Extract – Police profiling | Perspective on profiling

It was the police themselves who first proposed the notion of “profiling”, to designate a method of investigating exceptionally violent crimes, for example the serial murders of sex workers. “Criminal profiling” as a formalized investigative technique originated in the United States, then in various police departments in North America, and even led to the creation of the profession of “profiler”. The notion of “profiling” was then taken up and redefined by human rights groups and academics to highlight the discriminatory nature of certain police units or interventions targeting specific categories of the population. The notion of “racial profiling” has served as a model for other types of discriminatory profiling, such as social and political profiling, which evoke a propensity of the police to modulate their interventions according to subjective perceptions of normality and deviance, since tends to distinguish between “good” and “bad” individuals.

Police profiling is not only a contemporary issue, but the news is rich in events that risk making this subject of research an unfortunately fashionable subject for the next few years. During the assault on the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021, for example, demonstrators, including several people claiming to be from the far right, faced relatively small and above all quickly overwhelmed police forces, even if social media was teeming for weeks of disturbing messages about this gathering. Just hours after the riot, mass media like USA Today, drew a comparison with the Black Lives Matter protests that took place in Washington a few months earlier, which had been the subject of a very heavy police deployment and the target of police repression even if they remained peaceful . As several journalists have pointed out, there seem to be two weights, two measures, in the application of the maintenance of order, which is precisely what the notion of “profiling” designates. In this case, it can be assumed that the Black Lives Matter movement has been the target of both political and racial profiling.

Profiling crossing

While certain dynamics may be similar in the different forms of discriminatory profiling, each obviously has its particularities. In North America and Europe, for example, racial profiling is by far the deadliest and the one that leads to the greatest number of imprisonments. It is therefore important not to dilute the profiling readings into an indistinct or uniform whole. That said, taking a cross-section of profiling allows us to understand how several types of profiling can affect a category of people at the same time (age and race, for example). This cross-reading offers several advantages, making it possible, among other things, to consider social positions at the intersection of several systems of domination (for example, an itinerant Aboriginal woman). Thus, while the chapters of this book most often approach the problem by discussing a particular type of profiling, they also highlight the interweaving of profiling.

In the future, it will be necessary to analyze in more detail the repressive measures taken by governments between 2020 and 2022 on the occasion of the fight against COVID-19 (curfews have led to over-judicialization of homeless people or marginalized people). And beyond the health crisis situation, several countries have recently adopted exceptional measures, such as states of emergency which suspended civil liberties in whole or in part. On January 4, 2021, the French Council of State validated government decrees which authorize the extension of the intelligence file, and which allow in particular the filing of political opinions (if they are linked to an activity) and the religion of individuals. . This measure could lead to making certain profiling activities legal within the meaning of the law (while profiling is supposed to describe a practice that does not comply with the law).

Beyond the police slogans, which evoke public utility and a certain neutrality (“Protect and serve”, “Always fair”), this institution also participates in the constitution, consolidation and perpetuation of various systems of domination, oppression and exclusion, including statism (colonial or not), capitalism, racism and sexism.

Police profiling

Under the direction of Pascale Dufour and Francis Dupuis-Déri

The Presses of the University of Montreal and University Presses of Rennes
January 2022

274 pages