A/HRC/29/46 enforcement agencies for use at border checkpoints and in criminal databases. This has led to concerns about profiling being institutionalized.16 23. Racial and ethnic profiling is also manifested in the broad discretion allowed in States’ criminal justice systems. Studies have identified a strong correlation between minority status and harsher criminal sentences.17 Evidence from some States shows that implicit bias, including stereotypes that people of colour are violent, affects criminal investigations. 24. High levels of discretion in States’ criminal justice systems facilitate racial and ethnic profiling and result in a disproportionate representation of minority populations in detention facilities.18 In 2014, 60 per cent of those incarcerated in one North American state were members of racial and ethnic minorities.19 Additionally, several states have initiated campaigns to crack down on drug use. Those campaigns have resulted in a severe disproportionality of minorities in the composition of prison populations. 20 For example, one study carried out in a North American state found that males of African descent were nearly 12 times more likely to be sent to prison for a drug offence than other men, despite surveys showing that both groups used and sold drugs at roughly the same rates. 21 C. Legal policy and regulatory frameworks prohibiting racial and ethnic profiling, and similar measures, policies and laws adopted at the international, regional and national levels 25. In response to the manifestations of the phenomenon described above, the Special Rapporteur recalls that international and regional organizations and States have adopted a variety of laws and instruments to combat and prohibit the use of racial and ethnic profiling. 1. International legal policy and regulatory frameworks 26. Racial and ethnic profiling is prohibited under international human rights law and is contrary to various provisions such as the right to live free from racial discrimination, the right to equality before the law, the right to personal freedom and security and the right to the presumption of innocence. More specifically, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination prohibits, in its articles 2, 4, 5 and 7, the use of racial profiling. Furthermore, the general equality provision of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (art. 26) and other specific guarantees therein 16 17 18 19 20 21 8 Frank Gardner, “Risk profiling software tackles the terrorist threat”, BBC news website, 21 November 2012, available from http://m.bbc.com/news/technology-20412478. William T. Pizzi, Irene V. Blair and Charles M. Judd, “Discrimination in sentencing on the basis of Afrocentric features”, Michigan Journal of Race and Law, vol. 10 (2005), p. 327. Angela Y. Davis and Dylan Rodriguez, “The challenge of prison abolition: a conversation”, Social Justice, vol. 27 (2000), p. 212. Christina R. Rivers, “Civil death and the execution of democracy: black political power in the ‘New Jim Crow’ era of mass incarceration, National Conference of Black Political Scientists (Wilmington, 2014), available from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2404105. James Austin and others, “The use of incarceration in the United States”, Critical Criminology, vol. 10 (2001), pp. 17–41 (2001); and Frank Rudy Cooper, “The un-balanced Fourth Amendment: a cultural study of the drug war, racial profiling and Arvizu”, Villanova Law Review, vol. 47 (2002), p. 851. Marc Mauer and David Cole, “Five myths about incarceration”, Washington Post, 17 June 2011, available from http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-incarceration/2011/06/13/ AGfIWvYH_story.html.