.

It seems there’s no end to them. They are the recent videos and reports of Black and brown people beaten or killed by law enforcement officers, and they have fueled a national outcry over the disproportionate use of excessive, and often lethal, force against people of color, and galvanized demands for police reform.

This is not the first time in recent decades that high-profile police violence — from the 1991 beating of Rodney King to the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in 2014 — ignited calls for change. But this time appears different. The police killings of Breonna Taylor in March, George Floyd in May, and a string of others triggered historic, widespread marches and rallies across the nation, from small towns to major cities, drawing protesters of unprecedented diversity in race, gender, and age.

According to historians and other scholars, the problem is embedded in the story of the nation and its culture. Rooted in slavery, racial disparities in policing and police violence, they say, are sustained by systemic exclusion and discrimination, and fueled by implicit and explicit bias. Any solution clearly will require myriad new approaches to law enforcement, courts, and community involvement, and comprehensive social change driven from the bottom up and the top down.

While police reform has become a major focus, the current moment of national reckoning has widened the lens on systemic racism for many Americans. The range of issues, though less familiar to some, is well known to scholars and activists. Across Harvard, for instance, faculty members have long explored the ways inequality permeates every aspect of American life. Their research and scholarship sits at the heart of a new Gazette series starting today aimed at finding ways forward in the areas of democracy; wealth and opportunity; environment and health; and education. It begins with this first on policing.

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad traces the history of policing in America to “slave patrols” in the antebellum South, in which white citizens were expected to help supervise the movements of enslaved Black people.

Photo by Martha Stewart

The history of racialized policing

Like many scholars, Khalil Gibran Muhammad , professor of history, race, and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School , traces the history of policing in America to “slave patrols” in the antebellum South, in which white citizens were expected to help supervise the movements of enslaved Black people. This legacy, he believes, can still be seen in policing today. “The surveillance, the deputization essentially of all white men to be police officers or, in this case, slave patrollers, and then to dispense corporal punishment on the scene are all baked in from the very beginning,” he  told NPR  last year.

Slave patrols, and the slave codes they enforced, ended after the Civil War and the passage of the 13th amendment, which formally ended slavery “except as a punishment for crime.” But Muhammad notes that former Confederate states quickly used that exception to justify new restrictions. Known as the Black codes, the various rules limited the kinds of jobs African Americans could hold, their rights to buy and own property, and even their movements.

“The genius of the former Confederate states was to say, ‘Oh, well, if all we need to do is make them criminals and they can be put back in slavery, well, then that’s what we’ll do.’ And that’s exactly what the Black codes set out to do. The Black codes, for all intents and purposes, criminalized every form of African American freedom and mobility, political power, economic power, except the one thing it didn’t criminalize was the right to work for a white man on a white man’s terms.” In particular, he said the Ku Klux Klan “took about the business of terrorizing, policing, surveilling, and controlling Black people. … The Klan totally dominates the machinery of justice in the South.”

When, during what became known as the Great Migration, millions of African Americans fled the still largely agrarian South for opportunities in the thriving manufacturing centers of the North, they discovered that metropolitan police departments tended to enforce the law along racial and ethnic lines, with newcomers overseen by those who came before. “There was an early emphasis on people whose status was just a tiny notch better than the folks whom they were focused on policing,” Muhammad said. “And so the Anglo-Saxons are policing the Irish or the Germans are policing the Irish. The Irish are policing the Poles.” And then arrived a wave of Black Southerners looking for a better life.

In his groundbreaking work, “ The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America ,” Muhammad argues that an essential turning point came in the early 1900s amid efforts to professionalize police forces across the nation, in part by using crime statistics to guide law enforcement efforts. For the first time, Americans with European roots were grouped into one broad category, white, and set apart from the other category, Black.

Citing Muhammad’s research, Harvard historian Jill Lepore  has summarized the consequences this way : “Police patrolled Black neighborhoods and arrested Black people disproportionately; prosecutors indicted Black people disproportionately; juries found Black people guilty disproportionately; judges gave Black people disproportionately long sentences; and, then, after all this, social scientists, observing the number of Black people in jail, decided that, as a matter of biology, Black people were disproportionately inclined to criminality.”

“History shows that crime data was never objective in any meaningful sense,” Muhammad wrote. Instead, crime statistics were “weaponized” to justify racial profiling, police brutality, and ever more policing of Black people.

This phenomenon, he believes, has continued well into this century and is exemplified by William J. Bratton, one of the most famous police leaders in recent America history. Known as “America’s Top Cop,” Bratton led police departments in his native Boston, Los Angeles, and twice in New York, finally retiring in 2016.

Bratton rejected notions that crime was a result of social and economic forces, such as poverty, unemployment, police practices, and racism. Instead, he said in a 2017 speech, “It is about behavior.” Through most of his career, he was a proponent of statistically-based “predictive” policing — essentially placing forces in areas where crime numbers were highest, focused on the groups found there.

Bratton argued that the technology eliminated the problem of prejudice in policing, without ever questioning potential bias in the data or algorithms themselves — a significant issue given the fact that Black Americans are arrested and convicted of crimes at disproportionately higher rates than whites. This approach has led to widely discredited practices such as racial profiling and “stop-and-frisk.” And, Muhammad notes, “There is no research consensus on whether or how much violence dropped in cities due to policing.”

Gathering numbers

In 2015 The Washington Post began tracking every fatal shooting by an on-duty officer, using news stories, social media posts, and police reports in the wake of the fatal police shooting of Brown, a Black teenager in Ferguson, Mo. According to the newspaper, Black Americans are killed by police at twice the rate of white Americans, and Hispanic Americans are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate.

Such efforts have proved useful for researchers such as economist Rajiv Sethi .

A Joy Foundation Fellow at the Harvard  Radcliffe Institute , Sethi is investigating the use of lethal force by law enforcement officers, a difficult task given that data from such encounters is largely unavailable from police departments. Instead, Sethi and his team of researchers have turned to information collected by websites and news organizations including The Washington Post and The Guardian, merged with data from other sources such as the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Census, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A Joy Foundation Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Rajiv Sethi is investigating the use of lethal force by law enforcement officers,

Courtesy photo

They have found that exposure to deadly force is highest in the Mountain West and Pacific regions relative to the mid-Atlantic and northeastern states, and that racial disparities in relation to deadly force are even greater than the national numbers imply. “In the country as a whole, you’re about two to three times more likely to face deadly force if you’re Black than if you are white” said Sethi. “But if you look at individual cities separately, disparities in exposure are much higher.”

