Customer Reviews

Profiles in Injustice: Why Racial Profiling Cannot Work

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This masterpiece of legal scholarship, clearly and eloquently written for the general public (plus police officers, politicians, and lawyers) lays searingly bare the United States's collective shame of the evil practice of racial profiling and stereotyping. The first 3 of the 9 chapters lay the groundwork of the author's thesis via extensive anecdotal evidence, thoroughly supported by direct quotations and direct observations, many of them from police officers as well as innocent victims. Chapter 4 provides a convincing and well-reasoned [I'm a professional statistician] statistical validation of the author's thesis, plus proof that racial profiling actually decreases probabilities of intercepting criminals. Chapter 5 exposes the hidden but corrosive costs of racial profiling, such as disunity among Americans and the cancer of chronic distrust of police and courts. Chapter 6 extends the discussion beyond African-American victims to East Asian, Hispanic, and Near-Eastern victims. The last three chapters provide the encouragement of a road to improvement, including examples of municipalities and police departments already following that road.
Throughout, the author's prose is objective, quietly restrained, and superbly organized and enunciated.

This masterpiece of legal scholarship, clearly and eloquently written for the general public (plus police officers, politicians, and lawyers) lays searingly bare the United States's collective shame of the evil practice of racial profiling and stereotyping. The first 3 of the 9 chapters lay the groundwork of the author's thesis via extensive anecdotal evidence, thoroughly supported by direct quotations and direct observations, many of them from police officers as well as innocent victims. Chapter 4 provides a convincing and well-reasoned [I'm a professional statistician] statistical validation of the author's thesis, plus proof that racial profiling actually decreases probabilities of intercepting criminals. Chapter 5 exposes the hidden but corrosive costs of racial profiling, such as disunity among Americans and the cancer of chronic distrust of police and courts. Chapter 6 extends the discussion beyond African-American victims to East Asian, Hispanic, and Near-Eastern victims. The last three chapters provide the encouragement of a road to improvement, including examples of municipalities and police departments already following that road.
Throughout, the author's prose is objective, quietly restrained, and superbly organized and enunciated.