What usually happens with profiling is that catch rate is out of proportion with the base rate.

For example, if blue people are twice as likely to do bad things as red people, you end up catching more than twice as many blue people when you profile based on blueness. And that's unfair discrimination. It's unfair on all the honest blue people made to feel like criminals.

And of course it's self-perpetuating. The lopsided catch rates justify profiling in the minds of people doing the catching.

In the real world, I dont know the underlying actual differences in offending rates, but I do know that correlation with life circumstances would probably be much higher than skin colour.

> Racial profiling is being criticized despite being effective.

You got anything to back up this blanket statement?

How and why do you have to back it up?

It’s just a type of argument that is actually quite common with its basic idea being that just because something is effective, doesn’t mean it’s right or just to do.

Transferred to racial profiling the argument is this: Even if racial profiling is effective, employing it is still ethically indefensible and plain wrong.

Put another way: Even if we agree on a goal (e.g. catching more criminals) that doesn’t mean that any effective way to achieve or improve that is then suddenly appropriate.

The German constitutional court does make this argument explicitly (even though I’m not sure any police officers actually respect that – but at least those affected can now somewhat defend themselves).

> How and why do you have to back it up?

With arguments, and to support your point of view.

Maybe I wasn't clear. I wanted some real evidence that racial profiling is effective (as well as how effective it is), I wasn't looking to get into an argument about the morality of the issue.

My main message is that racial profiling is unethical whether or not it is effective.

Especially in the case I cited, it is obvious that racial profiling works better than random sampling (or based only on other features). People out of an ethnic minority will always have different rates of citizenships compared to the general population. So if you pick someone from a minority group that are less likely to be citizens, your chances are higher to pick someone who doesn't have the citizenship compared to the general population of citizens.

While the principle is quite simple, I don't have any empirical knowledge and can only refer you to Google Scholar if you desire more insights ;)

Here's an article explaining the counterproductiveness of "watch lists", but that doesn't map directly to the shoplifting scenario. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/racial-profiling-...