Racial Profiling and Police Subculture

Racial profiling is the practice of subjecting citizens to increased surveillance or scrutiny based on racial or ethic factors rather than "reasonable suspicion." The current debate (Satzewich and Shaffir 2009; Henry and Tator 2011) focuses on whether intention matters in considering racial-profiling practices. Satzewich and Shaffir (2009) argue that the intentions of policing agents are an important consideration for understanding racial profiling. In their rejoinder, Henry and Tator (2011) invoke the principle that "racism/racial profiling is to be judged primarily by its consequences in creating inequality for certain groups" (66); they cite case law that recognizes that the motivation or intention of the perpetrator is irrelevant to the judgement that racial discrimination has occurred.

It is clear that, given the power and discretion available to police, the experience of being subject to racial profiling can lead both to a feeling of being harassed and to a sense of alienation from the legal system and the wider society (Glover 2008). For victims of racial profiling, the intention of the policing agent is not an issue; the sense of injustice and insecurity is what stays with them. Over a long period of time, negative experience such as racial profiling can lead to specific ethnic groups' losing confidence in the police (cf., Bradford, Jackson, and Stanko 2009).

Nevertheless, there is merit in Satzewich and Shaffir's (2009) argument that, in order to find a solution to the problem of racial profiling, it is important to determine whether such discriminatory practices are the result of officers' being racially prejudiced or whether they are the unintended result of certain organizational practices.

In practice, racial profiling is difficult to prove. Empirical studies to distinguish between the "improper" and the "proper" use of race by police have yielded mixed results (see, e.g., Alpert, Dunham, and Smith 2007; Antonovics and Knight 2009). Alpert et al. (2007) describe three mechanisms through which racial disparities in police treatment can happen: through prejudice, through cognitive bias and stereotyping, and through race-based deployment. While prejudice involves conscious intent, cognitive bias and stereotyping can be unconscious biases based on false assumptions about the criminality of ethic groups, while race-based deployment is an organizational or local practice that may or may not involve individual intent and consciousness.

Satzewich and Shaffir (2009: 200–201) suggest that racial profiling is best understood in the context of a police subculture where police regard profiling as part of their work; it "occurs even in the absence of officers who may be inclined to prejudice or discrimination against members of visible minorities" (201). The authors have demonstrated through interviews with police officers that "what critics label as racially motivated practices, police view as sound, work-related criminal profiling" (201).

There is certainly a vast literature that supports the finding that street-level police officers often form stereotypical opinions abut the criminality of certain ethnic groups and use such visual cues in routine, proactive policing work (see, e.g., Ericson 1982; Bayley and Mendelsohn 1969). These ways of seeing and acting are regarded as features of police (sub)culture that appear to be common across space and time. Satzewich and Shaffir (2009) provide evidence that police officers in their study (even officers from ethnic minorities) saw profiling as integral to police work and admitted that the racial appearance of the citizen was one factor among others that they took into account when deciding whether to intervene. The authors suggest that "the occupational culture enables the police to draw upon a vocabulary of explanations" that "permit[s] them to deny responsibility when faced with the allegation that their profiling is racially motivated" (Satzewich and Shaffir 2009: 211).

While police culture may be cited by officers to justify their profiling practices, culture is not, in itself, always static, homogeneous, insulated from its environment and unaffected by the agency of police actors (Chan 1997; Chan, Devery, and Doran 2003). My research in Australia has identified how police cultural knowledge and practices can be affected by changing political conditions and governance structures and how police officers can exercise agency in negotiating the changing field of policing and of making...