Examining the characteristics associated with police departments that experience high numbers of lethal encounters is one way to better understand and address racial disparities in policing and the use of violence, Sethi said, but it’s a massive undertaking given the decentralized nature of policing in America. There are roughly 18,000 police departments in the country, and more than 3,000 sheriff’s offices, each with its own approaches to training and selection.

“They behave in very different ways, and what we’re finding in our current research is that they are very different in the degree to which they use deadly force,” said Sethi. To make real change, “You really need to focus on the agency level where organizational culture lies, where selection and training protocols have an effect, and where leadership can make a difference.”

Sethi pointed to the example of Camden, N.J., which disbanded and replaced its police force in 2013, initially in response to a budget crisis, but eventually resulting in an effort to fundamentally change the way the police engaged with the community. While there have been improvements, including greater witness cooperation, lower crime, and fewer abuse complaints, the Camden case doesn’t fit any particular narrative, said Sethi, noting that the number of officers actually increased as part of the reform. While the city is still faced with its share of problems, Sethi called its efforts to rethink policing “important models from which we can learn.”

Fighting vs. preventing crime

For many analysts, the real problem with policing in America is the fact that there is simply too much of it. “We’ve seen since the mid-1970s a dramatic increase in expenditures that are associated with expanding the criminal legal system, including personnel and the tasks we ask police to do,” said Sandra Susan Smith , Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice at HKS, and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute. “And at the same time we see dramatic declines in resources devoted to social welfare programs.”

“You can have all the armored personnel carriers you want in Ferguson, but public safety is more likely to come from redressing environmental pollution, poor education, and unfair work,” said Brandon Terry, assistant professor of African and African American Studies and social studies.

Kris Snibble/Harvard file photo

Smith’s comment highlights a key argument embraced by many activists and experts calling for dramatic police reform: diverting resources from the police to better support community services including health care, housing, and education, and stronger economic and job opportunities. They argue that broader support for such measures will decrease the need for policing, and in turn reduce violent confrontations, particularly in over-policed, economically disadvantaged communities, and communities of color.

For Brandon Terry , that tension took the form of an ice container during his Baltimore high school chemistry final. The frozen cubes were placed in the middle of the classroom to help keep the students cool as a heat wave sent temperatures soaring. “That was their solution to the building’s lack of air conditioning,” said Terry, a Harvard assistant professor of African and African American Studies and social studies. “Just grab an ice cube.”

Terry’s story is the kind many researchers cite to show the negative impact of underinvesting in children who will make up the future population, and instead devoting resources toward policing tactics that embrace armored vehicles, automatic weapons, and spy planes. Terry’s is also the kind of tale promoted by activists eager to defund the police, a movement begun in the late 1960s that has again gained momentum as the death toll from violent encounters mounts. A scholar of Martin Luther King Jr., Terry said the Civil Rights leader’s views on the Vietnam War are echoed in the calls of activists today who are pressing to redistribute police resources.

“King thought that the idea of spending many orders of magnitude more for an unjust war than we did for the abolition of poverty and the abolition of ghettoization was a moral travesty, and it reflected a kind of sickness at the core of our society,” said Terry. “And part of what the defund model is based upon is a similar moral criticism, that these budgets reflect priorities that we have, and our priorities are broken.”

Terry also thinks the policing debate needs to be expanded to embrace a fuller understanding of what it means for people to feel truly safe in their communities. He highlights the work of sociologist Chris Muller and Harvard’s Robert Sampson, who have studied racial disparities in exposures to lead and the connections between a child’s early exposure to the toxic metal and antisocial behavior. Various studies have shown that lead exposure in children can contribute to cognitive impairment and behavioral problems, including heightened aggression.

“You can have all the armored personnel carriers you want in Ferguson,” said Terry, “but public safety is more likely to come from redressing environmental pollution, poor education, and unfair work.”

Policing and criminal justice system

Alexandra Natapoff , Lee S. Kreindler Professor of Law, sees policing as inexorably linked to the country’s criminal justice system and its long ties to racism.

“Policing does not stand alone or apart from how we charge people with crimes, or how we convict them, or how we treat them once they’ve been convicted,” she said. “That entire bundle of official practices is a central part of how we govern, and in particular, how we have historically governed Black people and other people of color, and economically and socially disadvantaged populations.”

Unpacking such a complicated issue requires voices from a variety of different backgrounds, experiences, and fields of expertise who can shine light on the problem and possible solutions, said Natapoff, who co-founded a new lecture series with HLS Professor Andrew Crespo titled “ Policing in America .”

In recent weeks the pair have hosted Zoom discussions on topics ranging from qualified immunity to the Black Lives Matter movement to police unions to the broad contours of the American penal system. The series reflects the important work being done around the country, said Natapoff, and offers people the chance to further “engage in dialogue over these over these rich, complicated, controversial issues around race and policing, and governance and democracy.”

Courts and mass incarceration

Much of Natapoff’s recent work emphasizes the hidden dangers of the nation’s misdemeanor system. In her book “ Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal ,” Natapoff shows how the practice of stopping, arresting, and charging people with low-level offenses often sends them down a devastating path.

“This is how most people encounter the criminal apparatus, and it’s the first step of mass incarceration, the initial net that sweeps people of color disproportionately into the criminal system,” said Natapoff. “It is also the locus that overexposes Black people to police violence. The implications of this enormous net of police and prosecutorial authority around minor conduct is central to understanding many of the worst dysfunctions of our criminal system.”

One consequence is that Black and brown people are incarcerated at much higher rates than white people. America has approximately 2.3 million people in federal, state, and local prisons and jails, according to a 2020 report from the nonprofit the Prison Policy Initiative. According to a 2018 report from the Sentencing Project, Black men are 5.9 times as likely to be incarcerated as white men and Hispanic men are 3.1 times as likely.

Reducing mass incarceration requires shrinking the misdemeanor net “along all of its axes” said Natapoff, who supports a range of reforms including training police officers to both confront and arrest people less for low-level offenses, and the policies of forward-thinking prosecutors willing to “charge fewer of those offenses when police do make arrests.”

She praises the efforts of Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins in Massachusetts and George Gascón, the district attorney in Los Angeles County, Calif., who have pledged to stop prosecuting a range of misdemeanor crimes such as resisting arrest, loitering, trespassing, and drug possession. “If cities and towns across the country committed to that kind of reform, that would be a profoundly meaningful change,” said Natapoff, “and it would be a big step toward shrinking our entire criminal apparatus.”

Retired U.S. Judge Nancy Gertner cites the need to reform federal sentencing guidelines, arguing that all too often they have been proven to be biased and to result in packing the nation’s jails and prisons.

