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Also people often make an unfounded extrapolation from arrest or conviction stats to crimes committed. We can accurately measure arrests or convictions fairly e
by TheCoelacanth 9y ago
Also people often make an unfounded extrapolation from arrest or conviction stats to crimes committed. We can accurately measure arrests or convictions fairly easily so we frequently have statistics for those, but it is very hard to accurately measure who is committing crimes. People often like to assume that there is a direct correspondence between arrests/convictions and crimes committed, but that is an unjustified assumption.
- ctlby 9y agoIt’s not at all hard, and obviously so: for most crimes (e.g. assault, rape, robbery, murder), the perpetrator’s race is observable. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) measure exactly this, and surprise, surprise: offense rates and arrest rates line up pretty exactly for every race across every category of crime.
- mwilliaams 9y agoA logical and reasonable assumption, and I think probably mostly true, but still unproven.