28 ms·

It'll vary a lot by demographic. It's not that 1/3 of every group of US adults has ever been arrested, it's that there are some groups where hardly ever have an

by gjm11 2y ago

It'll vary a lot by demographic. It's not that 1/3 of every group of US adults has ever been arrested, it's that there are some groups where hardly ever have and some groups where a huge fraction have, and it averages out to 1/3. In particular, I bet that if you look at poor black men who live in US cities the figure is very very high. Maybe it's close to 100%.[1] If you look at middle-class white women living in the suburbs, not so much. Also: the fact that the report is about the US and you're in Ireland is very relevant; the US has a lot more arrests than Ireland. (I would guess, though I haven't looked at stats and I don't know whether they exist, that the US also has more racial divergence in the figures than Ireland.) (I shall not get into the highly contentious and political question of why these things are the case.) I'll guess that your extended family and friends are mostly (1) not in the US, (2) white, (3) middle class, and (4) not living in city centres. All of which makes them drastically less likely to end up having difficult interactions with the police. [1] I did some crude arithmetic on the figures at https://www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2022/08/Americans-with-Criminal-Records-Poverty-and-Opportunity-Profile.pdf https://www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2022/08/Americ... and got an estimate that 108% of black men in the US have a criminal record. That seems unlikely to be correct :-) but suggests that the real figure is probably pretty high. (I suspect it does also indicate that the "up to 1/3" is an overestimate.)

gruez 2y ago
>[1] I did some crude arithmetic on the figures at https://www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2022/08/Americ https://www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2022/08/Americ... and got an estimate that 108% of black men in the US have a criminal record. That seems unlikely to be correct :-) How are you calculating the proportion of black men with criminal records? The pdf mentions that black men are 6x more likely to be incarcerated, but that's not the same as having a criminal record.
- gjm11 2y ago
  Yeah, that's one reason why the arithmetic is crude. The PDF says the following things: About 1/3 of US adults have been arrested by age 23. About 1/3 of US adults have a criminal record. Black men in the US are about 6x more likely to be incarcerated than white men in the US. These figures aren't all about the same thing -- different classes of (alleged) offence, and also "adults" versus "men" -- and indeed the black:white ratios may be different for arrests, and criminal records, and incarcerations. It's not obvious to me whether we should expect the black:white ratio to be much higher for incarcerations than for arrests or criminal records. If it is, then that would indeed be one of several possible explanations for how the crude calculation ends up with more than 100% of black men in the US having a criminal record. Anyway, my calculation just pretended that the black:white ratio is the same for arrests / criminal records (take your pick, both are alleged to be up to ~1/3 of US adults) among adults as for incarcerations among men. Probably false, but I was just looking for a ballpark figure.
- smcin 2y ago
  That link doesn't point directly to data, only an expired event. What is the link please? For state-level data, did you mean: https://www.sentencingproject.org/research/detailed-state-data-tool/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/research/detailed-state-da...
  - gjm11 2y ago
    That's very weird. My comment referred to this link: https://www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2022/08/Americans-with-Criminal-Records-Poverty-and-Opportunity-Profile.pdf https://www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2022/08/Americ... and the person replying to it quoted what I wrote but changed the link. (Presumably by mistake; I can't think of any reason why someone would do it maliciously.) Anyway, the thing earlier in this paragraph is what I was pointing at.
dragonwriter 2y ago
> Also: the fact that the report is about the US and you're in Ireland is very relevant; the US has a lot more arrests than Ireland. While some of the effect may be more frequent and longer incarceration per arrest, the US (until recently being passed last year by El Salvador) has had the highest incarceration rate in the world, so its a good bet that it has a higher than typical arrest rate for the developed world, as well.
datavirtue 2y ago
I live in Cincinnati and I'm continually surprised to meet African Americans who all seem to have an immediate family member who has been shot. And that's without the subject even coming up with a lot of them. At this point, I would be afraid to ask. (Most are not involving police) Among whites the only person I know to have been shot dropped his shotgun and accidentally blew half his forearm off while hunting.
rufus_foreman 2y ago
>> I bet that if you look at poor black men who live in US cities the figure is very very high Blacks are 14% of the population, so black men would be under 7%, poor black men who live in cities would be less than that. So that doesn't explain the statistic.

by gjm11 2y ago

gruez 2y ago

>[1] I did some crude arithmetic on the figures at https://www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2022/08/Americ https://www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2022/08/Americ... and got an estimate that 108% of black men in the US have a criminal record. That seems unlikely to be correct :-) How are you calculating the proportion of black men with criminal records? The pdf mentions that black men are 6x more likely to be incarcerated, but that's not the same as having a criminal record.

gjm11 2y ago
Yeah, that's one reason why the arithmetic is crude. The PDF says the following things: About 1/3 of US adults have been arrested by age 23. About 1/3 of US adults have a criminal record. Black men in the US are about 6x more likely to be incarcerated than white men in the US. These figures aren't all about the same thing -- different classes of (alleged) offence, and also "adults" versus "men" -- and indeed the black:white ratios may be different for arrests, and criminal records, and incarcerations. It's not obvious to me whether we should expect the black:white ratio to be much higher for incarcerations than for arrests or criminal records. If it is, then that would indeed be one of several possible explanations for how the crude calculation ends up with more than 100% of black men in the US having a criminal record. Anyway, my calculation just pretended that the black:white ratio is the same for arrests / criminal records (take your pick, both are alleged to be up to ~1/3 of US adults) among adults as for incarcerations among men. Probably false, but I was just looking for a ballpark figure.
smcin 2y ago
That link doesn't point directly to data, only an expired event. What is the link please? For state-level data, did you mean: https://www.sentencingproject.org/research/detailed-state-data-tool/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/research/detailed-state-da...
- gjm11 2y ago
  That's very weird. My comment referred to this link: https://www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2022/08/Americans-with-Criminal-Records-Poverty-and-Opportunity-Profile.pdf https://www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2022/08/Americ... and the person replying to it quoted what I wrote but changed the link. (Presumably by mistake; I can't think of any reason why someone would do it maliciously.) Anyway, the thing earlier in this paragraph is what I was pointing at.

dragonwriter 2y ago

> Also: the fact that the report is about the US and you're in Ireland is very relevant; the US has a lot more arrests than Ireland. While some of the effect may be more frequent and longer incarceration per arrest, the US (until recently being passed last year by El Salvador) has had the highest incarceration rate in the world, so its a good bet that it has a higher than typical arrest rate for the developed world, as well.

datavirtue 2y ago

I live in Cincinnati and I'm continually surprised to meet African Americans who all seem to have an immediate family member who has been shot. And that's without the subject even coming up with a lot of them. At this point, I would be afraid to ask. (Most are not involving police) Among whites the only person I know to have been shot dropped his shotgun and accidentally blew half his forearm off while hunting.

rufus_foreman 2y ago

>> I bet that if you look at poor black men who live in US cities the figure is very very high Blacks are 14% of the population, so black men would be under 7%, poor black men who live in cities would be less than that. So that doesn't explain the statistic.