I think you meant probability instead of likelihood. That is: it may be true that most criminals in an area are of a certain race; that says nothing about the p

I think you meant probability instead of likelihood. That is: it may be true that most criminals in an area are of a certain race; that says nothing about the probability of a single person of that race being a criminal because you'd need to know about the prevalence of crime. (In statistics, the likelihood is the probability of the data conditional on the hypothesis, so in this case the probability of being of a certain race given that one is a criminal.)