Road Work: Racial Profiling and Drug Interdiction on the Highway

• Published in: Michigan law review Vol. 101; no. 3; pp. 651 - 754
• Main Authors: Gross, Samuel R., Barnes, Katherine Y.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ann Arbor University of Michigan Law School 01-12-2002; Michigan Law Review Association
• Subjects: Attorneys general; Automobiles; Civil rights; Cocaine; Crime; Criminal arrests; Criminal investigations; Drug dealers; Drug traffic; Drug trafficking; Evaluation; Heroin; Highways; Hispanic Americans; Hispanics; Illicit drugs; Law enforcement; Marijuana; Minority & ethnic groups; Narcotics, Control of; Police; Police departments; Race; Racial profiling; Racial profiling in law enforcement; Roads & highways; Search & seizure; Search and seizure; Searches and seizures; Searches and seizures, Automobile; September 11 terrorist attacks-2001; State police; State police services; Studies; U.S. states; UNITED STATES; United States > US; Maryland
• ISSN: 0026-2234; 1939-8557
• DOI: 10.2307/1290469

It is not news that American police officers devote a disproportionate amount of their attention to racial and ethnic minorities. The phrase "racial profiling," however, has only recently appeared and has no set meaning. As we use the term, "racial profiling" occurs when a law enforcement officer questions, stops, arrests, searches, or otherwise investigates a person because the officer believes that members of that person's racial or ethnic group are more likely than the population at large to commit the sort of crime the officer is investigating. In this article we examine the data that accumulated under the 1995 Maryland court order from January 1995 through June 2000 - a total of 8027 searches.