This link says it all. For example, in Massachusetts, African-Americans are about 7% of the population but almost 30% of the inmates.
Here it is, state by state: http://www.scribd.com/doc/9381…
Probably someone could pull this as a cut and paste.
But we now incarcerate, nationally, 1 of 142 in our population. The cost is $48k a year each.
The disproportionate impact is eye popping.
And so is the economic impact. Some wizard could figure out how many days each year I work just to pay for prisons. A lot.
Please share widely!
I don’t see what the relevance of these statistics is. Maybe African-Americans do commit about 30% of the imprionable offences. You’ll have to show that a particular judge consistently gives black defendents harsher sentences than whites convicted of the same crime before I start seeing a problem. Otherwise, I don’t buy the implication that such disproportionality automatically means a prejudicial system.
What if we found that most judges were just a little more likely to sentence minority defendants to prison, or a little more likely to give them longer sentences?
Or what if it could be shown that white defendants are 25% more likely to hire their own defense attorneys, and that these folks are 35% more likely to get an acquittal for imprisonable offenses (murder, manslaughter, fraud, larceny, cocaine possession, DUI homicide, etc)?
No problems there?
I’m not saying I’ve researched it myself, or that these are in any way accurate statistics- but I think your scenario of a consistently inconsistent, obviously bigoted judge is a bit too narrow a criterion for gauging bias of the judicial system.
See my reply above to your original comment.
The variable in this discussion would be race. If your first sentence is true that would concern me, but again I would want to see that a particular judge consistently sentences black defendents more harshly than white defendents and I would want to know if there were any other factors involved. My philosophy is that like snowflakes no two cases are ever exactly alike, which is why we have human judges and not computers deciding cases. As for conviction rates we’ll never know if the same jury would hand down two different verdicts, except in the case of co-defendents, since jurors only serve for one trial and so there is nothing to compare.
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p>I do assume that those who can hire their own attorney get a better deal than those who get a public defender and statistically it may well be the case that whites can do this at a higher rate than blacks. However, that is really a class issue and not a race issue. Since we already extend the right to have counsel to mean the right to be provided with counsel, which is certainly a good thing, I’m not sure what more we can do to level that playing field.
You seem to be arguing that legal outcomes are so completely unrelated to one another as to be beyond the powers of statistical analysis … even though these are the kinds of complex systems such analysis exists to understand.
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p>Why does it have to be the same judge giving different sentences? This criterion assumes all racism is personal, that there is no such thing as systemic racism.
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p>Google “race drug sentencing” and see numerous studies that find black defendants sentenced more harshly for exactly the same crimes.
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p>And if race reduces to class behind these numbers, then it’s evidence that blacks are poorer and less powerful … and therefore get screwed more by the legal system. Phew, I’m glad there’s no racism in our legal system.
Certainly you can do the statistics, but to what end? Systems can only be racist if the people charged with making them work are racist. We can moan all we want about the disparities, but unless there is a concrete solution, which I don’t see, then it seems we are wasting our energy. We can legislate narrower sentencing guidelines to ensure consistency I suppose, but don’t progressives usually balk at that? Blacks may be IN GENERAL “poorer and less powerful”, but it is a generalization. There are plenty of poor whites and better off blacks. Yes, I believe that each case should be judged both as to guilt and sentencing on its own merits, unless the charges themselves are connected.
Both in terms of what systemic racism is and how researchers compare things (like criminal cases) that differ in some ways and are constant in others. If you get outcomes with no conceivable explanation other than differential treatment by race, you have some form of systemic racism.
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p>It’s not rocket science. Poor people get treated worse by the legal system. Black people get treated worse because they are poor and also, to some unknown but significant degree, because they are black. This has been documented.
