Reducing Ethnic Profiling in the European Union - Open Society ...

passengers at borders, although the methodology needed further development. It alsofound that data in this area are useful for highlighting disproportional rates of stopsand monitoring trends and officer decision-making.Given historical abuses of ethnic data and ongoing sensitivities, the question ofhow to define and record ethnicity must be addressed with sensitivity. The UK stopform features 16 “ethnic” categories as well as “other,” and the person stopped is askedto self-identify according to these categories. The officer can also provide his/her perceptionof the person’s ethnicity if the officer disagrees with the self-identification. Theform also records the law under which the stop has been made and provides an openfield for officers to record the individualized grounds that led him to suspect that personis involved in crime. This provides the basis for supervision to ensure that officers areconducting their stops in accordance with the law.In Bulgaria, Hungary, and Spain, a European Union-funded pilot project introducedstop forms which recorded the nationality and/or ethnicity of the persons stopped.These stop forms were in full compliance with national personal data protection law ineach country—even in Hungary, which has one of the strictest personal data protectionstandards in the EU. (Please see Appendix A for the Hungarian stop form.) This project,called Strategies for Effective Police Stop and Search (STEPSS), demonstrated thatthrough monitoring stops, police can reduce ethnic profiling and enhance efficiency atthe same time. This project is discussed in more detail below.In order to analyze data from stop forms and determine whether ethnic minoritiesare stopped more than whites, the ratio of ethnic minorities in the population needsto be compared to the ratio of ethnic minorities who have been stopped. The question ofwhat population is in fact the fair comparator or benchmark has generated considerablecontroversy in both the United States and the United Kingdom. 146Data analysis should certainly seek to be as accurate and precise as possible, butwhen stop data consistently show that ethnic minorities are stopped at vastly higherrates than the majority population when compared to their overall representation in thepopulation, it indicates an issue that needs to be addressed.General principles of good practice:Ethnic data are a necessary but not a sufficient tool to address ethnic profiling.It is the first step in a process that uses data as feedback for management andsupervision and as a resource for community outreach and dialogue.Gathering ethnic data in a manner consistent with European data protectionnorms is particularly important for highly discretionary actions such as identitychecks and stops and searches.78 ETHNIC MONITORING AND LAW ENFORCEMENT DATA-GATHERING