Justice Department is expanding limits on profiling
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is announcing new standards today to expand limits on racial profiling.
The current ban on consideration of race and ethnicity by federal law enforcement agents will be expanded to ban consideration of gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity, report the Washington Post, NBC News, CNN and USA Today.
The new standards will prohibit profiling in some national security cases, which previously had an exemption from the racial profiling ban, USA Today says. But the ban on profiling won’t apply at borders and airports. Nor will it apply to the U.S. military, the Secret Service and intelligence officials, the stories say.
Holder will brief law enforcement agencies on the guidelines today and will urge state and local law enforcement agencies to adopt the same policies in a speech on Tuesday, CNN says, citing an unnamed Justice Department official.
“I have repeatedly made clear that profiling by law enforcement is not only wrong, it is profoundly misguided and ineffective–because it wastes precious resources and undermines the public trust,” Holder said in a prepared statement. “Particularly in light of certain recent incidents we’ve seen at the local level–and the widespread concerns about trust in the criminal justice process which so many have raised throughout the nation–it’s imperative that we take every possible action to institute strong and sound policing practices.”
