Smells like Teen Surveillance: Gang Databases and the Need for Enhanced Fourth Amendment Protection for Children

As they exist today, law enforcement’s gang databases inaccurately and disproportionately record information about young Black and Brown people. Often, the kind of information included exceeds what is allowed by federal regulation. This manner of policing and surveillance used to facilitate the creation of gang databases has been present since America’s founding. Young people and children are especially susceptible to these practices because of their incomplete psychological development, limited control over their own lives and whereabouts, and imbalanced power dynamics when interacting with adult police officers. Furthermore, in most jurisdictions, children and their families are not notified of their inclusion in a gang database. This is concerning because gang database inclusion can result in harsher treatment from police, bias in sentencing, and, in immigration proceedings where gang database inclusion can be admitted into evidence, deportation. This Note argues, however, that eliminating gang databases alone is not the solution. Law enforcement has historically adapted to such changes to achieve the same result: surveillance of young people of color. Thus, this Note argues that young people need procedural safeguards to protect them from the law enforcement stops that comprise the information in gang databases. To do this, this Note looks to learn from the largely failed procedural safeguards for youth under Miranda in order to develop a solution in the Fourth Amendment context that works to stop the cycle of surveillance of minors.