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Murder is highly correlated with urban and minority populations - the murder rate for blacks is about 8x that of whites.[1] The root of this is clearly socioeco

by Empact 11y ago

Murder is highly correlated with urban and minority populations - the murder rate for blacks is about 8x that of whites.[1] The root of this is clearly socioeconomic, and I believe rooted in the drug war[2], which drives black market violence both by creating a lucrative ungoverned market and by removing constructive inter-generational alternatives through mass incarceration - i.e. if your father is in prison for a non-violent drug crime, you as a child lose both a role model and a bread-winner, which makes you more likely to fall into gangs for social and economic reasons. If that's accurate, it's a vicious, massively destructive cycle. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Homicide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S... [2] e.g. outlier city "Baltimore’s City Police Commissioner Anthony Batts says that 80 percent are drug-related." http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/01/the-year-in-murder-2013-marks-a-historic-low-for-many-cities.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/01/the-year-in... "Eighty percent of the homicides were gang-related, [Chicago Police Commissioner Garry McCarthy] said" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/29/chicago-homicide-rate-new-york_n_2378073.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/29/chicago-homicide-ra... New Orleans Police Department: "29% of all murders in #NOLA this year involved a gang member. That's down from 42% this same time last year." https://twitter.com/nopdnews/status/618864980364898305 https://twitter.com/nopdnews/status/618864980364898305 And in some California cities "gang homicides only accounted for 29 percent of the total for the period under consideration (2003-2008)" I question the use of "only" here. :P http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-defilippis/do-we-have-a-gang-problem_b_5071639.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-defilippis/do-we-have-a-g... On the other hand, The National Gang Center says (based on survey data): "These estimates suggest that gang-related homicides typically accounted for around 13 percent of all homicides annually." https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/survey-analysis/measuring-the-extent-of-gang-problems https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/survey-analysis/measuring...

yummyfajitas 11y ago
It's hardly clear that the root is socioeconomic. I don't have data on crime, but in education race remains predictive even after you include socioeconomic status in the estimator. https://randomcriticalanalysis.wordpress.com/2015/05/16/on-concentrated-poverty-and-its-effects-on-academic-outcomes/ https://randomcriticalanalysis.wordpress.com/2015/05/16/on-c... Do you know of a similar analysis of crime?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- brbsix 11y ago
  Agreed. I've looked into the data in the past and this is not at all clear. You don't see anywhere near the same incidence for murder or violent crime among impoverished whites or Hispanics in America. These sorts of things are much more correlated with IQ than to poverty or nearly anything else.
- Empact 11y ago
  I haven't looked into this deeply, more of a productive assumption[1], but here are some related studies: "the majority of the black-white gap (over 60%) [in violence] and the entire Latino-white gap are explained by a small set of factors, especially marital status of parents, immigrant generation, and neighborhood characteristics associated with racial segregation." https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/www/external/labor/seminars/adp/pdfs/adp_ajph.pdf https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/www/external/labor/sem... "Despite a large difference in mean levels of family disruption between black and white communities, the percentage of white families headed by a female also had a significant effect on white juvenile and white adult violence." "The combination of urban poverty and family disruption concentrated by race is particularly severe. Whereas the majority of poor blacks live in communities characterized by high rates of family disruption, most poor whites, even those from "broken homes," live in areas of relative family stability" https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3226952/Sampson_RacialEthnicDisparities.pdf?sequence=2 https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3226952/Sampson_... "Multivariate regression results for ninety-one cities showed that while total inequality and intraracial inequality had no significant association with offending rates, interracial inequality was a strong predictor of the overall violent crime rate and the Black-on-Black crime rate." http://egov.ufsc.br/portal/sites/default/files/anexos/33027-41458-1-PB.pdf http://egov.ufsc.br/portal/sites/default/files/anexos/33027-... See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_correlations_of_criminal_behaviour#Socioeconomic_factors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_correlations_of_cr... [1] I have a hard time imagining a productive line of thought that leads from saying that high black murder rates result from something inherent to blackness
michaelbuddy 11y ago
This fairy tale about "non-violent drug crime" is interesting because it tries to get us to forget how many violent criminals are locked up THANKFULLY due to the only charge that stuck to them, e.g. their 9th felony possession charge while armed with a loaded gun. People would have us all believe that these peaceful minorities are locked up because the cops stopped them on their way to church, found a little "medicine" on them and put them away for 20 years and left his kids orphaned. It's just nonsense. So many people get leniency in the cases of repeated drug offenses. Honestly, what is a society supposed to do with people who repeatedly break laws? In major cities a frightening number of homicides go unsolved. Though I can't say I'm a fan of the drug war, there is value in locking up criminals that just haven't been caught doing their most violent acts. Any time somebody brings up the non-violent drug imprisonment, and the socio-econmic downward spiral, yes it's true there are a small number of people who have been railroaded who could be raising their sons and daughters, but we also need the clear image of the killer who lucky for us got pinched because he made a different mistake. All the cops in the room know he killed his cousin but everyone in the project last year was too scared to rat him out. The prosecutor is going to push the longest sentence they can get for the laws broken just so that guy can't victimize somebody else's kid.
- hidroto 11y ago
  > there is value in locking up criminals that just haven't been caught doing their most violent acts. you're making judgments before proof or evidence aka prejudice.
  - michaelbuddy 11y ago
    NO. I'm saying lock up somebody for one crime you have proof on, might not have been that criminal at their worst but you got them on the proof of another. They are paying the price and they can't do their worst crimes to innocent people when they are locked up for the moment. That's value to peaceful society.

