NCJ Number
181985
Journal
Minnesota Law Review Volume: 84 Issue: 2 Dated: December 1999 Pages: 265-325
Date Published
1999
Length
61 pages
Annotation
Based on interviews with African-Americans in Toledo, Ohio, as well as statistics from courts in Toledo and in other Ohio cities and other areas of the country, this paper examines racial profiling in police traffic stops and recommends a strategy for countering it.
Abstract
Part I discusses the experiences of three of the African-Americans who were interviewed for this article. The frightening and embarrassing nature of the experiences, the emotional difficulties and devastation that often follow, and the ways they cope bring to life the statistics, which are discussed in Part II. Part III then shows how the problem is connected to larger issues at the intersection of criminal justice and race. Part IV puts the problem of "driving while black" into its legal context and explains how the law not only allows but encourages these practices. Part V concludes with a discussion of some approaches that might be taken to address the problem. The author advises that a solution to the problem will not be easy to achieve, since many in the law enforcement field, along with its supporters, oppose even the most basic first steps toward an understanding of the problem through the collection of comprehensive, accurate data. Yet it is with law enforcement and community leaders that the best hope for any solutions rests. Changes in law enforcement policies, training, and supervision, as well as a determination from the "top" to end race-based policing are where the effort to come to grips with this problem will ultimately succeed or fail. The first effort to legislate the collection of data -- Representative Conyers' H.R. 118 -- has spawned a dozen imitators on the State level. 249 footnotes