'Routine stop and search', Hackney, North London, 2011. Karel Prinsloo/Press Association. All rights reserved. If you have never been stopped and search by the police, you might not see how it can affect those who are systematically stopped and searched, sometimes several times a week, for no apparent reason. Even if you have nothing to be blamed for, it is humiliating and frustrating to be targeted, singled out very often, just because of your perceived race, ethnicity or religion, rather than on the basis of individual behaviour or objective evidence.
With the tightened border controls over migration concerns and the threat of terrorism, the increased perception of use of ethnic profiling has been reported by anti-racism organisations across Europe.
When available, data on stop and search by police and border guards point to a disproportionate impact on ethnic and religious minorities. In the United Kingdom, Black people are stopped by police at six times the rate of White people and Asians at almost twice the rate of Whites. In Granada in Spain, Roma are 12 times more likely to be stopped than White people. In Belgium, there has been an increase in ethnic profiling by police of young males of African or north African background since the Brussels and Paris terrorist attacks. 79 % of border guards at EU airports rate ethnicity a helpful indicator for recognising persons attempting to enter the country in an irregular manner, before speaking to them. It makes the very communities whose support is necessary for fighting crime reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement authorities.
