Profiling is a Waste of Time and Resources

Ali Massoud has a great post on ethnic profiling: http://alisvoice.blogspot.com/

Many of my conspecifics advocate one form of profiling or another, but they don't really have it fleshed out how a profiling program would work. They are somewhat like my feebleminded former neighbor who told me he planned to invest in stocks that would increase in value while avoiding those that would decrease in value. He didn't know how to tell the winners from the losers in advance. My conspecifics who advocate profiling argue that the authorities will mostly just bother criminals and terrorists instead of wasting their time and energy on innocent people. The problem is that the authorities don't know who is a criminal or terrorist or who is going to misbehave just by looking at them or their papers.

Consider the case of racial profiling on the basis that darker hued folks are more likely to be convicted of crimes than their lighter hued counterparts. Although this may be so, it is still a small proportion of swarthy skinned folks who commit crimes; therefore, the vast majority of dark skinned folks whom one targets for scrutiny and harassment will be innocent. You will have wasted a boatload of effort and diverted resources to your ill conceived profiling plan. And there are still tens of thousands of light complexioned criminals whom you will need to deal with at the same time that you are checking all black folks so carefully.

Consider the case of ethnic profiling of Muslims. First off, Muslims come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Islam is a religion, not an ethnic category, and you may well find that some folks don't look Muslim to you but, in fact, are Muslims. My pro-profiling conspecifics have only the vaguest notion as to how to identify a Muslim from a non-Muslim. They think of dark complexions and mustaches, but this might just as well describe Mexicans or Cubans or Ethiopians or Arab Christians or Sephardic Jews. Surnames might be a better guide, but a would be terrorist may not use his own name and might try to pass for some other ethnicity, especially if he thought ethnic profiling was going on. So you're going to be profiling a lot of folks who might look Muslim to the idiots you have hired a s screeners, and you will miss a lot of Muslims in the process. Also, only the tiniest minority of Muslims is a terrorist, way below a single percent even if you limit your profile to males of a certain age range. Accordingly, almost everyone you target will be entirely innocent. You will be wasting time and resources in a big way. And, as Ali points out, there are still the whitebread nutjobs to consider.