PolicyGuy

Wednesday, December 31, 2003


Will Collecting Racial Data of Motorists Lead to De-Policing?
Starting in the new year, police in Illinois will be required to record the race and sex of every motorist they stop. The goal is to track the extent of "racial profiling" among police.

As this story in the Chicago Sun-Times says, however, "Two suburban departments that have been reporting such data to the U.S. Justice Department for several years both have experienced decreases in traffic citations."

This has lead some concerns that the extra hassle will lead to de-policing, or fewer stops.

UPDATE: Arab and Hispanic activists complain about the new law. No, they don't mind being counted. They're afraid that they won't be counted.

"You can't tell whether Arab-Americans are being profiled if we're counted with whites," said [Rouhay] Shalabi, president of the Chicago-based Arab American Bar Association. "Ideally, there should be another box ... to be more specific."

The days when rock singer Bob Seger complained that government and corporate forms were making him Feel Like a Number have long passed us.

"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'?s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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