…What do you DO about it? I’m in no way denying the statistics, but if Judge Smith sentences a black defendant more harshly than Judge Jones sentences a white defendant then may be it’s a difference in judges and not a difference in defendants. Maybe Judge Smith is more law-and-order generally and would have sentenced a white defendant more harshly than Judge Jones would sentence a black defendant. We don’t know unless we have a pattern and if we do find a pattern I would say the individual judge is racist rather than “the system”. Please make a suggestion as to how to fix it, if it indeed really needs fixing. Do you have examples of cases where the ONLY differences are the race of the defendants and the sentences received? BTW, “Black people get treated worse because they are poor…” is quite the overgeneralization of the socio-economic status of black people. You also assert without foundation that “also…because they are black”, which you have no way of knowing unless you can read the judge’s mind or have some documentation of intent to discriminate. I guess I’m more optimistic about people’s attitudes than you are.
First, documenting the patterns is doing a lot, because it raises awareness. It gives pressure groups and legislators (and defense lawyers!) ammunition and embarrasses those who need to be embarrassed. It can inform professional seminars for judges and lawyers. It could even lead to a review process for judges, courts, districts, and states, with a scale of repercussions for continued imbalances. Some of these things have been done with police treatment of motorists, for example. Nobody had to argue that the Wellesley cops who pulled over Dee Brown were racist (and I don’t think they were). That department just needed a wake-up call on the assumptions produced by the town’s demographics.
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p>I think we’re on different wavelengths here regarding abstract vs. statistical vs. specific claims. I thought it was obvious that I meant “black people get treated worse b/c they are (proportionally/on average/more likely to be etc.) poor.” Socioeconomic differences by race are sort of widely accepted to exist.
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p>The law already recognizes systemic racism. Nobody has to prove “intent to discriminate” in the minds of legislators before you can challenge redistricting or school segregation, e.g. I don’t understand why you would want such a high bar anyway, unless your own “intent” is to block such reform.
First, thank you for your answer. We may be getting somewhere. I try (pretty successfully I think if I do say so myself) to be absolutely color-blind. I’m not sure what good defense arguments such as you suggest would do, at least in my hypothetical courtroom. If I were an appellate judge and a defense attorney started spouting stats that show that his client is somehow a victim of racism, I would probably be quick to cut him off and say, “Can we stick to the merits of THIS case?” I’m not familiar with the Wellesley case you cite, but I don’t believe in keeping track of race of drivers in general (maybe, for specific cops or towns if a problem is suspected).
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p>As for redistricting (I assume you mean legislative districts.) I don’t believe race should be taken into account. Last time I checked each person counts as one person and the 3/5 clause became a moot point with the end of slavery. I believe political boundaries and regional interests should be taken into account as much as possible, but otherwise all that should matter is that each district include the right number of people, whoever those people may be.
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p>Forced school segregation was declared unconstitutional more than 50 years ago, but de facto segregation per se due to neighborhood demographics actually doesn’t bother me PROVIDED that all students within the community of equal access to facilities and resources. That is the real issue. At the elementary level my town has a wide disparity in its schools and you go to the school for your part of town. For us its not a race issue as the town is about 95% white throughout and all the schools are roughly the same in that regard.
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p>You can raise awareness all you want, but I’m still looking for the next step.
Without meaning to be disrespectful, your positions boil down to: if we pretend race doesn’t exist, racism and racial disparities will go away. Since the general disparity AmberPaw cites has been growing steadily worse, during a period in which Americans’ attitudes toward race have been growing increasingly tolerant and “color-blind,” it doesn’t seem to be working.
…but short of some kind of law insisting that whites be sentenced more harshly than blacks to intentionally rectify the imbalance, I don’t see what can be done. Such a law would be blatantly unfair and an obvious violation of the equal protection clause. Still waiting for a concrete solution from those who are concerned about this.
why not let whites get a taste of that for a while? then they might get serious about enforcing it for everyone. i’m being facetious of course, but not very. something is never a problem until it hurts you. just ask my straight brother, who thinks i’m a nut for getting upset about all the anti-gay laws and amendments. they dont’ affect him personally, so he sees no real pressing problem and thinks anyone who does is just overly emotional.
…that the equal protection clause SHOULD be enforced to the fullest extent? It shouldn’t take personal experience to force this issue, but though I agree with you on the merits your rhetoric is extreme in some cases. I’m just a calmer personality I guess.
I would be more apt to think that if the reason for the incarceration was racism, that the states that are traditionally racist would have a higher ratio of population to incarceration rate than a traditionally non-racist state.
