The Truth about Race and Crime
By • 5/5/08Heather Mac Donald has just published a wonderful piece debunking liberal myths about race and crime in City Journal. Her article serves as a good compliment to The Color of Crime, which I wrote while I was working for New Century Foundation and which covers much of the same ground. The gist of Mac Donald’s article is that blacks experience higher rates of incarceration not because of police or judicial bias, but because they commit crimes at far higher rates than non-blacks do.
The most powerful evidence comes from surveys in which crime victims are asked about the race of those who robbed or assaulted them. These surveys allow one to measure the percentage of criminals who are black. Generally speaking, the percentage of those arrested for a crime who are black is about the same as the percentage of criminals who are black, indicating that police are not racially biased in arrests.
Mac Donald also takes aim at the myth that harsh sentencing for crack offenders, who are almost all black, is responsible for racial disparities in incarceration rates. In fact, crack offenders make up less than one percent of prison populations, and blacks are almost as likely to be incarcerated for other crimes as they are for drug offenses.
Liberals would have you believe that American law enforcement is draconian, but as Mac Donald says, “Absent recidivism or a violent crime, the criminal-justice system will do everything it can to keep you out of the state or federal slammer.” In fact, very few first time property crime offenders go to prison, even if they steal a car.
Below I’ve copied a few highlights from the article, but the whole thing is well worth a read. For more on race and crime, see The Improvident Races and The Reality of Racial Differences.
About one in 33 black men was in prison in 2006, compared with one in 205 white men and one in 79 Hispanic men. Eleven percent of all black males between the ages of 20 and 34 are in prison or jail.
From 1976 to 2005, blacks committed over 52 percent of all murders in America. In 2006, the black arrest rate for most crimes was two to nearly three times blacks’ representation in the population. Blacks constituted 39.3 percent of all violent-crime arrests, including 56.3 percent of all robbery and 34.5 percent of all aggravated-assault arrests, and 29.4 percent of all property-crime arrests.
The race of criminals reported by crime victims matches arrest data. As long ago as 1978, a study of robbery and aggravated assault in eight cities found parity between the race of assailants in victim identifications and in arrests—a finding replicated many times since, across a range of crimes.
In 1997, criminologists Robert Sampson and Janet Lauritsen reviewed the massive literature on charging and sentencing. They concluded that “large racial differences in criminal offending,” not racism, explained why more blacks were in prison proportionately than whites and for longer terms. A 1987 analysis of Georgia felony convictions, for example, found that blacks frequently received disproportionately lenient punishment. A 1990 study of 11,000 California cases found that slight racial disparities in sentence length resulted from blacks’ prior records and other legally relevant variables. A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases from the country’s 75 largest urban areas discovered that blacks actually had a lower chance of prosecution following a felony than whites did and that they were less likely to be found guilty at trial. Following conviction, blacks were more likely to receive prison sentences, however—an outcome that reflected the gravity of their offenses as well as their criminal records.
Critics blame drug enforcement for rising racial disparities in prison… The facts say otherwise. In 2006, blacks were 37.5 percent of the 1,274,600 state prisoners. If you remove drug prisoners from that population, the percentage of black prisoners drops to 37 percent—half of a percentage point, hardly a significant difference. (No criminologist, to the best of my knowledge, has ever performed this exercise.)
The per-capita rate of imprisonment increased three times from 1973 to 2000; the number of state and federal prisoners grew fivefold between 1977 and 2007, from 300,000 to 1.59 million. When inmates in jails are included, the total number in correctional facilities at the end of 2007 was 2.3 million, according to the Pew Center on the States. One in 100 adults is in custody.
Absent recidivism or a violent crime, the criminal-justice system will do everything it can to keep you out of the state or federal slammer. It can be disconcerting for the average law-abiding citizen to hear a prosecutor’s typology of the crime universe: most thefts, for example, are considered “nonserious crimes” that do not merit prison sentences, unless they concern a huge amount of money or took place in the victim’s presence. Steal an unoccupied car or burgle an unoccupied home and you’ll probably get probation; hijack a car from a driver or stick up a pedestrian, however, and you’ll probably go to prison.
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The following (from the full article) goes a long way towards debunking the it’s-whites’-fault malarkey:
“Backing up this bias claim has been the holy grail of criminology for decades—and the prize remains as elusive as ever.”
That bona fide criminologists are willing to concede this is a very positive development, and would seem to mark some kind of advance since the initial release of Color of Crime, when that publication’s frank discussion of crime stats sent the criminology industry scurrying for cover.
