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Comment by brainfire | Hacker News Reader

This was flagged to death but I'm vouching it because it should be addressed.

First, I'm not sure I believe your numbers to begin with. Is there a source?

Second, a huge issue is racism in law and police policies (not necessarily in individual cops) - crime statistics need to be taken with a grain of salt. The numbers reflect what the police and courts do, not what people do- they're related of course, but there's a bias.

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> a huge issue is racism in law and police policies (not necessarily in individual cops) - crime statistics need to be taken with a grain of salt

Homicides are one way to dis-entangle this (in jurisdictions not prone to To Kill A Mockingbird asshattery). It's objective as to when it happens. And our courts are relatively better, at least in the post-DNA era, about due process when it comes to such crimes.

It appears blacks committed 52.2% of homicides from 1976 through 2005 while representing 12.3% of the population [1]. The 2013 statistic for "murder and nonnegligent manslaughter" arrests of blacks is also 52.2% [2]. That said, (a) arrest does not mean conviction and (b) we decided long ago, and rightfully so, that projecting population characteristics onto someone who did not choose to be a member of that population is morally wrong and therefore, oftentimes, illegal.

[1] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htius.pdf page 12

[2] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

> It appears blacks committed 52.2% of homicides from 1976 through 2005 while representing 12.3% of the population .

We can take this further: It should not be compared against the total population, but segmented by traits known to be associated with violent crime, like poverty. But even then, since violence is itself cultural, I'd expect certain area's to be more unsafe than others, despite similar levels of poverty. So we'd need to look at blacks and non-blacks in those specific areas and compare those specific traits. I'm _sure_ someone has done this study, does anyone have enough familiarity with this area to provide some high quality references?

A well-cited and recent paper concluded that "while male joblessness has little or no direct effect on crime, it has the strongest overall effect on family disruption, which in turn is the strongest predictor of black violence. [1]"

[1] https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3226953/Sampson_... journal page 377

I think it's worth noting that those BJS stats talk about convictions and that less than half of all violent crime is "cleared". [1] It's hard to know for sure who is getting away with these crimes but it's enough people that, IMO, the figures are highly suspect.

[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

> It appears blacks committed 52.2% of homicides from 1976 through 2005 while representing 12.3% of the population

It appears blacks were victims in 52.3% of homicides while representing 13.3% of the population. [1]

[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/race-and-hom...

And even if the stats are totally true, they're still misleading. Crime is more strongly associated with low socioeconomic status than with race. It's not black > crime, it's crime > punishment > poor > crime, and blacks are caught in the loop.

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