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p>Lets look at some ratios from our black-friendly free-states.
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p>New Hampshire: 8.9
Maine: 7.7
Vermont: 10.3
Rhode Island: 8.0
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p>And some former slave states and bastions of racism?
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p>Mississippi: 1.9
Louisiana: 2.2
Georgia: 2.2
Virginia 3.1
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p>The main outlier to this group appears to be West Virginia, who has the nations highest with 11.0
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p>These numbers don’t make sense to me. Are we in the tolerant and liberal northeast closet racists? Has the south shed its great disdain for the colored folk? This is some interesting state breakdown.
Yes*. (well not everyone, but I think this area gets too much credit for it’s alleged racial progresiveness.)
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p>”Has the south shed its great disdain for the colored folk?”
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p>No.
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p>My first, quick thought is that the numbers in Mississippi, etc are so low when compared to the northeast is that the Black population is so large in those southern states, that it is mathematically impossible for those states to have ratios that are significantly bigger than they are.
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p>For example: Mississippi’s BLack population is 36.3% of the population, with a Black prisoners making up 70.5% of those incarcerated for a ration of 1.9, meaning that we can multiply 36.3 x 1.9 to arrive at approximately the 70.5% (the numbers aren’t precise, I presume it is due to rounding).
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p>If Mississippi were to equal New Hampshire’s ratio of 8.9, then 36.3 x 8.9 = 323. Obviously, we can’t have 323% of the African American population incarcerated. So I’m betting that the closer a state’s Black population tends to be to 50% of the overall population, the smaller the ratio tends to be.
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p>——————
*Martin Luther King moved to Chicago in 1966 and he famously said that the racism he found in the northern city of Chicago was worse than what he had been fighting in the South. We in the north love to brag about the civil rights folks that went down to the “backwards” south in the 60s, forgetting things like King’s violent experiences in Chicago, that a disproportionate amount of the Northerners traveling to the South were Jewish – people that had their own integration struggle – and the ugliness of bussing in the 70s in liberal, now deep blue places like Boston.
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p>We also forget that Celtics great Bill Russell, the Michael Jordan of his time, was constantly harassed and someone broke into his home and shit on his bed. And the Red Sox were the last team to integrate due to a racist ownership culture.
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p>Joe, check out Howard Bryant’s book, Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston.
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p>Even if you don’t read the whole book, check out chapter two; before Bryant gets into the Baseball, he provides an excellent overview of Boston in the 1800s and the events that created the classic sectarian Boston that we discuss when talking about the Irish in politics, racism in sports, and busing. Bryant discusses the disconnect between the legendary progressive Boston of abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and ex-slave and orator Frederick Douglass, and the parochial, tribal, and bigoted Boston that many African Americans were disappointed to find in later years. Bryant also illustrates how late 1800s immigrant class Irish and Irish Americans should have been natural allies with African Americans in the struggles for both to gain power and leverage over with the ruling Brahmin class, yet the Irish’s competition with Black people for jobs and housing was exploited as a divisive force which led to the idea that Irish association with Black people hurt the Irish’s chance at social mobility.
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p>King and Bryant, among many others, put to rest the idea of the morally-superior-in-terms-of-race North. Yes, we have a habit of thinking that we were/are “better” in that respect, but more than likely, it’s that we were/are different in our racism.
had never occurred to me. Good point!
that drawing an all-white jury is less likely in the South.
…I know here, with the “stroke of a pen” the role of Guardian Ad Litem [ED GAL] for education was abolished without notice or apparent concern – for teens who were truants or otherwise in low grade trouble [CHINS kids, those in court due to “Children in Need of Services Petitions”] – and most of these kids, at least when I had been appointed to represent them or was serving as an ED GAL has failed families and as ED GAL I was the first to request special ed evaluations and other basics.
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p>Most of these kids – not all – were minority. And there is less every year outside of the “school to prison” pipeline. In our state, the largest source of mental health help for kids is in lockup because there is almost nothing for them.
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p>So when I looked at these statistics, it occurred to me that the same utter disregard for vulnerable human beings if not “kids of the right folk” was probably global.
