While at Harvard Law School, Barrack Obama argued that economic status is better indicator of crime than race (can't find the cite, as there is more written abo

While at Harvard Law School, Barrack Obama argued that economic status is better indicator of crime than race (can't find the cite, as there is more written about Obama than by him, at HLS). If using an Artificial Neural Network, would this mean that race should be downstream from economic status? Maybe race should be a hidden layer? What should be the input nodes? Is there a way to automatically create input nodes? Perhaps finding the better inputs could lead to proactive measures? For example, let's say there several inputs are: adolescence, public schools, evenings, and free time. That might lead to keeping schools open late for extracurricular activities.