Major Major Major help??????

Question

Believe me, merchants don't like monitoring their customers to prevent theft, but they know it's a matter of economic survival. Merchants know that closely watching customers is bad public relations if done crudely. However the retail business loses over 31.3 billion dollars every year, and shoplifting represents one-third of that. Customer surveillance is limited to the public areas where there is no expectation of privacy as opposed to inside fitting rooms and restrooms that are considered private areas. If trained professionals do the surveillanceproperly, most people will never realize they have been observed while shopping. And since people from certain communities are most likely to shoplift than others, It's not surprising that loss prevention personnel keep a close watch on them. Certain groups simply harbor more lawbreakers, and while in theory security personnel should keep a watchful eye on everyone, the reality is that they need to focus their attention where it will pay off.The fact that certain ethnic groups are over-represented in arrest statistics shows that targeting them for increased police scrutiny is a smart business move! Dan White

Explain White's argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with his analysis and conclusion.Support your positin,providing reasons and examples from your own experience,observations,or reading

Answer 1

What White is suggesting is what is often called "racial profiling", where law enforcement (or here, retail) personnel focus on those groups (in this case they are called ethnic, rather than racial) because it is believed that they are more likely to offend than are others.  

I would suggest that the problem lies in his statement, "And since people from certain communities are more likely to shoplift than others," followed by things like "Certain groups simply harbor more lawbreakers."  This is an assumption, and he gives no evidence that it is true, other than in his own mind.  Even if he were to show that more people in some groups were arrested for breaking laws, one might question if that was because they broke more laws, or because law enforcement was more likely to arrest lawbreakers in those groups than in others.  For example, I used to do a lot of volunteer legal work with the homeless, who often got citations for things like urinating in public or drinking in public.  Think about it.  If you had access to a bathroom, would you urinate in public?  If your parents and their friends had living rooms and backyard decks, would they choose to have a beer on the street?  Does this mean that the homeless are big drinkers and urinators, or does it mean that they are more likely to do it in places where they will be arrested for it?

If you wanted to support White's argument, your best bet would be to use financial reasoning.  If it has been shown that some groups are more likely than others to offend (you might argue that White seems to have evidence of this, even though he doesn't provide it), then resources could be focused on those groups which would be most likely to be caught.  Given the same resources, you could get bigger outcomes than if you spread your resources out to watch everyone.