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p>And that bothered me, and so I pulled up the link and put it out for discussion.
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p>One of the kids I am talking about was adopted by a grandmother because her biological mother was lost to crack. She was sexually abused by her uncle, but her grandmother is in denial. So the kid, now 13, has no family to go back to and is learning how to behave, I hope, as I had finally gotten her into a good residential school – before my role was eliminated with the stroke of a pen in the dark. There was zero family to care for her or advocate for her and that is not the child’s fault.
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p>Children should not be treated as disposable and valueless – but I feel they are if they are the “wrong color” or ethnos here. And the dumping of all ED GALs mid case like that shows it.
http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/s…
No one has ever proved to me that a disparate racial incarceration rate is prima facie proof of law enforcement or judicial discrimination.
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p>I look the mapping of violent crime in Boston and note that the highest concentrations of violent crime are in neighborhoods with higher percentages of African-American residents. (I’m using violent crime as a proxy for all crime.)
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p>What’s the mystery: more crime in black neighborhoods, therefore, a higher black incarceration rate? Why is this not self-evident?
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p>Should the prison population be exactly the same racial mix as the general population? Of course not. Except in the progressive mind.
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p>
who do the exact same thing they complain about.
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p>
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p>No one said that. I believe it was merely suggested that this disparity merits further discussion. And it does. And thoughtful progressives like Christopher and others weigh in and suggest that a proper analysis would be quite complex. You, on the other hand, state:
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p>
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p>Simple as that? Alas, you lack the advantages of a progressive mind.
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p>Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely agree that the disparate rates of incarceration do not establish a prima facie case of discrimination. I just feel compelled to stick up for progressive minds.
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p>
Anyway, here are some links:
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p>Some background on disproportionality and “embedded” racism, with mutigenerational impact:
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p>http://www.casey.org/OurWork/D…
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p>http://www.antiracistalliance….
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p>Racial profiling and police stops:
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p>http://euc.sagepub.com/cgi/con…
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p>http://www.jointheconversation…
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p>http://chelm.freeyellow.com/ra…
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p>Part of the inquiry should be “why” one or more groups are represented in the prison population in a “disproportionate” manner to their representation in the population.
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p>Stating that there is a disproportionate amount of crime in African American communities and inferring that this fact [if true] should lead to greater incarceration is a tautology.
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p>In making this assumption, were other communities at the same socio-economic level compared?
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p>Is the cause or causes of “greater crime” in some neighborhoods analyzed?
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p>Framing the right questions is necessary to get useful answers.
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p>More to the point, WHY does the USA have the highest percapita level of incarceration in the “developed world” – Higher then, say, Russia or England, or Spain? Why does such a high portion of our gross national product go into prisons and law enforcement? Some process or societal paradigm is not working very well.
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p>And so I looked at that chart, not to blame, but to say, why? What could be changed to be more positive, functional, and productive?
The U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration of the entire world.
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p>We’re #1, unfortunately.
How did we end up with so many nasty rapists, murderers, sadists and alike? Which country should the US be more like? What would that country do with the animal that killed Anne Pressly?
of the people in prison are the violent miscreants you’re concerned about.
http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q…
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p>The New Prohibition has been recreating all the successes of the first Prohibition. Smuggling? Check. Funding violent criminal organizations? Check. Criminalizing victimless recreation? Check. Putting innocent citizens in the line of fire? Check. Failing utterly at eliminating the target substances? Check.
why don’t you encourage the new “Change” administration to do a test? Pick a state, say Maryland and “change” the laws to something you and your kind would like to see. I’ll assume you are in favor of perpetrators of non-violent crimes (drug users, drug dealers, pimps, weapons offenses, property offenses, fraud, corruption…) to NOT be sentenced to prison. BTW, what would do to them? Therapy, check. Counseling, check. Provide love and affection, check. Fine them (they are penniless), check. What would MAryland look like with “your laws” and “your system of Justice” in place. Would law abiding people want to live there? How would property values do? Did you ever see “Escape from New York”? Don’t you think we have tried many of these ideas over the years and they fail miserably.
