Crime, Terror and Suspect Communities: Ethnic Profiling in Europe

Door Rebekah Delsol, Rachel Neild, 15 oktober 2009 14:47 uur0 Waardering:

Following the September 11th 2001 attacks in New York, and again after the bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005, law-enforcement authorities across Europe launched aggressive counter-terror operations, frequently targeting people who appeared to be Muslim.

In the Netherlands, the murder of Theo Van Gogh, the alert caused by Samir A., the arrests of members of the Hofstad Group, and also recently the March 2009 alert concerning the IKEA attack, have led the Government to undertake a programme aimed at trying to understand the process by which individuals become ‘radicalized’ to the point that they commit an act of terrorism; again, religion and religious practice was a central focus of such inquiries. Dutch anti-radicalisation efforts are one of the forms of ethnic profiling examined in ‘Ethnic Profiling in the European Union: Pervasive, Ineffective, and Discriminatory,’ a report published by the Open Society Justice Initiative in May 2009. Examining counter-terror and policing practices in the Netherlands alongside discussions of France, Germany, Italy and the UK, the report finds that ethnic profiling is pervasive across the EU.
 

Dit artikel is geplaatst in het Tijdschrift voor de Politie nr. 8, 2009. Het notenpakket bij dit artikel vindt u hieronder

Bron: Het Tijdschrift voor de Politie, 2009, nr. 8, p. 30 e.v.
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1 Arun Kundnani (2004). ‘Analysis: the war on terror leads to racial profiling’, London: Institute for Race Relations; IRR News, July 7. Vickram Dodd (2005), ‘Surge in stop and search of Asian people after July 7,’ [cursief]The Guardian[/cursief], December 24.
2 Islamic Institute for Human Rights (2004). ‘Country Profile: The Conditions of Muslims in France’, [cursief]Monitoring Minority Protection in EU Member States: Overview[/cursief], New York: Open Society Institute, 53, at: http://www.eumap.org/.
3 See for example: ‘Polarization and radicalization action plan 2007-2011’.
4 David Harris (2005). ‘Confronting Ethnic Profiling in the United States’ in [cursief]Justice Initiatives: Ethnic Profiling by Police In Europe[/cursief], New York: Open Society Justice Initiative, June.
Bernard Harcourt (2004). ‘Rethinking Racial Profiling: A Critique of the Economics, Civil Liberties, and Constitutional Literature, and of Criminal Profiling More Generally,’ [cursief]The University of Chicago Law Review[/cursief], Vol 71, No. 4, Fall 2004.
E.J. van der Torre and H.B. Ferwerda (2005). [cursief]Preventive searching, an analysis of the process and the external effects in ten municipalities[/cursief], The Hague: Beke, Arnhem, Politie & Wetenschap, Zeist.
Claes Lernestedt, Christian Diesen, Tove Pettersson and Toren Lindholm (2005). ‘Equal before the Law: Nature or Culture,’ in [cursief]The Blue and Yellow Glasshouse: structural discrimination in Sweden[/cursief], Swedish Government Official Reports 2005: 56.
Paul Quinton, N. Bland, et al. (2000), [cursief]Police Stops, Decision-Making and Practice[/cursief], London: Home Office.
5 London Metropolitan Police Service Assistant Commissioner Tariq Ghaffur, quoted in Andrew Blick, Toufyal Choudhury, and Stuart Weir, The Rules of the Game: Terrorism, Community and Human Rights, Democratic Audit, Human Rights Center, University of Essex, Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, 2006, 34.
6 U.S. Customs Service (1998). ‘Personal Searches of Air Passengers Results: Positive and Negative, Fiscal Year 1998’, Washington DC: U.S. Customs Service.
7 Open Society Justice Initiative (2009). Addressing Ethnic Profiling by Police: A Report on the Strategies for Effective Stop and Search (STEPSS) Project, New York: Open Society Justice Initiative, 30-31.
8 Bruce Hoffman (2006). [cursief]Inside Terrorism[/cursief], New York: Columbia University Press, 2006 edition, 169.
9 Ethnic statistics are essential to document indirect discrimination, where, without such data, it is impossible to identify discriminatory outcomes and patterns that result from actions or policies that do not necessarily have discriminatory intent. It is important to be clear that generating anonymous statistical data does not reduce the importance of strong protections of personal data and close scrutiny of data collection, storage and access practices to prevent any possible misuse of ethnic data. This is particularly important in a sensitive area such as law enforcement where there are evident risks that ethnic data could serve various forms of ethnic profiling, as was the case with the ethnic database for Antillean youth established in 2005. For more information about this database see: http://www.justiceinitiative.org/db/resource2?res_id=104099.
 

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