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard file photo

Sentencing reform

Another contributing factor in mass incarceration is sentencing disparities.

A recent Harvard Law School study found that, as is true nationally, people of color are “drastically overrepresented in Massachusetts state prisons.” But the report also noted that Black and Latinx people were less likely to have their cases resolved through pretrial probation ­— a way to dismiss charges if the accused meet certain conditions — and receive much longer sentences than their white counterparts.

Retired U.S. Judge Nancy Gertner also notes the need to reform federal sentencing guidelines, arguing that all too often they have been proven to be biased and to result in packing the nation’s jails and prisons. She points to the way the 1994 Crime Bill (legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware) ushered in much harsher drug penalties for crack than for powder cocaine. This tied the hands of judges issuing sentences and disproportionately punished people of color in the process. “The disparity in the treatment of crack and cocaine really was backed up by anecdote and stereotype, not by data,” said Gertner, a lecturer at HLS. “There was no data suggesting that crack was infinitely more dangerous than cocaine. It was the young Black predator narrative.”

The First Step Act, a bipartisan prison reform bill aimed at reducing racial disparities in drug sentencing and signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2018, is just what its name implies, said Gertner.

“It reduces sentences to the merely inhumane rather than the grotesque. We still throw people in jail more than anybody else. We still resort to imprisonment, rather than thinking of other alternatives. We still resort to punishment rather than other models. None of that has really changed. I don’t deny the significance of somebody getting out of prison a year or two early, but no one should think that that’s reform.”

 Not just bad apples

Reform has long been a goal for federal leaders. Many heralded Obama-era changes aimed at eliminating racial disparities in policing and outlined in the report by The President’s Task Force on 21st Century policing. But HKS’s Smith saw them as largely symbolic. “It’s a nod to reform. But most of the reforms that are implemented in this country tend to be reforms that nibble around the edges and don’t really make much of a difference.”

Efforts such as diversifying police forces and implicit bias training do little to change behaviors and reduce violent conduct against people of color, said Smith, who cites studies suggesting a majority of Americans hold negative biases against Black and brown people, and that unconscious prejudices and stereotypes are difficult to erase.

“Experiments show that you can, in the context of a day, get people to think about race differently, and maybe even behave differently. But if you follow up, say, a week, or two weeks later, those effects are gone. We don’t know how to produce effects that are long-lasting. We invest huge amounts to implement such police reforms, but most often there’s no empirical evidence to support their efficacy.”

Even the early studies around the effectiveness of body cameras suggest the devices do little to change “officers’ patterns of behavior,” said Smith, though she cautions that researchers are still in the early stages of collecting and analyzing the data.

And though police body cameras have caught officers in unjust violence, much of the general public views the problem as anomalous.

“Despite what many people in low-income communities of color think about police officers, the broader society has a lot of respect for police and thinks if you just get rid of the bad apples, everything will be fine,” Smith added. “The problem, of course, is this is not just an issue of bad apples.”

Efforts such as diversifying police forces and implicit bias training do little to change behaviors and reduce violent conduct against people of color, said Sandra Susan Smith, a professor of criminal justice Harvard Kennedy School.

Community-based ways forward

Still Smith sees reason for hope and possible ways forward involving a range of community-based approaches. As part of the effort to explore meaningful change, Smith, along with Christopher Winship , Diker-Tishman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University and a member of the senior faculty at HKS, have organized “ Reimagining Community Safety: A Program in Criminal Justice Speaker Series ” to better understand the perspectives of practitioners, policymakers, community leaders, activists, and academics engaged in public safety reform.

Some community-based safety models have yielded important results. Smith singles out the Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets program (known as CAHOOTS ) in Eugene, Ore., which supplements police with a community-based public safety program. When callers dial 911 they are often diverted to teams of workers trained in crisis resolution, mental health, and emergency medicine, who are better equipped to handle non-life-threatening situations. The numbers support her case. In 2017 the program received 25,000 calls, only 250 of which required police assistance. Training similar teams of specialists who don’t carry weapons to handle all traffic stops could go a long way toward ending violent police encounters, she said.

“Imagine you have those kinds of services in play,” said Smith, paired with community-based anti-violence program such as Cure Violence , which aims to stop violence in targeted neighborhoods by using approaches health experts take to control disease, such as identifying and treating individuals and changing social norms. Together, she said, these programs “could make a huge difference.”

At Harvard Law School, students have been  studying how an alternate 911-response team  might function in Boston. “We were trying to move from thinking about a 911-response system as an opportunity to intervene in an acute moment, to thinking about what it would look like to have a system that is trying to help reweave some of the threads of community, a system that is more focused on healing than just on stopping harm” said HLS Professor Rachel Viscomi, who directs the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program and oversaw the research.

The forthcoming report, compiled by two students in the HLS clinic, Billy Roberts and Anna Vande Velde, will offer officials a range of ideas for how to think about community safety that builds on existing efforts in Boston and other cities, said Viscomi.

But Smith, like others, knows community-based interventions are only part of the solution. She applauds the Justice Department’s investigation into the Ferguson Police Department after the shooting of Brown. The 102-page report shed light on the department’s discriminatory policing practices, including the ways police disproportionately targeted Black residents for tickets and fines to help balance the city’s budget. To fix such entrenched problems, state governments need to rethink their spending priorities and tax systems so they can provide cities and towns the financial support they need to remain debt-free, said Smith.

Rethinking the 911-response system to being one that is “more focused on healing than just on stopping harm” is part of the student-led research under the direction of Law School Professor Rachel Viscomi, who heads up the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program.

Jon Chase/Harvard file photo

“Part of the solution has to be a discussion about how government is funded and how a city like Ferguson got to a place where government had so few resources that they resorted to extortion of their residents, in particular residents of color, in order to make ends meet,” she said. “We’ve learned since that Ferguson is hardly the only municipality that has struggled with funding issues and sought to address them through the oppression and repression of their politically, socially, and economically marginalized Black and Latino residents.”

Police contracts, she said, also need to be reexamined. The daughter of a “union man,” Smith said she firmly supports officers’ rights to union representation to secure fair wages, health care, and safe working conditions. But the power unions hold to structure police contracts in ways that protect officers from being disciplined for “illegal and unethical behavior” needs to be challenged, she said.

“I think it’s incredibly important for individuals to be held accountable and for those institutions in which they are embedded to hold them to account. But we routinely find that union contracts buffer individual officers from having to be accountable. We see this at the level of the Supreme Court as well, whose rulings around qualified immunity have protected law enforcement from civil suits. That needs to change.”

