Monitoring the Moscow Metro for Ethnic Profiling by Police

Ethnic profiling is a widely-employed tactic of law enforcement that violates international anti-discrimination norms. Few countries have directly addressed the problem; in the U.S. and the UK alone has it received widespread attention. Anecdotal evidence suggests that police in Moscow are using ethnic profiling in their policing of the Moscow metro. Specifically, casual observation suggestions that ethnicity may be a primary criterion for police document checks, with those from the Caucasus and Central Asians being the primary targets. Document checks take place in the context of administrative regulations that specify that even Russian citizens must have documentation showing “registration” of their place of residence if they have lived at that residence for over 90 days. The fines for lack of registration are significant (55 USD) relative to average incomes in Moscow. Police documents on stop-and-search procedures, if they exist, are confidential.

The Justice Initiative project to monitor ethnic profiling on the Moscow metro takes place in the context of a general lack of understanding of ethnic discrimination even by Russian human rights organizations. There is a tendency to either deny the existence of discrimination, attributing discriminatory treatment either to happenstance or to the attitudes of a single individual, or, at the other extreme, to believe that any unfavorable action affecting an ethnic minority constitutes discrimination. Xenophobia is common in society at large and ethnic minorities are commonly described in the media and in conversation as being the cause of crime, economic problems, and terrorism.

Every day, 8.5 to 13 million people pass through the 154 stations of the Moscow metro. The project will monitor the behavior of police patrols at selected metro stations to record the ethnicity, age, gender and other relevant characteristics of those whom the police stop for document checks. These will be compared against the same characteristics of the general public exiting the station at the time the monitoring is done. Metro stations have been selected for monitoring of police practices for several reasons. In the metro, monitors can document police practices unobserved; at busy stations, hundreds of people exit a station every 10 minutes, and dozens stand outside the station waiting. In this environment, monitors should be able to monitor unnoticed for shifts of 30 minutes, while observing a significant number of stops.

The methodology for achieving statistically valid results has been designed by Lamberth Consulting, with additional input from a group of academic advisors and staff of the Justice Initiative.