4 ms·

"Solely" is a thought experiment, just to highlight the importance of that question. It's a tough sell because statistics don't back it up; there are other sig

by blix 5y ago

"Solely" is a thought experiment, just to highlight the importance of that question. It's a tough sell because statistics don't back it up; there are other significant factors at play. There are certainly some biases against men but i think you are overestimating this one. Are you accounting for the differences between men and women? The success of African immigrants suggests that the effect really has nothing to do with skin color, but other societal and cultural factors. Luckily society and culture are both mutable.

mpweiher 5y ago
1. When someone writes "generally" and you answer with "solely", it sure sounds a lot like you're setting up a straw-man. 2. The statistics do back it up. 3. "This gender gap is about six times as large as the racial disparity that Prof. Starr found in another recent paper." https://web.archive.org/web/20180428124536/https://www.law.umich.edu/newsandinfo/features/Pages/starr_gender_disparities.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20180428124536/https://www.law.u... 4. Yes, skin color certainly does not appear to be a dominant factor, and maybe not a factor at all as you write.
- blix 5y ago
  A young black man in the 2nd perctile of income has the same chance of being incarcerated as a young white man in the 65th. The difference between the 1st percentile and 99th percentile young white men is smaller than between 80th percentile black men and white men. [1] I'm not sure which stats you are looking at, but the ones I see suggest that economics are not the biggest factor. The gender disparity is interesting and I wasn't aware of it's severity. Thanks. [1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2018/03/19/race-class-debate/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2018/03/19/race-class-deba...
  - mpweiher 5y ago
    So your blog post is contradicted by the research I cited. How to explain the difference? Well, the blog post doesn't control for other variables. Such as, crucially, how much crime do people commit and how severe are those crimes? The UofM study did control for such factors. And yeah, how much crime people commit varies and, yeah, has a pretty severe impact on how much incarceration happens. If you didn't control for these variables, the male/female disparity would be incredibly more severe, as the vast majority of inmates are male. And if you look, you will see that the research the blog post references comes from an advocacy group.

by blix 5y ago

mpweiher 5y ago

1. When someone writes "generally" and you answer with "solely", it sure sounds a lot like you're setting up a straw-man. 2. The statistics do back it up. 3. "This gender gap is about six times as large as the racial disparity that Prof. Starr found in another recent paper." https://web.archive.org/web/20180428124536/https://www.law.umich.edu/newsandinfo/features/Pages/starr_gender_disparities.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20180428124536/https://www.law.u... 4. Yes, skin color certainly does not appear to be a dominant factor, and maybe not a factor at all as you write.

blix 5y ago
A young black man in the 2nd perctile of income has the same chance of being incarcerated as a young white man in the 65th. The difference between the 1st percentile and 99th percentile young white men is smaller than between 80th percentile black men and white men. [1] I'm not sure which stats you are looking at, but the ones I see suggest that economics are not the biggest factor. The gender disparity is interesting and I wasn't aware of it's severity. Thanks. [1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2018/03/19/race-class-debate/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2018/03/19/race-class-deba...
- mpweiher 5y ago
  So your blog post is contradicted by the research I cited. How to explain the difference? Well, the blog post doesn't control for other variables. Such as, crucially, how much crime do people commit and how severe are those crimes? The UofM study did control for such factors. And yeah, how much crime people commit varies and, yeah, has a pretty severe impact on how much incarceration happens. If you didn't control for these variables, the male/female disparity would be incredibly more severe, as the vast majority of inmates are male. And if you look, you will see that the research the blog post references comes from an advocacy group.