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Comment by yucky | Hacker News Reader

93% of prisoners are men[1], so it's pretty common that women do not face justice.

[1] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_gende...

Justice is what happens when people are held accountable for the wrong things they've done.

Nothing about justice requires that punishment be meted out in strict accordance with the demographic breakdown of a population except insofar as wrong things are done in strict accordance with the same demographic categories.

Maybe you're assuming that to be the case, but I don't think you'll find any evidence to support such a claim.

Exactly. If black people disproportionately are in prison, maybe that's just justice.

uh...

This is called "affirming the consequent."

Exactly. If men are disproportionately in prison, maybe that isn't justice.

Why is it ok for 'spaulding to just shut down the argument as "nothing about justice requires that punishment be meted out in strict accordance with demographic breakdown" but suddenly a fallacy when I insert an actual demographic? I knew it would make people upset because well if we're talking about men then no defense is necessary, no woodruffw to the rescue with "affirming the consequent", but if black people cue up the folks with the torches.

Nobody has torches out. I'm just pointing out that 'spaulding has made a strictly correct observation. You could have responded to it with an equally valid and interesting observation ("we have ample social evidence that criminalization is gendered"), but you chose to be inflammatory instead.

It's not justice, but the same phenomenon. If certain group has a larger tendency to commit crimes, and you have limited time and resource to look for crimes, it's overall more effective (arrest more people and perhaps prevent more crime) to disproportionately target that certain group. Men and blacks do in fact proportionally commit more crime than women and other races, but less so than the rate of incarceration suggests. There are only two ways to prevent this: being super effective and checking everything (police state), or being less effective and arrest less criminals for taking extra steps to arrest in just proportion (there are legit reasons to want this, e.g. it'd be terrible for society if for example white women had the sensation they could commit any crime without punishment. But to what degree is that extra effort worth it?).

Or maybe it's not? It completely depends on your prior. I, for one, am not entirely convinced that racism disappeared without a trace in 1964.

Justice should be blind in terms of punishment. Easy show systemic racism by looking at the number of African Americans in jail for drug offenses for drug when comparing across races. Drug use by race is relatively consistent in terms of percentage. I would consider that a big problem with our justice system.

My understanding is those "usage rates" are uniform only if we look at "used in last year", but ignore "used in last week" metrics where they diverge (according to Bureau of Justice Statistics). SSC did a pretty good deep dive on race and the criminal justice system, that covers this and other things such as underreporting, below:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-...

As more and more women break the glass ceiling, we’ll see a higher percentage of white collar crimes being committed by women

Would need to have more information before coming to such a conclusion, such as the proportion of crimes committed by men vs women, the types of crimes committed by men vs women, etc.

Same when comparing racial disparity in crime/prison.

National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) does a pretty good job. It compiles the stats through interviewing victims of crime, so they aren't coming from enforcement branches.

Aren't there lots of terrible crimes without a victim? Like smoking or growing plants, or owning an NFA restricted firearm item? So looking at victims may not tell the whole picture.

1) What's the have to do with the conversation?

2) That's not how logic works. Correlation does not equate to causation.

I agree that correlation doesn't equal causation, I pointed it out because it's the exact same argument used to decry racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Either the argument is valid, or it isn't. We can't pick and choose when it fits our beliefs.

You're still oversimplifying things. A large reason people get confused between correlation and causation[0] but rather things that are correlated and connected with a confounder. The problem here is oversimplifying the model. You have to ask a lot more whys. It is fact that men are arrested more than women and fact that black men are arrested more often, as a percentage, than white men. But it is naive to assume that the "man" variable or the "black" variable are causal variables. In fact they are confounders.

The argument isn't either "valid or not" in a general sense. The argument needs more nuance and if that's your concern, ask for it and point out where it is lacking. Demand better comments instead of trying a quick mic drop.

