Racial Profiling: Causes and Consequences

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Racial profiling is a phenomenon that has been around for many years…

As of 2007, there had been over 200 court cases involving allegations of racial and ethnic profiling against law enforcement agencies in the United States. Consequently, it is an issue of significant concern.While racial profiling can affect many aspects of the lives of minorities, including Arab and Muslim Americans, Racial Profiling: Causes and Consequences focuses on the "driving while black" (DWB) phenomenon.

Among the most frequently occurring incidences of racial profiling is traffic stops—for minor traffic violations, which often result in vehicle searches for contraband. That is the focus of this book, which includes several studies of traffic stops and assesses traffic stops from several perspectives.

Racial Profiling: Causes and Consequences:

• Includes a study that analyzes reports from several states on data collected in traffic stops. These data indicate the race of the driver and the disposition of the traffic stop, i.e., race, search, and yield for contraband. This data was examined for evidence of racial discrimination.
• Features several personal stories of DWB in order to illuminate the pervasiveness of its occurrence.
• Presents a comprehensive study of traffic ticketing in Cleveland, Ohio. This study integrates research methods used in other studies to provide an enhanced estimate of the driving population within the particular geographic area being studied. 
• Provides an analysis of the DWB issue from an institutional racism perspective rather than the traditional individual racist police officer paradigm in which the issue is generally discussed. 
• Highlights the less obvious concomitant socioeconomic and legal ramifications of DWB such as the revocation of one’s driver’s license due to the accumulation of points for moving traffic violations and the various economic costs and hardships that stem from this loss of driving privileges, the possibility of multiple traffic infractions being added to a police record as was the case with Timothy Thomas, the young black man shot to death by Cincinnati police in 2001.