RACIAL PROFILING IS A CRIME

RACIAL profiling is a hate crime. Racial profiling isn't merely a matter of
blacks and Hispanics being stopped while driving and given traffic tickets.
In many cases, such profiling results in long-term harm to the person
profiled that is significantly worse than injuries inflicted by hate crimes.

In June 1999, the American Civil Liberties Union issued a report on racial
profiling on the nation's highways -- how black or brown drivers are
stopped and searched when white drivers aren't -- but that is only a minor
part of this national disgrace.

Police use racial profiling for making stops, frisks and arrests of
pedestrians. Worse, the racial profile then follows minority defendants
through the entire law enforcement system, so that penalties end up being
much more severe and of longer duration than had they been white defendants.

A Senate conference committee stripped the hate crime language from the
defense bill on a vote of 11-9 recently. The legislation was entitled
"Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act of 2000" and gave all the power to
determine whether a crime was a hate crime to law enforcement officials --
the same officials who use racial profiling.

Instead of bemoaning the defeat of proposed hate crime legislation (H.R.
4205) that had been part of the Department of Defense authorization bill,
social activists should rewrite the legislation so it includes racial
profiling.

In April and May, less than two weeks apart, two major organizations
released reports on how racial profiling has led to racial disparities in
America's juvenile justice system and criminal justice system.

The National Council on Crime and Delinquency, the nation's oldest criminal
justice think tank, issued a report on the disparity of treatment of
minority youth in the justice system. And the Leadership Conference on
Civil Rights, the pre-eminent coalition of civil rights organizations,
pointed to the data that shows the color of one's skin often determines
whether or not the person will be stopped by police; whether an arrest will
be made; how long the person's criminal sentence will be; and what kind of
plea bargain, if any, will be offered.

During their debate, when questioned by moderator Bernard Shaw of CNN, both
vice presidential candidates Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman talked about how
terrible racial profiling is and showed their anguish at such injustice --
yet neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have made a major thrust to
pass national legislation that would end the practice.

Too many young people who are black or Hispanic end up spending time in
adult prisons when their white counterparts, who committed the same crimes,
go to detention centers and are released back to their families much sooner.

Sometimes, where a black teen might spend a year incarcerated, a white teen
who commits the same offense will get a slap on the hand and sent back home.

Minority youth who are tried as adults end up in adult prisons where they
are raped, beaten, used, forced into the role of sex slaves, and not only
taught to hate the world, but to be even better criminals. Most prisons are
institutions that, in fact, teach criminal behavior.

Teen inmates are twisted by their experiences in prisons. They come back
out onto the streets with more anger and distrust than they had before they
were arrested.

Black teens are 48 times more likely to be incarcerated than white teens
for drug offenses. Minority youth represented only 34 percent of the total
U.S. population in 1997, according to the National Council on Crime and
Delinquency report, yet they represented 62 percent of the youth
incarcerated in adult and juvenile facilities.

It isn't because more minority youth use drugs that they are
disproportionately put into prisons. The incidence of white teen use of
illegal drugs is approximately the same. Federal health surveys have shown
that blacks and Hispanics are not more likely to be carrying or using drugs
- -- yet blacks and Hispanics do the time in prison.

The report issued by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights shows that
police disproportionately target minorities as criminal suspects. The U.S.
Drug Enforcement Agency uses racial drug-courier profiling at major
airports to identify drug traffickers. The profile targets black females --
despite a recent report by the congressional General Accounting Office that
indicates white females are twice as likely to be found carrying contraband
drugs.

Racial profiling targets minorities when driving, when traveling by
airlines, when walking down the street near their homes or in the areas
where they work.

Racial profiling ends up supporting racial prejudice. Racial profiling
seems to prove that more crimes are committed by those who belong to racial
minorities.

As an example, if 10 percent of whites and blacks carry illegal drugs, and
police focus on stopping 80 percent of the blacks living in a high crime
area, then a large percentage of the black drug carriers are likely to be
caught. If police only stop 5 percent of the whites in a similar high crime
area, then a very small percentage of the white drug carriers will be
caught. The result will look as if more blacks than whites commit drug crimes.

Two baseless and destructive premises prop up the rationale for using
racial profiles: 1) Most criminals are members of racial minorities; and 2)
most members of racial minorities are criminals. Unfortunately, the use of
racial profiles ends up being a racist, self-fulfilling prophecy. More
members of racial minorities are locked up -- "proving" the premises.

Racial profiling breeds racism, breeds discrimination and breeds distrust
- -- distrust among our ethnic and racial populations. Nothing could be more
destructive to the social fabric of a diverse nation.

Racial profiling makes the promise of "equality under the law" a mockery.
Let's do away with a kind of hate crime that law enforcement officials have
spawned and use every day across this nation.

Charles Levendosky is the editorial page editor of the Casper (Wyo.)
Star-Tribune.