Though economists engaged in normative study of
public policy generally assume that the relevant social planner
knows how policy affects population behavior, this rarely is the
case in practice. Fundamental identification problems and practical
problems of statistical inference make it difficult to learn how
policy affects behavior. Hence, there is much reason to consider
policy formation when a planner has only partial knowledge of
policy impacts.
In this paper, I examine a specific and recently
debated aspect of law enforcement—the choice of a profiling
policy. My concern is not so much to understand the use of personal
attributes such as race in profiling policies (though some of
my analysis does have implications for detecting discrimination),
but rather to understand how a social planner might reasonably
choose a profiling policy when he or she only has partial knowledge
of how policy affects criminal behavior. I consider both ex
ante search, which apprehends offenders before their offenses
cause social harm, and ex post search, which apprehends
offenders after completion of their offenses. This paper shows
how a social planner having partial knowledge of population offense
behavior can “reasonably” choose a search profiling
policy.
Charles F. Manski, Board of
Trustees Professor of Economics; Faculty Fellow, Institute for
Policy Research, Northwestern University
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