en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_C … sk_program
nytimes.com/2013/08/13/nyreg … .html?_r=0
i have mixed feelings about this. Racial profiling troubles me quite a bit, but it’s hard to argue with success, and the decline in NYC’s homicide rate since the policy was instituted is pretty remarkable.
What do you think?
I looked at the wikipedia article you linked. I’m considering your statement, ‘Racial profiling troubles me quite a bit, but it’s hard to argue with success’. It’s not entirely clear to me that the racial profiling aspect of the stop-and-frisk policy is what makes it so successful (we don’t know what the success rate would be in the scenario where they still did stop-and-frisk without racial profiling), but let’s assume, for a moment, that it is what makes it so successful. That you can’t divorce the racial profiling aspect of it from the success in reduced crime rates.
Assuming that (and as I said, it’s not entirely clear that this assumption is valid, but just assume it for the sake of conversation)…would people in good conscience still be able to stand against racial profiling? There was a woman wearing a sign that said ‘March To End Racial Profiling’. Would she be willing to wear a sign that said ‘March To End Racial Profiling, Even If That Means More Crime, More Deaths, Etc.’?
Would you?
In reality, you may not have to choose between racial profiling and more crime/deaths. In reality, it may not be that way at all. But if it were, which would you choose?
As a second question, if you were a black non-criminal, which would you choose?
Well, that’s precisely the rub. IF one considers racial profiling an injustice (i realize that’s debatable, but IF), is it worth inflicting that injustice upon people if it helps prevent other injustices (crimes)?
i really have a hard time answering the question, which is why i started the thread. i mean, what if NYC instituted a mandatory 8 pm curfew every night because so many crimes occur after dark, and the crime rate plummets so the mayor insists (over the objections of night-owl citizens who feel their rights are being violated) that the curfew is a necessarry public safety measure? The case goes to court and the judge overturns the curfew, the crime rate skyrockets again . . . What’s a practical minded person to think (black , white, or otherwise)?
i don’t know if that’s a fair analogy, but it’s the one i’ve been considering as i weigh the issue. i really don’t have an answer yet, personally.
It’s a band-aid approach. It doesn’t begin to address the problems of a lack of jobs or any other possible social lack that encourages crime. Sad as it may be, the have-nots are easily seduced into criminal behaviors. When there are no or few avenues of obtaining a reasonable living, then crime is “justified” in the eyes of those committing crime. But the policy is par for the course. Don’t address the difficult underlying issues, just slap a band-aid on it and pretend we’re doing the right thing. The judge is right, but powerless to do anything about the real issues.
As a stop-gap measure, perhaps there is necessity. But it should be just a small part of addressing the real causes of crime, and that never happens. We fill prisons with people to punish them for our inability to provide them a way to work toward their “good life” without resorting to crime.
iDK Tent, everything’s a stop gap measure, from gun control to increased police presence - none of that addresses the roots of the problem, but seriously, i mean, how do we go about curing poverty and disenfranchisement? You still have to attempt to curb criminal activity somehow - you can’t wait for a final solution before you do anything, can you?
Sometimes black men steal my chicken sandwich.
Not often. In fact it is very rare, but sometimes it happens.
When you are in a place with blacks, don’t eat a chicken sandwich, or wings, or a drum stick. Especially not popeyes or kentuckey fried.
Dan I think that you should stop and frisk every black man within eyesight before you get ready to eat your lunch.
i suppose white guys probably steal chicken sandwiches too, but maybe not as often. You should try soy patties, black people aren’t real into that.
It is besides the point to say that I don’t see any evidence in the wikipedia article that this was even racial profiling? It said the majority of the people stopped were Black or Latino, but that could just be a function of which neighborhoods enacted/needed the policy.
Anyway, I can see racial profiling being useful in a few, limited situations. If you’re targeting an ethnic gang like the Mafia or the Triads or the Bloods or what have you, you can’t not racially profile. You’d be stupid to ignore race there. Similarly, with international/military issues, some profiling might be in order. If you’re at war (hot or cold) with a country where 99% of the people there are of some certain ethnicity, there may be some policies that need to take that into account when you’re fighting espionage or whatever.
