Why Profiling Makes Sense and Should Be Done

[Kenny]

What that article doesn't say is that the Israeli profilers are well trained specialists who discern upon behaviour and body language.

Actually, it did.

 

[George-ananda]

Cops NEED training for dealing with and recognizing the mentally ill. Being harassed by pigs because you're an Aspie and talk like it shouldn't happen. Anyone familiar with the disorder can usually and easily pick up on it. Piggly-wigglies just hear a slower rate of speech with an unusual meter and suddenly you're having to prove your innocence.

Well I see Piggly-wigglies as generally good human beings doing a nasty job.

We are not going to agree on anything here after that essential difference of opinion.

 

[Left Coast]

ACLU, that is one opinion to consider but I am not always impressed by them.

I'm not always impressed by people who dismiss data without even interacting with it.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

Well we are not going to agree on anything then. I hear excessive emotional paranoia in that against what I believe to be overwhelmingly good human police officers and you probably hear a white racist position from me. Can't change emotions by debating.

Can't change willful ignorance either.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

Well what is the other side of the coin? Do you want less involved officers and more bad people getting away?

Most countries have much less crime with not even a third of police spending per capita. Not by volume but by ratio. That is damning. Increased police doesn't make areas safer. Spending money we would on police on better healthcare (including mental healthcare), affordable housing, job programs and social services like child protection and civil servants does.

The real mother of crime is poverty. Police aren't even a bandage oh, they just redirect money into already bloated money making schemes like private prisons.

 

[Revoltingest]

I can agree with demographic profiling based on statistical disproportions. The innocent among the profiled group have nothing to fear and will have greater safety even for themselves.

Any contact with authorities searching for criminal intent
has the risk of escalation & woe, even for the innocent.
And when the profiling is illegal, this inures government
to their own criminal behavior.

 

[Rational Agnostic]

Let me address the main objection to my argument: namely that criminals/terrorists will simply adjust to the profiling and use different people to carry out their acts of harm against others.

In order for this to be a valid objection to profiling, one would have to be able to demonstrate that profiling itself will change the demographics of crime so much that crime becomes completely unpredictable based on a person's demographic characteristics. In other words, you would have to affirm that profiling and investigation will cause the demographics of people who commit crimes to be completely random. This is an outrageous and indefensible claim. Do you really think that terrorists will adapt so well to profiling that a 3 year old white child from the American midwest has an equally likely probability of hiding explosives as a middle eastern man who voiced support for jihad in the past? There will NEVER be a scenario where some groups are not more likely to commit crimes than others. And as long as there is any possibility of profiling being effective, and thus saving lives, it should certainly be done.

 

[Rational Agnostic]

Care to show your work on that assumption? I don't think this is obvious at all.

You've got to be kidding me. Are you at all familiar with world events? How many 18 year old white girls from the midwest do you know of that have carried out jihadist terrorist attacks? Now compare that number with the number of males of middle eastern descent in their 20s and 30s. Don't pretend to be ignorant. You know that there is a difference.

 

[Rational Agnostic]

Which lines would you select based on, and how do you account for the bias in selection criteria?

For example, would you have a problem with university educated women of colour who are evangelical Christians being given a pass at a security check if they have a median income of more than 100k?

It would be based on the widely available demographic datasets on criminal and terroristic behaviors. We can create predictive models based on many different demographic variables. I can't say anything about your specific example because I don't know the statistics. But I would guess that highly educated black women would be pretty low risk.

 

[Heyo]

Let me address the main objection to my argument: namely that criminals/terrorists will simply adjust to the profiling and use different people to carry out their acts of harm against others.

In order for this to be a valid objection to profiling, one would have to be able to demonstrate that profiling itself will change the demographics of crime so much that crime becomes completely unpredictable based on a person's demographic characteristics. In other words, you would have to affirm that profiling and investigation will cause the demographics of people who commit crimes to be completely random. This is an outrageous and indefensible claim. Do you really think that terrorists will adapt so well to profiling that a 3 year old white child from the American midwest has an equally likely probability of hiding explosives as a middle eastern man who voiced support for jihad in the past? There will NEVER be a scenario where some groups are not more likely to commit crimes than others. And as long as there is any possibility of profiling being effective, and thus saving lives, it should certainly be done.

Let's see what we have here: a straw man, a black and white, an appeal to emotion, a bait and switch and a non sequitur.
That's a bingo.

 

[Tambourine]

Racial and ethnic profiling generally tend to devolve into a remarkable exercise in circular reasoning over time, and it does not surprise me that apparently, Harris neither recognizes nor understands that fact.

 

[George-ananda]

Any contact with authorities searching for criminal intent
has the risk of escalation & woe, even for the innocent.
And when the profiling is illegal, this inures government
to their own criminal behavior.

OK, but there’s an inherent trade off between bad guys getting away and good guys getting hassled. What do you prefer if no mind reading or perfect humans or system exists?

I tend to be a pro-police type (within reason).

 

[George-ananda]

I'm not always impressed by people who dismiss data without even interacting with it.

I didn’t dismiss it actually.

 

[George-ananda]

Can't change willful ignorance either.

You are actually proving my point about excessive emotionalism.

 

[Left Coast]

I didn’t dismiss it actually.

Huh, that's weird. Point me to your reply to the substance of what I linked.

 

[George-ananda]

Most countries have much less crime with not even a third of police spending per capita. Not by volume but by ratio. That is damning. Increased police doesn't make areas safer. Spending money we would on police on better healthcare (including mental healthcare), affordable housing, job programs and social services like child protection and civil servants does.

The real mother of crime is poverty. Police aren't even a bandage oh, they just redirect money into already bloated money making schemes like private prisons.

And I think the main problem is lower moral behavior and social responsibility and academic performance in African American communities if we are talking statistics in the US. White And Asian statistics are closer to these other countries I’m sure.

Poverty is more the result than the cause of the Black Community’s problems.

 

[George-ananda]

Huh, that's weird. Point me to your reply to the substance of what I linked.

Huh, is right. Not having time to read it immediately is not dismissal. Dismissal is calling it wrong without reading.

 

[Rational Agnostic]

And I think the main problem is lower moral behavior and social responsibility and academic performance in African American communities if we are talking statistics in the US. White And Asian statistics are closer to these other countries I’m sure.

Poverty is more the result than the cause of the Black Community’s problems.

I don't know if that's true or not. It's a chicken and egg situation. You certainly haven't demonstrated that poverty is the result rather than the cause of the black community's problems. I tend to think it's more likely to be the cause given the oppression that black communities have faced over the years. But that's irrelevant to my thread anyway.

 

[Rational Agnostic]

Let's see what we have here: a straw man, a black and white, an appeal to emotion, a bait and switch and a non sequitur.
That's a bingo.

I'll ask again: Do you think that there will EVER be a scenario, where the demographics of crime are completely random? If not, then why do you oppose profiling? If there are demographic factors that can predict who is more likely to commit a crime, then absolutely we should use them.

 

[Left Coast]

Huh, is right. Not having time to read it immediately is not dismissal. Dismissal is calling it wrong without reading.

You didnt say you didn't have time to read it. You said you're "not always impressed" by them, and left it there.

So if you're planning to read it, let me know when you have something substantive to actually say about it.