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Moving Beyond 'Driving While Black in Canada': Race, Suspect Description and Selection

Resource type
Author/contributor
Title
Moving Beyond 'Driving While Black in Canada': Race, Suspect Description and Selection
Abstract
The issue of racial profiling has finally begun to attract the attention of the Canadian media; courts; human rights commission; the Canadian Bar Association; and, the academy. The focus has been on racial profiling defined as the use of racialized stereotypes of the usual suspect as the basis for suspect selection. Less attention,however, has been given to cases where race forms part of the description of a suspect provided by the victim or witness. Through the use of narrative, the article examines how race-based suspect descriptions have been misused by the police in Canada. The narratives also reveal the devastating collateral damage when the police use race in any manner in suspect selection. This damage includes widespread harassment, intimidation, false arrests, violence, death, stigmatization and an engendering of mistrust. Given the misuse, the article recommends including suspect descriptions in the racial profiling prohibition where race is used as the dominant characteristic. After considering whether there should be a complete prohibition on using race in suspect descriptions, the article examines current constitutional standards to protect against misuse and proposes a new dominant feature constitutional test.
Genre
SSRN Scholarly Paper
Archive ID
671361
Place
Rochester, NY
Date
2005-02-24
Accessed
9/29/23, 5:12 PM
Short Title
Moving Beyond 'Driving While Black in Canada'
Language
en
Library Catalog
Social Science Research Network
Citation
Tanovich, D. M. (2005). Moving Beyond “Driving While Black in Canada”: Race, Suspect Description and Selection (SSRN Scholarly Paper 671361). https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=671361
Author / Editor