Profiling and political correctness :: The Eclectic Econoclast

The Eclectic Econoclast has a piece on racial profiling and random checks. I tend to agree with the point of view that we should allow the statistics guide our allocation of police resources.

It's probably been said better elsewhere, but in the case of terrorism and other forms of organized crime, the bad guys will take the use of profiling into account and substitute away from the use of labor that fits the profile. We should expect that efforts to prevent these forms of criminal activity the police will use a broader profile than the profile based on the population of criminals detected.