The solution is not to ignore the threat of terrorism but to address the threat more intelligently. Over the past two years, a project that our organization undertook with police forces and civil-society groups in Hungary and Spain found that, when stops were systematically monitored and data publicly reported, the proportion of stops that produced an arrest or other law-enforcement outcomes actually increased. Police work became more efficient.
This makes sense. When officers are required to articulate grounds for suspicion, they are more likely to rely on behavioral factors rather than prejudice.
In the future, the EU and its member states should fund more collaboration between police and minority communities. The EU should combat radicalization by addressing exclusion, not by conflating conservative religious faith with terrorism. And it should make clear that police may not use ethnic, racial or religious stereotypes.
By treating people as suspicious purely because of who they are, how they look or where they pray rather than what they do or have done, ethnic profiling threatens the very ethos of the EU, a union firmly rooted in the values of liberty, democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
James A. Goldston is executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative and a former coordinator of prosecutions at the International Criminal Court.
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