Other Harvard experts agree. In an opinion piece in The Boston Globe last June, Tomiko Brown-Nagin , dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute and the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at HLS, pointed out the Court’s “expansive interpretation of qualified immunity” and called for reform that would “promote accountability.”

“This nation is devoted to freedom, to combating racial discrimination, and to making government accountable to the people,” wrote Brown-Nagin. “Legislators today, like those who passed landmark Civil Rights legislation more than 50 years ago, must take a stand for equal justice under law. Shielding police misconduct offends our fundamental values and cannot be tolerated.”

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Racial Profiling in America

How it works

Racial Profiling against Minorities in America

Racial Profiling is an arbitrary action initiated by an authority based on race, ethnicity or national origin rather than on a person’s behavior. Discrimination is when you are denied opportunities and equal rights because of prejudice or other arbitrary reasons. (Schaefer, 2013: 233) There is no secret that racial profiling and discrimination still takes place in America today. With Racial profiling also comes stereotypes. Racial Profiling and stereotyping is something that happens very often in America especially against minority groups such as Blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims.

( Schaefer, 2013: 238) In fact, there were several experiments that proved such to be true (Schaefer as well as a tv show called what would you do?! (Schaefer, 2013:239) (abc news Alley, Healy 2010).

Whether it be a Muslim passenger being removed from a flight because their presence alarming other passengers (NPR Staff 2016), a Hispanic male being pulled over for driving a crown Victoria in a fairly decent neighborhood, or a young black woman entering into a relatively expensive store to purchase an item, but she is followed around by the staff, it happens and has become a normal thing. Racial profiling in America continues to compromise the future of America. Unfortunately, racial profiling victims pay the price majorly because it can affect them emotionally, mentally, and sometimes even physically and financially. Ultimately It is a very dangerous and a harmful practice that is highly ineffective.

From the conflict perspective Conflict theorist agree with Arnold Rose that racial prejudice and discrimination have many harmful consequences for our society. (Schaffer, 2013) Although racial prejudice and racial discrimination are both different from racial profiling, they all bring about harmful consequences. Some racial profiling incidents have ended in death. For example, the shooting death of Philando Castile by a police officer. According to Wikipedia the police officer patrolling the area where Castile and his girlfriend were stopped radioed a nearby squad saying that he planned to stop the vehicle because “The two occupants just look people that were involved in a robbery.

The driver looks like one of the suspects because of the wide-set nose.” Later it was determined that the car was stopped because of him being a black man driving car with dreadlocks and having a wide set nose. There was a previous robbery in the area, but the police had no other evidence on how the two robbers looked except that one had dreadlocks and a wide set nose. This is a tragedy of one instance of racial profiling. Mr. Castile was in his own neighborhood driving his normal car, that just so happened to be a 1997 Oldsmobile. (Wikipedia 2016)

He may not have been shot because he was black, but he was definitely profiled by the officer because he was black. The term driving while black comes to mind. (Wikipedia) His mother lost a son, his girlfriend lost her lover, his coworkers and students definitely lost someone who inspired them. This incident as many others has cause so much hurt and unsettling in the black community. This and other incidents like it have cause for many people to form groups to stand against racial profiling, racial inequalities, and other injustices in America

Despite research being done to show how ineffective racial profiling is in America authorities continue to use profiling. A recent study was proven that blacks are still more likely than whites to be frisked. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. more Muslims and Arabs have been racially profiled and sadly this has also become a normal thing.

(Schaefer, 2013: 239) There have been instances where a Muslim passenger was removed from a flight just because he spoke Arabic and another passenger felt uncomfortable with how he was speaking it. This isn’t the only incident to where someone was removed from a flight for looking too Muslim or looking or sounding Middle Eastern. (NPR Staff, 2016)

Society is affected mightily by racial profiling. It harms the future of growth in this country. Individuals may racial trauma that stems from cases to where discrimination and racial profiling were involved they could feel depression, anxiety that the incident may happen again, low self-esteem, they may feel humiliated, and irritable.

(Richardson, Turner 2016). It can ruin the trust between citizens and law officials. For instance, if a black man and his son were walking home from playing basketball at a nearby park and they get stopped and frisked by a white cop for no apparent reason in their minds they may never trust any cop or law official ever again. This could lead them to believe that all cops are this way as well. Racial profiling could cause some mental and emotional stress on both the father and the son. The shootings of unarmed blacks in America has caused a very real, very systemic societal problem. As a result, a lot of black Americans, regardless of class, regardless of context, and circumstance, feel the effects of these shootings. It causes us to wonder if they are happening because of black individuals being racial profiled. It is also affecting different Americans with their trust in the American government as a whole. There are barriers that were being broken down and now they are being built again.

My opinion on this social problem is that racial profiling is an act against basic human rights. It is an upsetting thing to know that because of your ethnicity people (especially the authorities) can make an assumption about you and act on that assumption on that alone rather than your own individual behavior. I have personally dealt with racial profiling in a clothing store in the lake park area. The thing about this is that I worked at a clothing store in the same plaza. The lady that was the manager of the store didn’t think I could afford to purchase items in the store because she kept asking me what I was looking for and hinting that certain things were expensive and then she would say the price and look at me to affirm that I knew I was somewhere that she felt I didn’t belong. When I realized what was happening it made me never want to shop at the store again and also let everyone that I knew not to shop there because of the treatment I received.

Being a person who had worked in retail you cannot ever know who is going to come into the store and you cannot judge a person based on looks but by how they behave. It certainly makes a huge difference. It makes me feel hurt for all individuals that encounter being racially profiled. With all that is going on in our nation it crazy to me that this is something that we as a nation have to deal with. Middle Eastern people should not have to always wonder if they may get kicked off of a plane because they are speaking in their native tongue.

Blacks should feel safe enough to drive home at night or even just being pulled over they shouldn’t have to wonder if this will be the time they don’t make it home. Hispanics shouldn’t feel that when they go into a store to purchase something they are being followed by the stores staff to see if they are stealing. It’s such a bad thing and causes stress and all other kinds of health problems. I feel as if we are to be judged, judge us individually based on our actions not any other reason.

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Racial Profiling: Definition

“Racial Profiling” refers to the discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual’s race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. Criminal profiling, generally, as practiced by police, is the reliance on a group of characteristics they believe to be associated with crime. Examples of racial profiling are the use of race to determine which drivers to stop for minor traffic violations (commonly referred to as “driving while black or brown”), or the use of race to determine which pedestrians to search for illegal contraband.