by Empact 11y ago

yummyfajitas 11y ago

It's hardly clear that the root is socioeconomic. I don't have data on crime, but in education race remains predictive even after you include socioeconomic status in the estimator. https://randomcriticalanalysis.wordpress.com/2015/05/16/on-concentrated-poverty-and-its-effects-on-academic-outcomes/ https://randomcriticalanalysis.wordpress.com/2015/05/16/on-c... Do you know of a similar analysis of crime?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
brbsix 11y ago
Agreed. I've looked into the data in the past and this is not at all clear. You don't see anywhere near the same incidence for murder or violent crime among impoverished whites or Hispanics in America. These sorts of things are much more correlated with IQ than to poverty or nearly anything else.
Empact 11y ago
I haven't looked into this deeply, more of a productive assumption[1], but here are some related studies: "the majority of the black-white gap (over 60%) [in violence] and the entire Latino-white gap are explained by a small set of factors, especially marital status of parents, immigrant generation, and neighborhood characteristics associated with racial segregation." https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/www/external/labor/seminars/adp/pdfs/adp_ajph.pdf https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/www/external/labor/sem... "Despite a large difference in mean levels of family disruption between black and white communities, the percentage of white families headed by a female also had a significant effect on white juvenile and white adult violence." "The combination of urban poverty and family disruption concentrated by race is particularly severe. Whereas the majority of poor blacks live in communities characterized by high rates of family disruption, most poor whites, even those from "broken homes," live in areas of relative family stability" https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3226952/Sampson_RacialEthnicDisparities.pdf?sequence=2 https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3226952/Sampson_... "Multivariate regression results for ninety-one cities showed that while total inequality and intraracial inequality had no significant association with offending rates, interracial inequality was a strong predictor of the overall violent crime rate and the Black-on-Black crime rate." http://egov.ufsc.br/portal/sites/default/files/anexos/33027-41458-1-PB.pdf http://egov.ufsc.br/portal/sites/default/files/anexos/33027-... See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_correlations_of_criminal_behaviour#Socioeconomic_factors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_correlations_of_cr... [1] I have a hard time imagining a productive line of thought that leads from saying that high black murder rates result from something inherent to blackness

michaelbuddy 11y ago

This fairy tale about "non-violent drug crime" is interesting because it tries to get us to forget how many violent criminals are locked up THANKFULLY due to the only charge that stuck to them, e.g. their 9th felony possession charge while armed with a loaded gun. People would have us all believe that these peaceful minorities are locked up because the cops stopped them on their way to church, found a little "medicine" on them and put them away for 20 years and left his kids orphaned. It's just nonsense. So many people get leniency in the cases of repeated drug offenses. Honestly, what is a society supposed to do with people who repeatedly break laws? In major cities a frightening number of homicides go unsolved. Though I can't say I'm a fan of the drug war, there is value in locking up criminals that just haven't been caught doing their most violent acts. Any time somebody brings up the non-violent drug imprisonment, and the socio-econmic downward spiral, yes it's true there are a small number of people who have been railroaded who could be raising their sons and daughters, but we also need the clear image of the killer who lucky for us got pinched because he made a different mistake. All the cops in the room know he killed his cousin but everyone in the project last year was too scared to rat him out. The prosecutor is going to push the longest sentence they can get for the laws broken just so that guy can't victimize somebody else's kid.

hidroto 11y ago
> there is value in locking up criminals that just haven't been caught doing their most violent acts. you're making judgments before proof or evidence aka prejudice.
- michaelbuddy 11y ago
  NO. I'm saying lock up somebody for one crime you have proof on, might not have been that criminal at their worst but you got them on the proof of another. They are paying the price and they can't do their worst crimes to innocent people when they are locked up for the moment. That's value to peaceful society.