By on 5/6/08 at 9:15 pm
The higher arrest rate has nothing to do with actual drug use or drug trafficking but much to do with policing methods and politics, which introduces racial bias and leads to institutional racism.
The US Governments view:
It acknowledged the dramatically disproportionate incarceration rates for minorities, noted the many studies indicating that members of minority groups, especially blacks and Hispanics, “may be disproportionately subject to adverse treatment throughout the criminal justice process,” and acknowledged concerns that “incidents of police brutality seem to target disproportionately individuals belonging to racial or ethnic minorities.”
An Example of possible discrimination, make your own mind up:
Prosecutorial discretion in selection of jurisdictional venue has also perpetuated racial disparities in the criminal justice system with respect to cocaine cases. An illustration of this is U.S. v. Armstrong, a case involving allegations that federal prosecutors in Los Angeles selectively pursued and charged blacks in crack cocaine cases. Since the inception of mandatory minimum cocaine laws in 1986 to the advent of the Armstrong case, not a single white offender had been convicted of a crack cocaine offense in federal courts serving Los Angeles and its six surrounding counties. Rather, virtually all white offenders were prosecuted in state court, where they were not subject to that drug’s lengthy mandatory minimum sentences. The impact of the decision to prosecute the black defendants in federal court was significant. In federal court they faced a mandatory minimum sentence of at least ten years and a maximum of life without parole if convicted of selling more than fifty grams of crack. By contrast, if prosecuted in California state court, the defendants would have received a minimum sentence of three years and a maximum of five years. This selective prosecution pattern is not unique to Los Angeles. An investigative report by the Los Angeles Times revealed that: Only minorities were prosecuted for crack offenses in more than half the federal court districts [handling] crack cases … No whites were federally prosecuted in 17 states and many cities, including Boston, Denver, Chicago, Miami, Dallas and Los Angeles. Out of hundreds of cases, only one white was convicted in California, two in Texas, three in New York and two in Pennsylvania
http://74.125.39.104/search?q=cache:ug6qQNWqxdoJ:www.drugpolicy.org/docUploads/KennedyCommission_statement.pdf+us+government+racial+disparity+sentencing&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=11
Also:
The race of the victims, of those executed since 1976. BLACK 228 14%
HISPANIC 83 5%
WHITE 1303 79%
OTHER 36 2%
Why are the victims of murderers executed since 1976 overwhelmingly white - are white lives worth more than black?
By on 5/23/08 at 12:08 am
“The race of the victims, of those executed since 1976. BLACK 228 14%
HISPANIC 83 5%
WHITE 1303 79%
OTHER 36 2%
Why are the victims of murderers executed since 1976 overwhelmingly white - are white lives worth more than black[lives]?”
By Anti-Racist Action on 5/23/08 at 12:08 am
Well, Anti-Racist Action, Whites actually used to be about 90% of the U.S. population, until as recently as 1965 (and a little later). I am sure the White percentage was lower in 1976, but still a very significant figure in the majority. It probably averages to just maybe above the average percentage for Whites, at best, for your argument. However, (logically speaking,) Blacks have not been at 14%, at any time, since 1976. So, are Black lives worth more than those of other races? I would say, the figures would average close to the percentages of the populaton. And it would seem reasonable that any possible “pro-White” and Pro-Black” disparity would be an incidential variable.
And is your question truly a question, or a Begging the Question fallacy? If the latter, do you have evidence to back up your fallacious argument that the American Justice System is inherently “racist?”
By on 5/23/08 at 3:06 am
It’s great that the reality of race differences in criminality are being publicized yet again. And that it is being shown that the statistics aren’t due to a purported higher level of prosecution of black criminals over those of other races.
This is an important step, but alas, it isn’t enough. The real problem is the dogma, accepted by all liberals and virtually all “conservatives,” that the high crime rate of blacks is entirely due to social/environmental factors.
Until this dogma is challenged, and comes to be called into question by a wider segment of the population, the good work of individuals such as Ms. MacDonald will have only limited beneficial effect. Readers will interpret the statistics simply as further “evidence” of blacks being “disadvantaged.” From this flows the conclusion that it is whites, not blacks, who are responsible for black criminality. And from this flows white guilt for “the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow,” and for “not doing enough” to “remedy past injustices.”
So hats off to Ms. MacDonald for her courage in daring to speak the truth. But the real work of exposing and defeating the myth of black-crime-is-whites’-fault must still be done.
By on 5/6/08 at 2:12 pm