Another example of racial profiling is the targeting, ongoing since the September 11th attacks, of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians for detention on minor immigrant violations in the absence of any connection to the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon.

Law enforcement agent includes a person acting in a policing capacity for public or private purposes. This includes security guards at department stores, airport security agents, police officers, or, more recently, airline pilots who have ordered passengers to disembark from flights, because the passengers’ ethnicity aroused the pilots’ suspicions. Members of each of these occupations have been accused of racial profiling.

Racial profiling does not refer to the act of a law enforcement agent pursuing a suspect in which the specific description of the suspect includes race or ethnicity in combination with other identifying factors.

Defining racial profiling as relying “solely” on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion can be problematic. This definition found in some state racial profiling laws is unacceptable, because it fails to include when police act on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion in combination with an alleged violation of all law. Under the “solely” definition, an officer who targeted Latino drivers who were speeding would not be racial profiling because the drivers were not stopped “solely” because of their race but also because they were speeding. This would eliminate the vast majority of racial profiling now occurring.

Any definition of racial profiling must include, in addition to racially or ethnically discriminatory acts, discriminatory omissions on the part of law enforcement as well. For example, during the eras of lynching in the South in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s, southern sheriffs sat idly by while racists like the Ku Klux Klan terrorized African Americans. At times, the sheriffs would even release black suspects to the lynch mobs. A recent example would be the complaint by an African American man in Maryland, who after moving into a white community, was attacked and subjected to property damage. Local police failed to respond to his repeated complaints until they arrested him for shooting his gun into the air, trying to disperse a hostile mob outside his home.

Racial Profiling May Be Hazardous To Your Health

Many racial profiling victims walk away with traffic tickets, but too often for others the outcome of racial profiling is death.

Pennsylvania (Brentwood) – On October 12, 1995, Jonny Gammage, a 31 year-old African American male, was killed after being pulled over while driving the Jaguar of his cousin, Pittsburgh Steelers football player Ray Seals, in a predominately white community. Although police claimed that Gammage initiated the struggle, a tow truck driver said he saw one officer start the fight and the others join in kicking, hitting and clubbing Gammage while he lay on the pavement. Three officers were tried for involuntary manslaughter: John Vojtas was acquitted; Lt. Milton Mulholland and Michael Albert had their charges dismissed after two mistrials. Gammage’s family settled a wrongful death civil rights lawsuit against the five officers involved and their police departments for $1.5 million.

New York (Bronx-New York City) – On February 4, 1999, Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 22 year-old immigrant from New Guinea, West Africa, was shot and killed in the narrow vestibule of the apartment building where he lived. Four white officers, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy fired 41 bullets, hitting Diallo 19 times. All four were members of the New York City Police Department’s Street Crimes Unit, which, under the slogan, “We Own the Night,” used aggressive “stop and frisk” tactics against African Americans at a rate double that group’s population percentage. A report on the unit by the state attorney general found that blacks were stopped at a rate 10 times that of whites, and that 35 percent of those stops lacked reasonable suspicion to detain or had reports insufficiently filled out to make a determination. Thousands attended Diallo’s funeral. Demonstrations were held almost daily, along with the arrests of over 1,200 people in planned civil disobedience. In a trial that was moved out of the community where Diallo lived and to Albany in upstate New York, the four officers who killed Diallo were acquitted of all charges.

Ohio (Cincinnati) – On April 7, 2001, in the early morning hours, Timothy Thomas, a 19 year-old African-American, was shot to death by police officer John Roach. Thomas had 14 outstanding misdemeanor warrants, mostly traffic violations, including failure to wear a seat belt. According to a city councilman, he was running away, holding up his baggy pants, and scaled a fence, landing in a driveway where Roach was approaching and shot Thomas. He became the fifth black male in the city to die at the hands of police in a five-month period and the fifteenth since 1995. Two nights of protests left broken windows at City Hall and fires around the city. Witnesses reported that following Thomas’ funeral, six city SWAT team officers shot pellet-filled bags into a peaceful crowd. Two people hit by the pellets filed lawsuits. Under community and city council pressure, both the public safety director and city manager resigned. Officer Roach was indicted on charges of negligent homicide, and obstructing official business, resulting from differences in his version of events.

Roach was acquitted in a bench trial characterized by the judge’s (a former prosecutor) open admiration for Roach, and blaming Timothy Thomas for “making” Roach kill him.

A community coalition, the Cincinnati Black United Front and the ACLU of Ohio filed suit against the city and the Fraternal Order of Police, citing a pattern and practice of discrimination by police, including issuing the type of traffic citations Thomas received to African Americans at twice their population percentage. In April 2002 the case was settled, under terms including the establishment of a civilian complaint review board and the activation of the reporting of collected traffic stop data that had been enacted by city ordinance in 2001. The Department of Justice also intervened and settled with the city, including revision and review of use of force policy.

It is significant to note that research confirms the existence of bias in decisions to shoot. A series of University of California/University of Chicago studies recreated the experience of a police officer confronted with a potentially dangerous suspect, and found that:

• participants fired on an armed target more quickly when the target was African American than when White, and decided not to shoot an unarmed target more quickly when the target was White than when African American;
• participants failed to shoot an armed target more often when that target was White than when the target was African American. If the target was unarmed, participants mistakenly shot the target more often when African American than when White;
• shooting bias was greater among participants who held a strong cultural stereotype of African Americans as aggressive, violent and dangerous, and among participants who reported more contact with African Americans. shooting bias was greater among participants who held a strong cultural stereotype of African Americans as aggressive, violent and dangerous, and among participants who reported more contact with African Americans 1 .

The stories above and hundreds of others present a compelling argument that not only does racial profiling exists, but it is widespread, and has had a destructive effect on the lives of communities of color, and attitudes toward police.

Asian Racial Profiling

Asians, who, according to the U.S. census, number 10 million, or 4 percent of the population, have been victims of racial profiling as well. Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese American was targeted and suspected of espionage on the basis of his race. Memos by high-ranking FBI and Department of Energy officials acknowledged that Lee was singled out because he was Chinese, and eight similarly situated non-Chinese were not prosecuted. 2

In Seattle, Washington in July 2001 a group of 14 Asian American youth were stopped by police for jaywalking, claiming that they were kept against the wall for about an hour. The Seattle Times reported that one officer told them he had visited their country while in the army, and asked them repeatedly whether they spoke English. The paper also reported that U.S. Representative David Wu (D-Oregon) was detained entering the headquarters of the Department of Energy, and repeatedly.

In 2001, the Asian Freedom Project of Wisconsin issued a report that found the racial profiling of Hmong communities there, and included the testimony of adults, as well as boys and girls.

