Sociology 2253A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Racial Profiling, Visible Minority

• School: Western University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: Sociology 2253A/B
• Professor: Brenda Kobayashi

Document Summary

Bias-free policing: the requirement that police officers make decisions based on reasonable suspicion of probable grounds rather than stereotypes about race, religion, ethnicity, gender or other prohibited grounds. Discrimination: making a distinction in favour of or against a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit. Racial profiling: targeting of individual members of a particular racial group on the basis of the supposed criminal propensity of the entire group. Arises when you have discretion and because these officials are intrusted with power. Police strategy in which they were stopping those in minority groups and taking their information (id) They could card anyone but ended up stopping only visible minorities, even when doing nothing wrong. Their argument was that they were identifying those who were homeless so they could keep an eye on them.