Harris, David A. 1957-
HARRIS, David A. 1957-
PERSONAL: Born 1957. Education: Northwestern University, B.A.; Yale University Law School, LL.B., 1983; Georgetown University, LL.M..
ADDRESSES: Office—College of Law, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH 43606. E-mail—dharris@uoft. utoledo.edu.
CAREER: Balk Professor of Law and Values, University of Toledo College of Law, Toledo, OH, 1990—.
MEMBER: Civil Liberties Advisory Board to the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security.
AWARDS, HONORS: Soros senior justice fellow.
WRITINGS:
Profiles in Injustice: Why Racial Profiling Cannot Work, New Press (New York, NY), 2002.
Contributor to numerous scholarly and legal journals, including Journal of Constitutional Law, Michigan Journal of Race & Law, Minnesota Law Review, George Washington Law Review, Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, Temple Law Review, and Indiana at Bloomington Law Journal.
SIDELIGHTS: David A. Harris is a law professor at the University of Toledo and a Soros senior justice fellow who has written widely on racial profiling, stop and frisk, and other Fourth Amendment issues. In Profiles in Injustice: Why Racial Profiling Cannot Work, he describes what racial profiling is, what tactics are commonly used, and the costs of such profiling in dollars, casualties, relations with police, and wasted police time. As he shows, the impact is not just on African Americans ("driving while black"); Latinos are targeted as criminals and/or illegal immigrants, Asian-Americans as gang members, Arab-Americans as terrorists, and so on. Harris argues that statistical evidence shows profiling to be ineffective and recommends many useful alternatives, among them establishing appropriate policies in police departments, incentives, training, and collecting data to analyze trends.
Harris's early work on racial profiling became the basis for the Traffic Stops Statistics Act of 1997, the first legislative proposal at any level of government to take on the problem of racial profiling. Sponsored by Representative John Conyers of Michigan, the act quickly became the national model for antiprofiling legislation; thirteen other states have since passed laws based on the original Conyers bill. Hundreds of police departments around the country have begun efforts to collect data on traffic stops and set new policies. Harris also helped members of Congress draft the proposed federal End Racial Profiling Act of 2001.
In Profiles in Injustice, Harris cites statistics challenging the efficacy of racial profiling despite its widespread use. He examines the moral, ethical, and constitutional issues surrounding racial profiling and offers true accounts of minorities, including a black military officer and a Hispanic judge, who have been victimized. Finally, he examines the social costs of racial profiling and efforts by law enforcement agencies to eliminate the practice, even as profiling gained new notoriety in the wake of the terrorist attack on America of September 11, 2001, and increased scrutiny of people of Arab heritage.
"Not many people, of course, are willing to defend racial profiling as a stand-alone good," wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor, "but the constant refrain from the practice's supporters, especially those in law enforcement, has been that it's necessary because racial minorities commit more crimes than other members of society. Harris convincingly explains what is known as the lamppost phenomenon: If law enforcement agencies look for violations amid a particular group, they are bound to find them at higher rates." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly praised the book as an important argument in safeguarding civil liberties, and noted, "He analyzes how each [type of police intervention], aside from often not passing basic legal or ethical standards, nearly always fails to discover criminals or deter crime. These conclusions are supplemented by his often surprising analysis of arrest statistics.... This book lays some of the groundwork for post-September 11 books on profiling that are sure to come, and is rock solid on specifics that remain disturbing."
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2002, Vanessa Bush, review of Profiles in Injustice: Why Racial Profiling Cannot Work, p. 783.
Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2001, review of Profiles in Injustice, p. 737.
Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2000, p. A18.
Publishers Weekly, November 26, 2001, review of Profiles in Injustice, p. 47.
St. John's Law Review, summer, 1998, Daniel C. Richman, "Terry v. Ohio in the Trenches" p. 911.*