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I don't know why the downvotes, this is the correct perspective. You need to take the base rate of criminality into account, and comparing Japanese in Japan to
by NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
I don't know why the downvotes, this is the correct perspective. You need to take the base rate of criminality into account, and comparing Japanese in Japan to Japanese in America isn't unreasonable.
You could also look at the rate of crimes per capita in each country. For instance, murders per capita: 4.96 in the U.S. vs 0.26 in Japan [0]. If we take this to represent base-rate criminality in that population, then we have a 19:1 US:Japan murder ratio, with only a 16:1 US: Japan incarceration ratio. Japan incarcerates more per unit murder.
Of course this is a toy model, it's all a big feedback loop, etc., but I hope it serves to illustrate the point.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
- plumthreads 5y agoYou're claiming Japanese in America are representative of Japanese in Japan which is not the case. It's straight up racist too.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y agoI'm making the point that the base rate of criminality needs to be taken into account if you want to compare incarceration rates. For many different reasons people in one society might commit more crime than people in another society. Though I do not use the example myself, preferring the murder rate example, the parent's suggestion is a reasonable way to control for this inter-society difference. I would bet that Japanese in the U.S. evince rates of criminality more similar to those of Japanese in Japan than to the rest of American society. It's an empirical question; whether merely asking the question is racist or not given your particular sentiments about what's racist is beside the point.
- alksjdalkj 5y ago> I would bet that Japanese in the U.S. evince rates of criminality more similar to those of Japanese in Japan than to the rest of American society What makes you believe that? If true, what might cause that to be the case?
- Google234 5y agoI think most people know that Asians in the US commit less crime than other races. As for why, there are probably cultural reasons.
- wwtrv 5y agoOr rather economic reasons, the difference between the median income for Asian Americans is about the same as the difference between white people and African Americans.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y agoOr both! Or a bunch of other stuff too!
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y agoI've realized we're probably confused about whether we're talking about Japanese in America vs. Japanese-Americans. I was talking about Japanese in America (the article is about a foreigner in Japan), but I'd make roughly the same claims in either case. Empirically, I would bet that both Japanese in America and Japanese-Americans both show rates of criminality more similar to Japan's than to the remainder of the U.S. population's. In the case of Japanese-Americans, I'd bet it's higher than Japan's. I haven't looked any numbers up or attempted to figure it out in detail. As for why, there are a few reasons. One interesting one is selection effects (immigrants to a new country are not a random sample of the old country's population). There is culture, of course, probably the biggest factor, as well as other inheritances (material goods / wealth, genes, disease burden...).
- forty 5y agoI think listing genes is probably crossing the line. It's not like there is a gene for crime that some category of people would have more or less...
- 5y ago
- bpodgursky 5y agoActually the OP asked the question. By assuming a particular answer, you are providing the racism.
- user-the-name 5y agoNo, it is the question that is racist. The assumption that because of your ethnicity, you would have some kind of specific level of criminality. That is extremely racist.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y agoYou're assuming a causal relationship when the claim is correlational. The claim is not that because of a person's ethnicity that person will commit crimes at a certain rate, the claim is that you can make a good guess about criminality based on ethnicity. That is to say, there is a correlation. Which is unambiguously true--just look up the numbers. Only takes a moment. In either case, whether it's racist or not is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
- user-the-name 5y ago> the claim is that you can make a good guess about criminality based on ethnicity Yes. That is the claim that is racist.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y agoIt is empirically true. It is, of course, possible for things to be both true and racist, for some definition of racist.
- user-the-name 5y agoThe fact that you just stop the train of thought there is the racist part.
- mattficke 5y ago> You need to take the base rate of criminality into account So is this the kind of thing you measure with calipers, or…
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago...there are large academic fields where people spend entire careers doing exactly this? The statistics are not hard to come by.