Posted on September 14, 2011 in
Articles 
There continues to be very real and pervasive elements of racism and classism in the American justice system. Though elements of the law seem colorblind and judicious, the practice of policing, identifying, and punishing ‘criminal’ behavior have taken very serious racial undertones.
Criminal profiling is the process of using known principles of psychology and criminology to create the profile of a potential offender. That’s usually what you see when all the detectives of Law & Order: Criminal Intent get together and start putting pictures, pins, and evidence up on a cork board. There is little evidence that this criminal profiling is actually effective, as it mostly relies on common sense justifications. It is, nonetheless, a tactic that is used in police stations across the country.
The ugly stepsister of criminal profiling is racial profiling. On the surface, it seems to make sense. If reported suspects include a 5’4 white woman and a 6’2 black man, why would the police search for anyone else? Unfortunately, eyewitnesses are often incorrect and influenced by outside factors, and racial profiling can have damaging effects on those innocent people who “fit the profile.”
One of the biggest stories to hit the press in recent years occurred in a vibrant college town in Virginia. For over six years, a serial rapist haunted the town of Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia. From 1997 to 2003, the police were unable to catch the man who raped at least six women, and devised a plan to acquire the DNA of every person who met the suspects profile. Unfortunately, the information was extremely limited: police had a series of sketches depicting very different people, with the only common denominator being the suspect was a black male:
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