The Garden Grove (CA) Police Department settled a “gang” database racial profiling lawsuit by a group of young Asian Americans who said their civil rights were violated when officers photographed them as suspected gang members based merely on their ethnicity and clothing.

Indian Racial Profiling

Indigenous people ( Native Americans) call it “DWI,” with a new twist: “Driving While Indian.” According to the National American Indian Housing Council, there are 2.4 million Indians (including Eskimos and Aleuts) in the U.S. Indians complain about stops and searches by local police and sheriffs on roads leading to and from reservations.

In South Dakota , widespread reports of racial profiling led to hearings before the state legislature, where Indians testified about their being stopped and searched not only based on race but also on religious articles hanging from rearview mirrors, and regional license plates that identified them as living on reservations.

In June 2002 scores of Indians in the state’s Bennett County complained to Department of Justice attorneys, alleging racial profiling at the hands of sheriffs there, including vehicular stops in the absence of reasonable suspicion, the administration of breathalyzer tests without reasonable suspicion, warrantless searches of homes and vehicles, and demanding to see drivers licenses and vehicle registrations while inside bars.

Walking While Black and Brown

Although “Driving While Black/Brown” traffic stops and searches are the form of racial profiling that has received the most media attention, profiling takes place off the roadways as well. Black and Latino pedestrians are regularly stopped and frisked without reasonable cause.

In New York City , the December 1999 report of the New York City Police Departments pedestrian “stop and frisk” practices by the state attorney general provided glaring evidence of racial profiling in the nation’s largest city. Blacks comprise 25.6 percent of the City’s population, yet 50.6 percent of all persons “stopped” during the period were black. Hispanics comprise 23.7 percent of the City’s population yet, 33.0 percent of all “stops” were of Hispanics. By contrast, whites are 43.4 percent of the City’s population, but accounted for only 12.9 percent of all stops. Blacks comprise 62.7 percent of all persons “stopped” by the NYPD’s Street Crime Unit (“SCU”).

In precincts in which blacks and Hispanics each represented less than 10 percent of the total population, individuals identified as belonging to these racial groups nevertheless accounted for more than half of the total “stops” during the covered period. Blacks accounted for 30 percent of all persons “stopped” in these precincts; Hispanics accounted for 23.4 percent of all persons “stopped.”

Finally, precincts where minorities constitute the majority of the overall population tended to see more “stop & frisk” activity than precincts where whites constitute a majority of the population: Of the ten precincts showing the highest rate of “stop and frisk” activity (measured by “stops” per 1,000 residents), in only one (the 10 th Precinct) was the majority of the population white. In seven other precincts, blacks and Hispanics constituted the majority of the population. The remaining two precincts were business districts in Manhattan and Brooklyn in which the daytime racial breakdown of persons within the precinct is unknown.

In roughly half of the police precincts in New York City, the majority of the population living in the precinct is white. However, of these 36 majority-white precincts, only 13 were in the top half of precincts showing most “stops” during the period.

“Gang” Database Racial Profiling

In Orange County California , a database containing the names and photographs of reputed gang members appeared to racially profile. 3 Latinos, Asians and African Americans were more than 90 percent of the 20,221 men and women in the Gang Reporting Evaluation and Tracking system, but made up less than half of Orange County’s population. The disparity attracted the notice of the California Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights as well as the ACLU. We asked the county district attorney’s office to establish a civilian oversight board to monitor what we saw as problems with the list.

“Bicycling While Black and Brown”

Youth of color have been victims of racially-motivated bicycling stops, ” In April, 2001, the ACLU joined a suit against Eastpointe, Michigan , representing 21 young African-American men who were stopped by the police while riding their bikes there. The ACLU argued that the bicyclists were stopped in this predominantly white suburb of Detroit because of their race and not because they were doing anything wrong. In a 1996 memorandum to the Eastpointe City Manager, the former police chief stated that he instructed his officers to investigate any black youths riding through Eastpointe subdivisions. Police searched many of young men and, in some cases, seized and later sold their bicycles. Police logs and reports in Eastpointe have identified over 100 incidents between 1995 and 1998 in which African-American youth were detained.

“Bitten While Black and Brown”

A throwback to the grainy ‘60’s black and white television news footage of vicious police dogs attacking peaceful black civil rights protesters is the continued discriminatory use of canine units by police. These dogs, lethal weapons capable of biting at 2000 pounds pressure per square inch, and their handlers have been implicated in a vicious form of racial profiling that has led to legal action:

California (Los Angeles)- The ACLU of Southern California compiled reports on the hundreds of mostly blacks and Latinos who were bitten by Los Angeles Police Department dogs from 1990-1992, charging that the dogs trained to “attack and maul,” were routinely sent out in non-violent situations. In 1997, California state highway patrol canine units stopped almost 34,000 vehicles. Only 2 percent were carrying drugs.

Maryland (Prince Georges County) – The Washington Post reported that in May 2001 federal prosecutors charged a county police officer with releasing her police dog on an unarmed Mexican immigrant as part of a pattern of using and threatening the use of the dog on people of color. Despite being the subject of four lawsuits, twice being guilty of making false statements to a supervisor, and five prior instances of releasing the dog on suspects who weren’t resisting, and being flagged by a departmental “early warning” system, the officer remained undisciplined in any substantive way. In 1999 the Post reported that thirteen police dog excessive force suits had been filed in Prince Georges circuit and federal courts, in addition to five others that ended in judgement for plaintiffs or settlement. Of the total, ten alleged repeated bites of suspects once under police control, or while cuffed or on the ground.

South Dakota (Wagner)- While not involving the use of physical canine force, the issue reached a new low when school officials and police led a large German shepherd drug dog through classrooms in suspicionless drug searches of Yankton Sioux K-12 students, some as young as six years old. In July 2002, the ACLU filed suit in federal court.

Washington (Seattle) -In 1992 the ACLU alleged that police dog handlers used excessive force on suspects. Dogs were trained to attack and bite suspects regardless of their actions, even against alleged shoplifters, gasoline siphoners and jaywalkers. They also reported that in that year, 40 percent of police dog attacks were against African Americans, and that 91 people had received police dog bite injuries requiring hospitalization.

