Some time ago, I participated in a conference about “policing in an age of terror.” One big topic was the place of informed hunches in the armory of the police. Was it okay, or was it culpably racist, for the police to act on educated hunches when going about their jobs? Should they “profile” certain groups of people and, in some circumstances and in some neighborhoods, “stop and frisk” people they thought looked suspicious? Well, the heart, as Pascal famously assured us, has its reasons that reason does not know. About this, as about most things, Pascal was right. But what does it tell us about “rational hunches” or “policing in the age of terror?”
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