Two ISU professors are conducting a study on racial profiling to define the causes behind increased arrest rates of minorities.

Philippe Marcoul and Helle Bunzel, both assistant professors of economics, have designed a theoretical study to determine whether racial profiling is always a result of racism.

They want to examine why more minorities are stopped and arrested and how national data is affecting those decisions.

The professors propose that, on the contrary, there could be a problem with the way information is being collected.

They said because statistics show more minorities are stopped for certain crimes, this could lead to a tendency for police officers to pull over more of these people.

They said their model shows police officers can be susceptible to racial profiling because of what they perceive as trends in crime.

“They don’t have to be racist just because they use racial profiling in their work,” Bunzel said.

She said a hypothetical situation would be assuming only blonds were stopped, arrested and convicted of drunken driving, then it would be easy to assume that all blonds drive drunk.

Eventually, police officers would stop picking up people with brown or black hair because the only people who were caught driving drunk were those with blond hair.

She explained how easy it would be to get caught in this bad example and lead to a “self-fulfilling misperception.”

“This could convince the next generation that blonds drive drunk,” Marcoul said.

They said they are also looking to see if there is an economic incentive behind stopping more minority drivers because economics is the study of social behavior.

“Economics is not only about price,” Marcoul said.

Marcoul said they are wondering if there is more of a need to catch as many of one type of person because national statistics show that one particular group commits the most crimes.

Marcoul said they are looking at racial profiling from a national scope, so they are unsure of how Ames deals with racial profiling.

He said they are still in the preliminary stages but added that collecting national data can be costly.

Chuck Cychosz, support services manager with the Ames Police Department, said he does not believe racial profiling is a problem in Ames.

Cychosz said the department has paid attention to the national discussion of racial profiling, and all officers go through extensive training that includes addressing this issue.

He said the department studied the issue of racial profiling in detail in 2000 and 2001 and found there was perhaps an overrepresentation of non-whites being stopped.

Cychosz said this was because of the influx of new drivers who had difficulty dealing with traffic laws, however, and not their race.

He said supervisors monitor officers for any indication of “disproportionate treatment of any group” and place equality and fairness as high priorities.

“This is certainly an ongoing concern of ours,” Cychosz said. “Our shift supervisors are pretty sensitive to these issues.”