The following states appear to require independent reasonable suspicion for dog searches: Alaska, 4 Illinois, 5 Minnesota, 6 New Hampshire, New York, 8 Pennsylvania, 9 and Washington. 10

“Shopping While Black and Brown”

The targeting of shoppers/business patrons of color for suspicion of shoplifting by private security and other employees has disproportionately affected both working and prominent African-American women. TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey said she was refused buzz-in entry to a store even after seeing white women admitted and making a second attempt. After calling from a pay phone and being assured the store was in fact open, a third try failed as well (New York City) . U.S, Congresswoman Maxine Waters said she was followed around a store and required to show her key at a hotel, unlike whites who entered before her ( New York City) . Professional basketball player and Olympic medalist Sheryl Swoopes was kept waiting to be seated for almost an hour at a restaurant, while whites who arrived after her were seated before her (Houston, Texas) .

Pauline Hampton and her niece, both African-Americans, were shopping at the Dillard Department Store in Overland Park, Kansas , a suburb of Kansas City, with their children. After making several purchases, they went to the cosmetics counter to redeem a coupon. A white security guard accused Hampton of shoplifting, took her shopping bag, and, without consent, searched it, emptying the bag onto the counter. After finding the receipt for the items, he shoved the goods and the empty bag back to her. When she complained about his actions, the guard ordered them to leave, and threatened to call the police and have them forcibly removed. Hampton eventually called her husband to the scene and the situation escalated. They sued, and were awarded a $1.2 million judgement; the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Dillard’s appeal.

The store chain, based in Arkansas has also faced dozens of racial profiling lawsuits, claiming harassment and false arrest, in other states including Arkansas, Iowa, and Texas . Evidence produced in one case showed that although 16 percent of its shoppers were African American, 87 percent of the false arrest claims were made by them. In Texas, Dillard settled and paid money to the family of an African American customer who died at a store after being beaten and hog-tied while being detained, and has also settled discrimination suits by employees in Kansas and Missouri.

Other companies sued for racial profiling include Eddie Bauer, Avis Rent A Car, Denny’s Restaurant, The Children’s Place, and Holiday Spa.

Worksite Racial Profiling

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has had a history of disproportionately targeting ethnic groups of color for undocumented labor violations. Like all law enforcement, INS agents must have sufficient evidence of wrong doing to establish probable cause or reasonable suspicion to arrest or detain. They may not carry out their duties in a racially or ethnically discriminatory manner. While ethnicity or nationality are obviously critical elements in immigration violations by themselves, without additional facts there is insufficient basis for law enforcement action.

The New York Times reviewed files of INS raids released as part of the settlement of a garment workers union selective enforcement suit against the agency in New York City. The settlement included a summary that Latinos were 96 percent of the 2,907 people arrested in the 187 worksite raids carried out by the INS in the district, fat greater than their representation in the city’s legal or illegal population. This occurred even where the INS acknowledged that half the workers were not Latino but Asian, including undocumented immigrants.

And while some raids were based on informant information, 80 percent were initiated by agents who cited as primary evidence subjects’ appearance or language without evidence of wrongdoing. Included were skin color, speaking Spanish or English with a Spanish accent, appearing to be of South or Central American descent and wearing clothing “not typical of North Americans.” Such characterizations in major American cities are common to born and naturalized citizens alike.

Undocumented workers were discovered and arrested in all but a few of the reviewed raids, but nearly everyone arrested was Latino.

Suits have also been filed in Arkansas, California, Louisiana, and Ohio claiming racial profiling by the INS. A federal court in Ohio found violations of the rights of Latinos by that states highway patrol’s practice of stopping Latino drivers to question them about their immigration status, including officers even confiscated the green cards of legal migrant workers claiming they were counterfeit. In California, federal courts have found Fourth Amendment violations of Latinos in the stopping of Latinos on the basis of appearance and foreign sounding names.

The Supreme Court has held that INS agents working near the Mexican border may use Spanish ethnicity as a basis for detaining a person, but that it may not be the only basis.

A related issue is the targeting by police, first reported by the ACLU in Florida, of Latinos waiting on public sidewalks for labor employers to appear and select them for work, under the offense of being “visual clutter.”

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Racial Profiling: Problem Statement Essay

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Racial profiling is the discriminating behavior of law enforcement officers by targeting persons for criminal allegation based on their race, ethnicity, religious belief, or nationality. These are some of the factors that are often used by security agents in imposing abnormal police stops, searches, and even eventual arrests. Due to this, for many years, blacks, Hispanics, Arabs, and Muslims have been given unfair treatment only because of their race. When it comes to these minorities, some phrases, such as driving while black and flying while Arab, are used to segregate them from equal access to services. To some extreme extent, this racial profiling has the possibility of leading to police brutality (Lang & Kahn-Lang, 2020). In racial profiling the police or any law enforcement agents uses more force, this sometimes becomes inhuman when dealing with suspects from the minority group. This paper will look deep into the effects of racial profiling, policies put in place and their effectiveness to curb this social issue.

For those who have never had an experience of racial profiling or have not associated with anyone who has experienced it, it may seem to be an everyday issue or a mere inconvenience. However, this issue is more profound than an annoyance and it has a direct consequence on the victims (Lang & Kahn-Lang, 2020). Those who have faced profiling have been affected emotionally, physically, and mentally even in extreme cases some have been affected financially and physically (Harris, 2020). The effects include post-traumatic stress disorder and other forms of stress. This leads to the creation of perceptions in the victims, so they avoid using the available community resources (Lang & Kahn-Lang, 2020). Further, it was found that the disorder affects not only the direct victims but also others beyond the direct experience. Racial profiling has significant indirect effect on families, friends, and relatives. This has shown why profiling is so harmful, and it, therefore, needs measures to combat it.

The target population of racial profiling has raised some concerns on their access to the services and even the quality of services they receive. According to Kovera (2019), many participants noted that the psychological impacts of racial profiling had made their children develop anti-social behaviors even at a young age. One will find that most of the time, white people associate black people with criminality without even realizing they also do it. Another study showed that when resumes are in the application for jobs, it was found that, stereotypically, those with white names received more call back. This is more than fifty percent, compared to those with black names (Lang & Kahn-Lang, 2020). This is even after they all have similar qualifications. Even some blacks and Asians raised an issue that they were paying more car loan interest than the white despite having the same creditworthiness.

Some policies have been put in place to address the issue of racial profiling. There is an attempt to reduce homelessness and housing inability. This is because racism and the policies that support it use people of color to charge high rental costs, evicting and even make them overcrowded (Lang & Kahn-Lang, 2020). Therefore, these policies will curb the issues where households with low incomes pay almost half of their rent earnings, increasing their risk of homelessness (Lang & Kahn-Lang, 2020). Also, this is an attempt to improve access to preschool and childcare. This will help in reducing the inequalities that exist in the opportunities of children from the racialized groups, it will also help the parents from high childcare costs.