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p>So seriously, what exactly would you do in my experimental state of Maryland to address the issue of crime?
I’ll assume that you and ‘your kind’ always fall back on putting words in other people’s mouths because you can’t marshal a cogent argument without setting up strawmen to attack. Don’t strain yourself trying to bring anything substantial to the discussion if you don’t think you can carry the weight.
For 8 years we have heard how badly things have been run. Now it is the chance, no the obligation for the left to try it their way in Washington. It should be amusing to see how the horrible ways some things were run and criticized will suddenly become a good way of doing things. Deficits are bad, the National debt is a sin… now, “Don’t worry about deficit spending… the National debt will increase by $1.5 trillion and maybe more next year… no problem”.
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p>Strawman, drawman… just answer the question… what is your solution? Otherwise stop your belly aching. You are the one bringing nothing to the table but some complaints. Whine, whine, whine…
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p>
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p>So, your plan is?
is to point out once again that you’re stuffing straw. Who’s talking about the last eight years and Obama in this thread? You are. Who’s blathering on about deficits and the debt? Oh – that’s you, too.
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p>If you actually cared about the topic at hand and were willing to discuss it honestly, I’d answer those parts of your question that have some relevance here. You don’t; you aren’t; so I won’t.
Until you can come with a solution, stop whining and go light up. Until then the incarceration/race issue will continue just as is which is completely fine with me. People get arrested for breaking the law not for their color.
An excellent effort on your part to make the conversation more boring.
kirth spouts that we have #1 incarceration rate in world, I say it’s a sad story that we have so many “bad people”, kirth says only half people in jail are “violent” offenders, I say ask (with sarcasm) what are we going to do with all the “non-violent” offenders? What is kirth’s solution???
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p>No answer of course but defensive remarks and personal attacks. I believe if you criticize something then you have the responsibility to suggest an alternative. Did kirth want all non-violent incarcerated people to be freed from prison? Was kirth saying drugs should be legal? Is it wrong to ask for what kirth’s solution is?
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p>PS Do you have a solution or did you just feel like throwing a hand grenade and “goading” me?
The problem is ill-understood and discussing it with someone who insists on the most obtuse, simple-minded responses will be unproductive. Why do you aim to be that someone?
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p>P.S. One question mark usually suffices.
I don’t think there is an issue with our overwhelming number of blacks in prison relative to the general population. But, people who do have a problem with it (maybe you KBusch) should either criticize and promote their alternative ideas… or remain quiet and accept the status quo.
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p>Okay????????????
The first step to developing alternative ideas is to understand the problem. Trying to understand what is going on does not constitute “whining”.
I know you have the capacity to deal with inferiors like myself and talking down at my level does elevate you “god-like” status in my book.
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p>Ok, I’ve stopped working so I can concentrate on this (even with all the voices in my head). So have you gotten to the first step of understanding the problem yet (large percentage of prisoners are black relative to general population)? If yes, have you begun to develop an alternative idea yet (please hurry before discover something else like Asian prison population is far less general Asian population in the US indicating a clear bias against incarcerating Asians).
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p>I need to go lay down now… this thinking stuff is tiring… no wonder so many of you Democrats don’t have jobs.
I see nothing helpful to the issue of disproportionate incarcerations rates, or anything too helpful about anything racial, disproportional or otherwise:
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p>The Casey Link … about child welfare
AntiRacistAlliance.com … about child welfare programs in Texas
euc.sagepub.com … cryptic research abstract about police stops in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Spain
http://www.jointheconversation.com … sorry, I didn’t bother to download the Word document
Chelm.freeyellow.com … a screed filled with statistics of arrests and incarceration rates resulting from the War On Drugs, meant to reflect poorly on the War on Drugs.
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p>Seriously Amber, with all due respect, you want me to read this bullshit and then conclude something about racial disparities?
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p>That’s in line with your changing the subject. Your original post specifically brought attention to the disproportional incarceration rates:
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p>
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p>Now you accuse your own initial post of being a tautology:
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p>
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p>What’s your point? IS there a point?
