Interesting article - "Is the Criminal-Justice System Racist?"

[quote name='Heavy Hitter']According to Heather McDonald's article, no. To quote - "No: the high percentage of blacks behind bars reflects crime rates, not bigotry."
Good read.

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_criminal_justice_system.html[/QUOTE]

Well, I may have more to say after I buckle down and read the article, but that's a flawed position from the get-go. Oh, there are more blacks in jail because of crime rates! *slaps forehead* Huh. And how do we determine who gets searched and arrested and convicted and what sentence they receive and what even counts as a crime in the first place, and all those factors that make up those "crime rates"? Yeah.
 
In general, there is disparity in the system, but outright racism/discrimination isn't overly common. You'll always have a few racist cops, racist judges etc. that effect things.

The main reasons for the prison disparity are that the bulk of serious street crime is in poor, disadvantaged urban areas that happen to be largely minority.

The rates of offending thing is an interesting point, self report surveys in which people report their delinquency etc. in the past year usually find little difference for most crimes between races. Of course, these tend to focus more on minor things like drug use, shoplifting etc., as people are unlikely to be honest about reporting things like robbery despite the surveys being anonymous.

So part of the difference for things like pot and other drugs is simply that you're more likely to get caught in poor urban areas where there are a ton more police around vs. the suburbs or especially rural areas, due to police focusing on high crime areas.

That said, there are some racist policies, be it intentional or unintentional. The classic example is the 100:1 disparity for the 5 year mandatory minimum sentence for crack cocaine vs. powdee cocaine. It takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to get the mandatory sentence, vs. only 5 grams of crack cocaine.

Some say that came about due to the raging crime in the 1980s associated with crack, others say it was because rich whites used powder cocaine and poor minorities used crack. The latter would seem more pertinent to explaining why the law is still on the books long after the crack epidemic of the 1980s has abated and crime rates have dropped.

Then there's the whole marxist/conflict criminology view that we have the disparity because the rich whites with power define behaviors of the lower class as criminal (fits the above example--harder to apply to serious crimes like murder, robbery etc--the mala en se offenses--evil in themselves).

Anyway, post is kind of all over the place--that's reflective of the criminological literature on race and crime. It's a bit all over place, but the general sense is there's a lot of disparity in sentences, but probably not much outright discrimination.
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']In general, there is disparity in the system, but outright racism/discrimination isn't overly common. You'll always have a few racist cops, racist judges etc. that effect things.

The main reasons for the prison disparity are that the bulk of serious street crime is in poor, disadvantaged urban areas that happen to be largely minority.

The rates of offending thing is an interesting point, self report surveys in which people report their delinquency etc. in the past year usually find little difference for most crimes between races. Of course, these tend to focus more on minor things like drug use, shoplifting etc., as people are unlikely to be honest about reporting things like robbery despite the surveys being anonymous.

So part of the difference for things like pot and other drugs is simply that you're more likely to get caught in poor urban areas where there are a ton more police around vs. the suburbs or especially rural areas, due to police focusing on high crime areas.

That said, there are some racist policies, be it intentional or unintentional. The classic example is the 100:1 disparity for the 5 year mandatory minimum sentence for crack cocaine vs. powdee cocaine. It takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to get the mandatory sentence, vs. only 5 grams of crack cocaine.

Some say that came about due to the raging crime in the 1980s associated with crack, others say it was because rich whites used powder cocaine and poor minorities used crack. The latter would seem more pertinent to explaining why the law is still on the books long after the crack epidemic of the 1980s has abated and crime rates have dropped.

Then there's the whole marxist/conflict criminology view that we have the disparity because the rich whites with power define behaviors of the lower class as criminal (fits the above example--harder to apply to serious crimes like murder, robbery etc--the mala en se offenses--evil in themselves).

Anyway, post is kind of all over the place--that's reflective of the criminological literature on race and crime. It's a bit all over place, but the general sense is there's a lot of disparity in sentences, but probably not much outright discrimination.[/QUOTE]

Well said.

[quote name='thrustbucket']*Reads Dmaul's post. Looks around for Mykevermin. Hides behind a bush with bowl of chicken wings and puts on a helmet*[/QUOTE]

You really think DMaul's post is drastically at odds with anything Myke would say?
 
[quote name='thrustbucket']*Reads Dmaul's post. Looks around for Mykevermin. Hides behind a bush with bowl of chicken wings and puts on a helmet*[/QUOTE]

Meh, we're both criminologists, I can't imagine he has much of a different take than what I just wrote. :D

That's pretty much the basics you're going to learn about race and crime when getting ready for the comprehensive exams in any criminology and criminal justice Ph D program.
 
Was going to read the article but i couldn't get past the first sentance

The race industry and its elite enablers take it as self-evident that high black incarceration rates result from discrimination.
Click to expand...

I pretty much agree 100% with dmaul though I'd say there's probably more unconscious racism at work outside of urban areas.

Example of what I mean: I've had a headlight out for over a year and a half now because of a wiring problem. Never been pulled over for it, my gf had one out for 3 months and was pulled over three to four times. I drive a grey 2001 sentra, she drove (at the time) a white 1989 corolla. We live in the incredibly affluent area of CT so her car stuck out as a poor persons car (translation minority) while mine fit in fine as a middle class white guys car. She never got a ticket for it, im assuming because she was white, but they pulled her over every chance they got.

Now presuming she wasn't white and female there would be (in my eyes) a much higher chance of her getting a ticket and should she have anything illicit on her, a much higher chance of her being arrested. This isn't to say that the officers were consciously weighing her race against what they were going to do but its something that sticks out to me.
 
I'd go more with class-based rather than race-based discrimination for the most part now anyway, but I can't take that article seriously, so I'm not going to argue about anything in it.
 
This is interesting:

"The JFA Institute, an anti-incarceration advocacy group, estimated in 2007 that in only 3 percent of violent victimizations and property crimes does the offender end up in prison."

I wonder what percentage of "violent victimizations and property crimes" result in indictments and trials.

Of those trials and indictments, how much is spent on legal defense based on race?
 
Well, only about 10% of crimes reported to the police very result in an arrest (that's total--including minor crimes through murders--rate is higher for more serious crimes).

So it's not that surprising that the percentages for prison overall are low. They'd be hire if you looked at murders, armed robberies etc.

Property crime drops it a lot as the police seldom solve those.

But I don't know the actual percantages of crime types that go to indictment etc. off the top of my head (and don't care enough to look it up). :D
 
[quote name='Heavy Hitter']Apparently it matters enough to prompt you to breeze in and drop a snarky, dismissive comment.[/quote]

That's a very low standard. And don't say "snarky."
 
[quote name='mykevermin']Who is Heather McDonald and why does what she say matter?[/QUOTE]

This is very disappointing. I was hoping for well-reasoned, intelligent commentary from a liberal academic perspective on the subject matter. Perhaps when you're sober? :)
 
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