Ladies and gentlemen, your excellencies,
First, I would like to thank the Special Rapporteur for
having invited me to this prestigious event, it is quite an
honor to be here.
On Monday, we have, in detail discussed a Draft
Recommendation on Minorities in the Criminal Justice
System. Once finalized, submitted and adopted, it, I am
sure, will serve as an invaluable instrument for the
protection of minorities in the criminal justice system and
beyond.
Among the various important issues raised in the document
and the interventions heard yesterday and today, I will
only highlight two, which I find worthy for consideration in
the Forum.
The first concerns dilemmas pertaining to data collection
and underlying definitions and classifications of minority
communities, as well as membership within the groups, and
the second pertains to the definition of hate crimes.
I would like to emphasize in the outset that discrimination
in the criminal justice system, and policing in particular,
can occur both in the form of OVER AND UNDER
POLICING OF MINORITIES.
The first question I would like to address concerns
classification and data collection.
We see a well-documented, and often historically rooted and,
thus, understandable reluctance on behalf of many states to
collect data on ethnicity and race.