Just wondering. If a kid is a throwaway, born to throwaways, with no way out, and then costs you $800k or more in incarceration and law enforcement rather than having the kind of family and education supports that are the norm in, say, Finland, you re ok with flushing all the tax money down the toilet as long as it is punitive? Did you know that in Finland, a father or mother who provides full time child care for their own child receives the average wage [ and overall, this is more than paid for by low incarceration, low crime rate, and high educational achievement there] – I don’t see any reason to put a full white paper here, though I have written them and I could. In THIS state even peanuts for Guardian Ad Litems for education no longer exist. Let ’em drop out and get high, the government here says, that’s fine, we can always lock ’em up later ’cause there is tons of money for incarceration but not a penny for education.
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p>Am I angry? You bet. Do I think the policy of open-ended incarceration and minimum sentencing, while closing one door after another to education is wrong, mean-spirited and downright stupid, as well as expensive? Yes I do.
If you’re bitching about disparity of incarceration, then what is your goal if not see total normalization of the prison population as the “non-racist” outcome.
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p>If I’m jumping to conclusions, then what mix of prison population would you consider not racist?
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p>And I see nothing faulty with my logic: areas of high crime contribute more to the prison population than areas of low crime. Yes, as simple as that. This does not speak to why higher crime rates exist in these neighborhoods, as “unfair” and racist as that fact may seem to the progressive mind.
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p>But hey, Back Bay and Beacon Hill could stand some more drive-bys and armed robberies. We’re disproportionately short of crime. Can we spread some around, it’s only fair.
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p>For this topic, there are no advantages to the progressive mind that I can discern.
I don’t understand why this happens, but it seems to often.
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p>In certain discussions, there are conservative contributors who want to squeeze out all the interesting nuance. We have plenty of liberals who are willing to say (and not just on this topic), “This sounds wrong, but I don’t know why” and a horde of usually conservative respondents whose replies seem to be “But you do know why! You’re just pretending not to know! I know what you think! And you’re wrong!” This kills any exploration of the “why”.
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p>Not only is “I know what you think!” toxic to intimate relationships, but it certainly short-circuits the more interesting and more delicate discussions we’d otherwise have.
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p>Note that JoeTS didn’t do this. So it’s not all conservatives. It should be possible to discuss these things at a level higher than talk radio.
In fact I have been saying this same thing for a long time (but usually get called a racist for even suggesting it).
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p>If an area has a high crime rate and that area has a high concentration of a race or ethnicity, it would make perfect sense to me that the incarceration rate would correlate to that data. I cannot believe that in fact there hasn’t been studies to observe this exact phenomenon. Now having said that I have no idea on the “why” it happens.
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p>Does anyone have any actual suggestions to address this? I’m the hard on crime, we need more prisons person but what is the suggestion from the “The US incarceration rate is higher than any other place in the universe… blah blah blah story”? Should we just “forgive people”. “try to understand them better” “blame ourselves” or maybe is a a correlation between our society, our freedoms, our give-away socialistic attitude which allows so many loafers, our turn the other cheek so they can slap that too naiveté or our (to paraphrase Obama) the inability to see that there is a huge difference between fathering a chid and being a father tot hat child…?
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p>Again I don’t know the WHY but I do know the IS. I would not feel safe walking down the streets of predominantly black areas (Mattapan Square, Dudley St, Chandler St -Worcester) vs. predominately white areas (Weston, West Roxbury).
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p>Now admittedly, it could be as simply as income levels. Being from MASS, it is hard to find a poor area in the state that isn’t also a high minority area. And it is also hard to find an affluent area that is also a high minority area so comparing apples to apples might be impossible. Maybe if you go to the midwest you can find cities where there is very poor areas made up of primarily white people and how does the incarceration rates look? Maybe I’m missing something but is there and area of MASS which is low income but is predominately white? The closest I can think of for a “non-poor” town with a high minority population is Randolph (black pop – 21%) and violent crime has increased steadily since 2000. but is still reasonable. So maybe income level, family structure, unemployment are huge factors vs. plain old race…
First, I need to call you on one thing right off the bat. You cite “our give-away socialistic attitude” as a problem, but these other countries are more welfare-states than we are.
