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Wouldn't that make the stats even more racially biased if they were investigated, given the demographics of urban areas?

tptacek 9y ago
No, it means that when black and latino people are the victims of crime, the perpetrators are less likely to be convicted than when white people are. More importantly, it rebuts your argument that the severity of the crimes we're talking about is so grave that it's unlikely there's any bias in their enforcement. Not only is there bias, but smoking gun evidence of that bias (whether it's intentional or systemic) is a simple Google search away. You wrote: For rape, sure, certain groups will get away with it. But for homicide? Are murders being selectively investigated? The answer is, "yes, of course." Slightly edited.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  Thank you for the explanation - I didn't know the solve rate was so low at all. Is it thought that of these unsolved black/latino murders, the race of the perpetrator is disproportionately white? Edit: So I searched a bit, and, in NYC, it's said this is due to reduced budgets for homicide in certain areas that are predominately minority. For this to impact the stats (the raw numbers being that blacks, as a group in the US, commit 4-5x homicide by population, and similarly bad numbers looking at interracial crime) it'd have to be a massively disproportionate amount of non-blacks going into these neighbourhoods and killing them. From the "flavour" text in the articles I read, the victims families are lamenting that cops don't care because "it's just blacks men killing other black men". But wow am I astounded how low the solved rate is, that's crazy. Though I would suspect most homicides are at least reported, whereas many lesser crimes (like drug possession) might not be. It's totally plausible that the real drug possession rate among whites is actually orders of magnitude higher than reported, less so for homicide. Thanks again for taking the time to respond and correct me.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    I think you need to start from the realization that offender statistics are systemically biased and recognize that your certainty level here should be capped. Your analysis here is based on another fallacy, which is that there's a direct connection between the crime of homicide and capital punishment. In fact, no: only a subset of murders, aggravated by circumstances mostly not present in gang shootings, attract death sentences. Further, some presumably large fraction of the black/black murders you're considering occur in jurisdictions that are statistically (or, as in the case of Chicago, legally) unlikely to apply capital punishment. To reach a conclusion that there aren't racial disparities in capital punishment, you have to de-confound the homicide statistics to eliminate murders that are effectively or statistically ineligible for the death penalty, and then make comparisons.

tptacek 9y ago

No, it means that when black and latino people are the victims of crime, the perpetrators are less likely to be convicted than when white people are. More importantly, it rebuts your argument that the severity of the crimes we're talking about is so grave that it's unlikely there's any bias in their enforcement. Not only is there bias, but smoking gun evidence of that bias (whether it's intentional or systemic) is a simple Google search away. You wrote: For rape, sure, certain groups will get away with it. But for homicide? Are murders being selectively investigated? The answer is, "yes, of course." Slightly edited.

MichaelGG 9y ago
Thank you for the explanation - I didn't know the solve rate was so low at all. Is it thought that of these unsolved black/latino murders, the race of the perpetrator is disproportionately white? Edit: So I searched a bit, and, in NYC, it's said this is due to reduced budgets for homicide in certain areas that are predominately minority. For this to impact the stats (the raw numbers being that blacks, as a group in the US, commit 4-5x homicide by population, and similarly bad numbers looking at interracial crime) it'd have to be a massively disproportionate amount of non-blacks going into these neighbourhoods and killing them. From the "flavour" text in the articles I read, the victims families are lamenting that cops don't care because "it's just blacks men killing other black men". But wow am I astounded how low the solved rate is, that's crazy. Though I would suspect most homicides are at least reported, whereas many lesser crimes (like drug possession) might not be. It's totally plausible that the real drug possession rate among whites is actually orders of magnitude higher than reported, less so for homicide. Thanks again for taking the time to respond and correct me.
- tptacek 9y ago
  I think you need to start from the realization that offender statistics are systemically biased and recognize that your certainty level here should be capped. Your analysis here is based on another fallacy, which is that there's a direct connection between the crime of homicide and capital punishment. In fact, no: only a subset of murders, aggravated by circumstances mostly not present in gang shootings, attract death sentences. Further, some presumably large fraction of the black/black murders you're considering occur in jurisdictions that are statistically (or, as in the case of Chicago, legally) unlikely to apply capital punishment. To reach a conclusion that there aren't racial disparities in capital punishment, you have to de-confound the homicide statistics to eliminate murders that are effectively or statistically ineligible for the death penalty, and then make comparisons.