Ethnic Profiling in Europe

Ethnic Profiling by police is a growing problem in Europe. The Justice Initiative is building a coalition of law enforcement agencies and civil society organizations to address the problem by supporting data-gathering systems, thereby building a foundation for sound public policy in this important area.

The Ethnic Profiling by Police in Europe project is focused on police discrimination in the choice of who to stop and search. Ethnic profiling is a shorthand screening method employed by law enforcement whereby generalizations about a group of people, based on their ethnicity, result in higher instances of stops, searches, and often arrests. The project will bring together law enforcement and civil society to address profiling in a number of European countries by supporting research and the development of data-gathering systems in order to generate information on policing practices that will provide a foundation for the development of remedies and sound public policy in this area.

Studies of the criminal justice systems of many European countries have found pervasive evidence of ethnic and religious discrimination, particularly in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001 and in Spain in 2003. Irrefutable evidence of ethnic is hard to come by, however, due to many countries’ overly strict interpretation of data protection laws as precluding the gathering of any ethnicity-specific data. However, a 2001 European Commission Council Directive Implementing the Principle of Equal Treatment Between Persons Irrespective of Racial or Ethnic Origin (the “EU Race Directive”) explicitly authorizes the gathering of statistical information necessary to prove discrimination, which provides an opportunity to begin collecting such data.

The Ethnic Profiling in Europe project involves collaboration between three Justice Initiative program areas—National Criminal Justice Reform, Equality and Citizenship, and Freedom of Information/Freedom of Expression—and cooperating with civil society and police partners. Activities include:

• Researching national law and practice on data collection and data protection in a set of European countries, focusing on the collection of ethnicity-specific information by law enforcement as well as police perceptions and policies regarding the use of ethnic criteria in making stops and searches;
• Reviewing law enforcement practices on police data-gathering and management, with a view to proposing legislative reforms and/or changes in practice by police and security forces;
• Developing and pilot a data-gathering system to document ethnic profiling practices;
• Identifying remedies to discriminatory practices within the police and in police-community relations;
• Demonstrating that the documentation of ethnic profiling may be undertaken without violation of EU standards on data protection;
• Making the case for the need and value of gathering data on police stops and searches in order to identify where and how ethnic profiling is taking place and remedy this practice; and
• Building the case for inclusion of policing practice as a state service, and thus an area where the state has an obligation to collect data under the provisions of the EU Race Directive.

Through a combination of meetings, research, and the development and implementation of a data collection system, the project will advocate the expansion of good practices in data collection and non-discriminatory policing.

Preparatory research has been carried out in five countries—Latvia, Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Spain—in three areas: (1) legal analysis of the current state of data protection laws across Europe, (2) laws governing police practices and current police data gathering in each country, and (3) existing documentation on racial profiling in Europe and models of data gathering systems developed for tracking the existence of racial profiling.

Working with national partners in selected countries, the project is undertaking research and data-gathering on stop and search practices by police, supported by complimentary research to build the necessary benchmark comparison population. The research will also examine the concerns of affected communities and will incorporate a collaborative discussion of potential remedies. At the end of this process, a public report will be issued, including proposals for remedies being taken and implemented by the police.