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p>These countries with less crime do not resort to the death penalty AND have tougher gun laws. I would suggest their different attitude toward guns plus their greater willingness to take care of their people go a long way toward preventing crime to begin with and hence less need for prisons. We need to deflate our collective national ego a bit and allow ourselves to consider what we might learn from other countries that seem to get better results than we do on this and other things such as education and health care.
It is to laugh to see all the people in this thread saying, “Well, so what? If 30% of crimes are committed by blacks, shouldn’t they represent 30% of prisoners? There’s no evidence of judicial bias!”
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p>But the thing is, nobody on this thread actually argued that there is any judicial or law enforcement bias. To assume that that, specifically, was AmberPaw’s point, seems a rather large leap to conclusions to me.
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p>Now, of course there could be such bias, but even if there weren’t – even if all police officers and judges are completely race-blind and even-handed… Even granting all that, these numbers should deeply concern any thinking person, any person who cares about our society.
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p>If it turns out that 30% of crimes actually are committed by blacks, don’t we need to ask why this is? We can’t just turn a blind eye and say, “Enh, 30% of crime-committers are black, so 30% of prisoners are black. Makes sense. What’s the next diary about?”
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p>But that’s exactly what Christopher, bostonshepherd and JohnD are doing. All of them say, “these numbers don’t surprise me, they’re probably about right, because I sure don’t feel safe in Mattapan” when, regardless of the cause, they should shock any thinking member of society.
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p>So, if these numbers don’t surprise you, then tell us, just why do blacks commit so many crimes? Anyone? Bueller?
Here’s what she says:
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p>
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p>I claim this statement is meant to imply that there’s racism throughout our civil institutions, racism which results in disproportionate incarceration rates.
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p>That means from the beat cops to the judicial system, including the parole board. They’re all racists.
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p>Amber didn’t start this thread by saying, “hey why is all the crime concentrated in black neighborhoods?”
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p>She made a clear statement about the 7-to-30% ratio:
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p>
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p>It’s only further down that the thread morphed into more “nuanced” analysis.
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p>Try starting your own thread with this:
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p>
I don’t know if it is racism [though long standing cultural inequities do seem to be a part] clacissim or just what. But the solution of locking up more and more people is just not working.
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p>when one looks at the difference in schools, the impact on jobs of even a minor-league criminal record, the multigenerational impacts of these things – the family-unfriendly work place, the lack of mental health or addiction treatment – the economics of a 1:142 incarceration rate, the nefarious impact on the society as a whole of our gun-happy culture…the willingness to eliminate GALs for Education with the stroke of a pen as if an entire section of society is irrelevant…
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p>Morally – something is seriously wrong and the costs – in $$$$ and wasted human lives is not acceptable.
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p>Rather than just calling me names – what solution do hyou have other than flushing more human beings down a prisopn toilet?
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p>There is a very strong correlation between the impact of the child welfare system and its disproportionality and crime. The proportion of those children “raised by the State” via foster care who wind up with criminal records is, in our state 57% percent.
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p>I would hope you find THAT eye-popping. The report that says THAT statistic was done by the Department of Social Services, itself, and is linked in my earlier post, see http://foundationcenter.org/pn…
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p>Just doing nasty toned yapping is no way to fix a problem. Do you have any ideas other than “lock ’em up” and pay through the nose? I think there MUST be a better use of $48k each then lock ’em up.
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p>The actions of the court and law enforcement system are the end of the line. The child welfare system is the beginning of that end and the relationship is direct.
Rates of recidivism are important to look at, as well as rates of unemployment among former prisoners.
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p>AmberPaw, your points about the child welfare system are great.
We simply must imprison more white people to properly address this statistical injustice.
I don’t believe I said the numbers don’t surprise me; I used hypotheticals. I have also asked the questions about why more people in general are incarcerated here than elsewhere. I’m just very sensitive to somebody automatically crying racism whenever a statistical difference is detected. If it is true that blacks commit a disproportionate share of crime I don’t know why, but I have suggested we look at what more preventative rather than punitive measures be taken by society.