Is variation by motorist race in the success rate of searches informative about racial bias if police are motivated by crime minimisation rather than success-rate maximisation? We show that the basic idea of extracting information from 'hit rates' may still be valid, provided one can verify some...

Consider the choice of a profiling policy where decisions to search for evidence of crime may vary with observable covariates of the persons at risk of search. I pose a planning problem whose objective is to minimise the social cost of crime and search. The consequences of a search rule depend...