Racial profiling can be defined in various ways. Under the narrowest definition, racial profiling occurs when a law enforcement officer stops and questions, searches and/or arrests someone solely on the basis of that person’s race or ethnicity. This definition, which unfortunately has been incorporated into a few states’ anti-profiling statutes, is so narrow that it would not include police actions based, for example, on a person’s race and age, or on a person’s race and the high crime rate of the neighborhood. A broader definition, encompassing officers’ use of race or ethnicity as a factor in deciding to stop, question, search or arrest someone, is more realistic. A racial profiling study design guide produced for the U.S. Department of Justice by Northeastern University law professor Deborah Ramirez and her colleagues, contains this definition:
We define “racial profiling” as: any police-initiated action that relies upon: the race, ethnicity or national origin of an individual rather than the behavior of that individual, or information that leads the police to a particular individual who has been identified as being engaged in or having been engaged in criminal activity.
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