Some policies have been put in place, which has detrimental effects on the target group. Primarily through racial targeting, the police will search blacks more often than whites. Evidence has shown that it would be better for them to focus more on the right people who are minorities. Through this, it shows that racial targeting did not even improve the accuracy of the police: it did not even result in the balance between how white was treated compared to blacks (Lang & Kahn-Lang, 2020). It made even the police accuracy worse than before, this hit rate occurs across different departments and places.

Racial profiling is wrong and not productive. It affects the power and the crucial role of law enforcement authorities in keeping the public safe. It originates from stereotypes, negative attitudes, and prejudice against racialized groups, and they are often linked with criminality. Racial profiling is different from legal criminal profiling, which uses fair suspect descriptions. Profiling may make the trust of public institutions to be undermined (Harris, 2020). This is because there is a relationship between public confidence and law enforcement, which leads to public safety. Through this, people will not be willing to cooperate and even give evidence in court if they have been fed a negative perception about how the law is enforcement (Lang & Kahn-Lang, 2020). It should also be noted that profiling could happen at any decision-making stage. It can lead to implicit biasness on conscious and unconscious personal prejudice toward racialized people.

Harris, D. A. (2020). Racial profiling: Past, present, and future? Criminal Justice , 34 , 10. Web.

Kovera, M. B. (2019). Racial disparities in the criminal justice system: Prevalence, causes, and a search for solutions . Journal of Social Issues, 75 (4), 1139-1164. Web.

Lang, K., & Kahn-Lang Spitzer, A. (2020). Race discrimination: An economic perspective . Journal of Economic Perspectives , 34 (2), 68-89. Web.

• Racial Profiling in the United States
• Crime, Criminality, and Prisons in the USA
• Criminality and the Media Connection
• Unveiling Civil War Injustices with Untold Stories
• Black Soldiers’ Struggle for Recognition and Equal Pay
• The Issue of Racism: One of Social Evils
• White Privilege: Two Sides of the Issue
• Challenges Faced by Black American Youth
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/arizona-voters-will-decide-whether-local-police-can-make-border-crossing-arrests

Arizona voters will decide whether local police can make border-crossing arrests

PHOENIX (AP) — The Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature gave final approval Tuesday to a proposal asking voters to make it a state crime for noncitizens to enter the state through Mexico at any location other than a port of entry, sending the measure to the Nov. 5 ballot.

The vote came as President Joe Biden unveiled plans Tuesday to restrict the number of migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, saying “This action will help to gain control of our border, restore order to the process.”

Arizona’s proposal, approved on a 31-29 vote by the state House, would allow state and local police to arrest people crossing the border without authorization. It would also give state judges the power to order people convicted of the offense to return to their countries of origin.

The proposal bypasses Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, who had vetoed a similar measure in early March and has denounced the effort to bring the issue to voters.

House Republicans closed access to the upper gallery of the chamber before the session started Tuesday, citing concerns about security and possible disruptions. The move immediately drew the criticism of Democrats, who demanded that the gallery be reopened.

READ MORE: Former Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward pleads not guilty to felony charges in fake elector case

“The public gallery should be open to the public. This is the people’s House,” said state Rep. Analise Ortiz.

House representatives voted along party lines, with all Republicans voting in favor of the proposal and all Democrats voting against it.

Supporters of the bill said it was necessary to ensure security along the state’s southern border, and that Arizona voters should be given the opportunity to decide the issue themselves.

“We need this bill and we must act on it,” said state Rep. John Gillette, a Republican.

Opponents called the legislation unconstitutional and said it would lead to racial profiling, separating children from parents and create several millions of dollars in additional policing costs that the state can ill afford.

“It is not a solution. It is election year politics,” said Rep. Mariana Sandoval, a Democrat.

The proposal is similar to a Texas law that has been put on hold by a federal appeals court while it’s being challenged. The Arizona Senate approved the proposal on a 16-13 party-line vote. If it clears the House, the proposal would bypass Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, who vetoed a similar proposal in early March, and instead get sent to the Nov. 5 ballot.

While federal law already prohibits the unauthorized entry of migrants into the U.S., proponents of the measure say it’s needed because the federal government hasn’t done enough to stop people from crossing illegally over Arizona’s vast, porous border with Mexico. They also said some people who enter Arizona without authorization commit identity theft and take advantage of public benefits.

READ MORE: Arizona’s Democrats get enough votes to repeal 19th century abortion ban

Opponents say the proposal would inevitably lead to racial profiling by police and saddle the state with new costs from law enforcement agencies that don’t have experience with immigration law, as well as hurt Arizona’s reputation in the business world.

But supporters have waved off racial profiling concerns, saying local officers would still have to develop probable cause to arrest people who enter Arizona between the ports of entry.

The backers also say the measure focuses only on the state’s border region and — unlike Arizona’s landmark 2010 immigration law — doesn’t target people throughout the state. Opponents point out the proposal doesn’t contain any geographical limitations on where it can be enforced within the state.

The ballot proposal contains other provisions that aren’t included in the Texas measure and aren’t directly related to immigration. Those include making it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison for selling fentanyl that leads to a person’s death, and a requirement that some government agencies use a federal database to verify a noncitizen’s eligibility for benefits.

Warning about potential legal costs, opponents pointed to Arizona’s 2005 immigrant smuggling ban used by then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to carry out 20 large-scale traffic patrols that targeted immigrants. That led to a 2013 racial profiling verdict and taxpayer-funded legal and compliance costs that now total $265 million and are expected to reach $314 million by July 2025.

Under the current proposal, a first-time conviction of the border-crossing provision would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. State judges could order people to return to their countries of origin after completing a term of incarceration, although the courts would have the power to dismiss cases if those arrested agree to return home.

The measure would require the state corrections department to take into custody people who are charged or convicted under the measure if local or county law enforcement agencies don’t have enough space to house them.

The proposal includes exceptions for people who have been granted lawful presence status or asylum by the federal government.

The provision allowing for the arrests of border crossers in between ports would not take effect until the Texas law or similar laws from other states have been in effect for 60 days.

This isn’t the first time Republican lawmakers in Arizona have tried to criminalize migrants who aren’t authorized to be in the United States.

When passing its 2010 immigration bill, the Arizona Legislature considered expanding the state’s trespassing law to criminalize the presence of immigrants and impose criminal penalties. But the trespassing language was removed and replaced with a requirement that officers, while enforcing other laws, question people’s immigration status if they were believed to be in the country illegally.

The questioning requirement was ultimately upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court despite the racial profiling concerns of critics, but courts barred enforcement of other sections of the law.

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