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> But what has gotten inadequate attention is the increasing role these fees play in funding our courts and police departments, and how they crush the chances o

by MikeUt 6y ago

> But what has gotten inadequate attention is the increasing role these fees play in funding our courts and police departments, and how they crush the chances of millions of Black and brown Americans to make a better life for themselves and their families Lest anyone think whites are absent from prison, at least [0] 40% of prisoners are non-Hispanic white [1,2]. Since whites (Hispanic + non) account for 43% of homicide perpetrators [3], they are, if anything, over-represented in prison. So I don't understand why the NY Times chose to explicitly ignore them. [0] Assuming all the inmates counted as Hispanic were also counted as white. Otherwise the share of non-Hispanic white inmates is even larger. [1] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_ethnicity.jsp https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_ethni... [2] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_race.jsp https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_race.... [3] 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...

kurikuri 6y ago
>whites ... , if anything, are over-represented in prison The prison population statistics from the BOP only account for federal prisons, which is less than 10% of the incarcerated US population. In your cited Wikipedia source, the number of homicides tallied by the FBI (in Wikipedia’s [44]) totals around 6000, or around 5% of the size of the number of BOP inmates. These two figures do not come together to provide your conclusion at all.
- MikeUt 6y ago
  According to [1], 30% of all prisoners are non-Hispanic white, which is close to the numbers given for federal prisons. And I used homicide as proxy for violent crime, since if I had used anything else, you would have claimed the numbers can't be trusted due to over-policing and police racial bias. To get around that bias, you can also look at the national crime victimization survey [2], which does not involve the police, and paints a similar picture. Again, I fail to see any reason why the Times explicitly excluded almost a third of all prisoners, for which you needed no justification. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/05/06/share-of-black-white-hispanic-americans-in-prison-2018-vs-2006/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/05/06/share-of-bl... [2] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/revcoa18.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/revcoa18.pdf

by MikeUt 6y ago

kurikuri 6y ago

>whites ... , if anything, are over-represented in prison The prison population statistics from the BOP only account for federal prisons, which is less than 10% of the incarcerated US population. In your cited Wikipedia source, the number of homicides tallied by the FBI (in Wikipedia’s [44]) totals around 6000, or around 5% of the size of the number of BOP inmates. These two figures do not come together to provide your conclusion at all.

MikeUt 6y ago
According to [1], 30% of all prisoners are non-Hispanic white, which is close to the numbers given for federal prisons. And I used homicide as proxy for violent crime, since if I had used anything else, you would have claimed the numbers can't be trusted due to over-policing and police racial bias. To get around that bias, you can also look at the national crime victimization survey [2], which does not involve the police, and paints a similar picture. Again, I fail to see any reason why the Times explicitly excluded almost a third of all prisoners, for which you needed no justification. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/05/06/share-of-black-white-hispanic-americans-in-prison-2018-vs-2006/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/05/06/share-of-bl... [2] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/revcoa18.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/revcoa18.pdf