{"id":46341,"date":"2019-01-06T03:00:35","date_gmt":"2019-01-06T08:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=46341"},"modified":"2019-01-05T11:25:41","modified_gmt":"2019-01-05T16:25:41","slug":"carding-is-an-infringement-of-rights-that-does-nothing-to-reduce-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/01\/06\/carding-is-an-infringement-of-rights-that-does-nothing-to-reduce-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"“Carding” is an infringement of rights that does nothing to reduce crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley<\/a> wonders why the blatantly unconstitutional practice of “carding” people without even a hint of suspicion that they’ve done anything wrong was instituted in the first place:<\/p>\n

… it\u2019s far easier to make a case that carding has no effect at all on serious crime than that it has a huge one. But even if previous carding practice had \u201cworked,\u201d even if the new regulation had stopped it from working, it barely even amounts to a defence. As [Justice Michael] Tulloch notes, \u201cthe regulation simply gives effect to the existing law that people do not have to provide their identification when there are no reasonable grounds to believe the person has committed an offence.\u201d<\/p>\n

If carding \u201cworked,\u201d in other words, it relied on citizens not knowing or caring about their already-existing right to be left alone whilst minding their own business, or being too intimidated to exercise that right \u2014 as well they might be. Politely refusing an armed man or woman\u2019s request to identify yourself is no small thing, all the more so if you have \u201cnothing to hide.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problems inherent in such a situation are myriad. There are quantifiable harms: People were denied jobs and security clearances, and in at least one case menaced by child services, thanks to information stored in police databases that implicated them in nothing other than being included in a police database. And there are more existential harms. Imagine growing up with a squeaky-clean nose yet constantly feeling like a person of police interest. It\u2019s profoundly alienating, especially when targets quite logically conclude, based on well-documented statistics if not their own intuition, that they\u2019re being harassed because of their race, skin colour or some other innate characteristic. It\u2019s no less insidious if the bias is unconscious; it might even be more so.<\/p>\n

Nothing good can come from it, and plenty bad. It hinders police in solving crimes, for one thing: \u201cWhen a segment of society believes that it has been unfairly targeted by the police,\u201d Tulloch writes, \u201cit will delegitimize the police in their eyes.\u201d All those desperate calls for witnesses to come forward will be met more skeptically. Tulloch cites research showing \u201cinappropriate interaction with police\u201d can even \u201cdesensitize young people from guilt regarding potential acts of crime.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley wonders why the blatantly unconstitutional practice of “carding” people without even a hint of suspicion that they’ve done anything wrong was instituted in the first place: … it\u2019s far easier to make a case that carding has no effect at all on serious crime than that it has a huge one. But even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,10],"tags":[98,154,99,217,207],"class_list":["post-46341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-law","category-liberty","tag-police","tag-privacy","tag-racism","tag-rights","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-c3r","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46342,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46341\/revisions\/46342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}