[0] Most people aren't confused with spurious correlations like: US technology funding vs number of hangings. (99.8% correlated) http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

For what it's worth, I agree with you. But if you've ever discussed racial disparities in anything you know that asking for more information that might not fit neatly with the established narrative, is likely to just get you called a Nazi or something.

I think you're exaggerating this. No one is going to call you a Nazi for saying that Black men have a lower ability to climb the socioeconomic ladder through traditional legal means and thus have a propensity to seek out other non-legal means. Many seeking social justice will stand by that actually. But you will get called a Nazi if you suggest that the reason for them doing this is because they are black (note: capitalization is subtle but important). That is eugenics and has been disproved.

See how the causal factors in these arguments are different? The former is a demonstration of an unfair set of opportunities that disproportionately affects a certain subset of humans while the latter says that the arrests are destined because of genetic makeup. We know one is true and the other is false.

If you're making arguments akin to the former and getting called a Nazi, get off Twitter and touch some grass. Talk to some real people. Specifically people of color. But maybe listen first before you open your mouth.

If you use that argument to explain away property crime differences, maybe. But that doesn't hold for violent crime rate disparities, which is typically where these conversations go off the rails.

Maybe if that is happening then the problem is you're talking about apples when others are talking about oranges. They're both round fruits and share a lot of similarities so it is easy to get the two confused. Especially with human language where we have a lot of priors that fill in the tremendous gaps in our compressed language. It is even more problematic with hot topics, which is why I suggested listening first. If there is a failure to communicate then maybe change the means in which you are communicating. This should also prod you to listen better. Remember that in communicating you're trying to express this complex idea with a limited vocabulary and time. The listener then has to decompress and interpret this information based on what you said (not what you are thinking) combined with their prior experiences (including the similarity of your argument to arguments made by others. Possibly others you don't wish to associate who are instead dog whistling or using malinformation). So do your best to communicate well and specifically with your target audience but also ensure that you are doing your best to interpret the intended message of those you are communicating with. Not only will the latter help make a more productive conversation, but demonstrating this helps encourage others to do the same in return. Not to say that we aren't human and won't make quick quips. But if we can re-navigate these situations, they do tend to turn out better. I think this conversation between us is a good demonstration of that.

You assume good intentions with these people, that is not what has been on display for the last few years. A general rule of thumb is that anybody engaged in identity politics is a horrible human being, and discussion with them is generally an exercise in futility.

These are people who literally start every discussion with the idea that people of different races should be treated differently based on the color of their skin. So I suspect they're projecting a bit, since that is precisely Nazi ideology cloaked in a different skin (literally).

> You assume good intentions with these people

Yes, because if we don't, then it does lead to what's been on display (which is also a selection bias). Start with the assumption of good intentions, but you don't have to keep that after they play their hand.

> A general rule of thumb is that anybody engaged in identity politics is a horrible human being, and discussion with them is generally an exercise in futility.

I found the problem. If you treat everyone you meet like an asshole or terrible person then it is no wonder they respond that way. You can't expect anyone to be nice to you if you are being a dick to them. People can tell what you think of them. You probably aren't as good of a bluff as you think you are.

Well there is an easy way to test this theory of yours, by answering a question. Do you think we should treat people differently based on the color of their skin?

I happen to think we should treat everyone the same regardless of skin color. Do you?

I'm not taking the bait. I just want you to know that the reason you're having problems with people is because you're arrogant. Tone it down if you want to have the conversations you want to have because you're never going to get there the way you're going about it. That's the end of this conversation for me. Sorry.

Most crime is committed by men too

Most crime that we have records for to use for studies is committed by men you mean. Who is to say how much crime by women goes unreported and uninvestigated, and therefore has no presence in our statistics.

Yeah but it's not as if there is this huge epidemic of underreported or uninvestigated crimes committed by women. This doesn't account for the statistical difference.

This same argument is used to dispute the racial disparities in the justice system.

Is the explanation right in this case but wrong in that. Right in both? Wrong in both?

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