For civilian crimes, it depends on if you’re looking for a specific suspect or not. If you’re looking for a serial killer, it’s ok (and helpful) to assume you’re looking for a white male. I assume there’s other crimes that follow that trend too, I don’t know what they would be. It’s only the “What’s a Chinese person doing in THIS neighborhood? Better check into it…” type of profiling that seems problematic to me.
Get dat chicken, don need no soy patty.
You’re right that officially it’s not racial profiling, but the judge’s concern is that racial profiling is what it entails in practice. i’m not particularly interested in arguing that she’s correct, but i tend to agree with her.
You’re also right that racial profiling is necessarry and inevitable some of the time, but i find it troublesome in the context of essentially random police stops and searches. Obviously if you’re looking for someone specific and working from a description that includes their race then that’s one thing. But if you’re stopping and searching people simply because they “look like a drug dealer” (whatever that means), and all the people you end up stopping and searching turn out to be black and latino males in baggy clothes, then that’s seems kinda fucked up to me.
I find random police stops and searches to be troubling full stop unless it’s on the route of the presidential motorcade or something like that.
Yeah me too, but i find homicide even more troubling, so if the former prevents the latter, then maybe it’s justified?
To me this is one of many kinds of actions where we have effects that are fairly easy to track - in this case changes in crime rates (though there may be correlation rather than cause issues here) - and hard to track effects. Often in debates like this the hard to track effects are basically considered null, but only because, ultimately, they are hard to track. What are the effects on the way we view police and ourselves, when we allow the police to do this? Are there other trends in law enforcement, the intelligence community, corrections that together with this trend exacerbate effects on our sense of selves, our sense of the power of government, and perhaps most importantly though not separate from these other potential negative effects, a slide towards fascism? All these things are hard to track. One of the problems, I think, of consequentialist ethics is hubris. There is this idea, not usually stated, that we can work out the main effects and track them and those we can’t are not so important. This is part of a trend where empiricism is colluding with consequentialism to rule out all gut feeling based ethics, even good ones.
Personally, I see rather horrific trends towards fasicsm and dislike this policy.
Can I prove the negative effects are worse, or that small chances of devastating negative effects outweigh higher chances of positive effects?
No.
But then suddenly the onus is on me?
There is a real problematic sleight of mind that is just getting worse and worse around epistemology.
One can see these in the battle between those who might move more towards a precautionary principle in relation to GMOs and nanotech. They are often treated as being ruled by emotion since they cannot demonstrate their concerns are valid to a scientist - though sometimes they can do this also.
Debate framing places onus, often. What I see is how the consequentialist/empiricist combination is being used by those in power to increase power and take risks for others.
(not that I see this issue in particular as simple or onesided)
Somehow the assumption that as long as we cannot easily track or prove negative consequences we should shift power to the state. That is a wild assumption.
The parallel assumption with certain new techs is, as long as we cannot prove - in advance that something will cause problems, companies should be allowed to mass produce it.
Pushing, pushing, shifting power, shifting power.
For all the talk about how the religious have so much hubris, the consequentialists, as I see them, have a tremendous amount of hubris. There is a reason some things were deontologically determined.
Well, you know how I feel about that. Depends on the statistics. If it would make a very substantial reduction in homicides, then maybe. Everything is a trade-off. If some society wants to put up with a little more murder for a little less frisking, or vice versa, then, you know. However they vote, as long as the people making the decision are the people who have to live with the consequences. I’m fortunate to live in a place where I don’t have to deal with either one.
I would favor limiting crime rahter than facilitating a flawed egalitarian premise of the world.
You make an excellent point that i find it difficult to argue with, though i do tend toward consequentialism over deontological ethics . . . Do you think that the policy is really intended in some nefarious way as a power grab or whatever? Of course, simply because it might not be INTENDED as part of a gradual march toward facism doesn’t mean it isn’t part of such a shift - but i’m asking if you suspect the negative intention is really there in this case?
Ya, i figured
i think you’ll find the statistical drop in crime (particularly murder) is pretty significant, and while Bloomberg may be a big-government tyrant, he is a democratically elected mayor - so i guess you make the call . . .
nyclu.org/issues/racial-just … -practices
No mtter the drop in crime even as significant as it is, stop and frisk is a slippery slope. It takes very little to get from “he looks like…” to “he is…” It isn’t as if the cops are stopping people and asking, “Pardon me, but do you have any Grey Poupon?”