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John Lott found that the more minorities on a police force, the higher the rates of murder, manslaughter, violent crime, robbery and aggravated assault will be.

John Lott found that the more minorities on a police force, the higher the rates of murder, manslaughter, violent crime, robbery and aggravated assault will be. Violent crime increased by a minimum of 3.3 percent every year after affirmative action policies went into effect—and the spike in crime was highest in black neighborhoods. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=231100 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=231100 The problem was not with black cops, Lott’s study showed, but rather with the lowering of standards across the board, resulting in less-qualified officers of every race. To get more of MSNBC’s “voices of oppression” on police forces, requirements are reduced for all recruits. (Just as quality declined at MSNBC when “voices of oppression” had to be added to their lineup.)

fluidcruft 12y ago
Are these standards that you are saying were lowered applied at entry to police training or at graduation?
jaxytee 12y ago
Did he define exactly what these "Standards" are?
- dalke 12y ago
  Based on the paper at http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/56.Lott_.Police.pdf http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/56.Lott_.Police.pdf , "standards" here refers to various tests, including tests for cognitive skills, that police departments used during employee selection. The tests ended up with a negative bias towards minority groups. This is important because of the 1989 Supreme Court decision in City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co. which imposed a strict scrutiny test to ensure that job qualifications fit the goal 'so closely that there is little or no possibility that the motive for the classification was illegitimate racial prejudice or stereotype.' Eg, and quoting from the paper: > After spending “$5.1 million to have consultants develop unbiased exams, only to have minorities fare poorly again,” Chicago moved to a heavily weighted seniority system for promoting police officers and a lottery system for hiring firefighters (Spielman, 1996, p. 16) Thus, the supposition in the paper is that those cognitive tests correctly measured skills needed for law enforcement, and with that in supposition in place, it tries to estimate the impact of the changes, concluding that they were negative. I don't find the paper persuasive. I don't think the hypothesis is tested well enough, I don't see a model for how the police force composition could change so drastically after only 5 years, and I don't like the short baseline of the analysis.
aaronbrethorst 12y ago
This, of course, would be the same guy who has "massaged" data in his papers, and invented a fake identity to defend himself and attack critics online: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2003/10/double-barreled-double-standards http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2003/10/double-barreled-...
dalke 12y ago
Lott has also said "[A] nation's wealth [is maximized] if a crime is not deterred when the benefit to the criminal of a particular crime is greater than the total social cost of that crime." - a very Chicago School view of the world. Therefore the obvious question is, is the purported increase in violent crime outweighed by other advantages in total social cost? If so, then by his own statements, it's worthwhile. (Eg, does violent crime then decrease by 5% in the second year?, does the number of petty crimes drop by 50%?, is there an increase in the tax base?, etc.) Without that, picking out only a single negative is not enough to be actionable. Also, the data for the paper comes from 1987, 1990, and 1993, and it uses murder rates as a estimate to judge if there are confounding factors. (The paper rightly points out the numbers are based on reported crimes, and not actual crime numbers. It's possible that the report rates go up if, say, black citizens are more likely to report crimes if they feel there won't be a racial bias against them.) However, the homicide rate in the US in the 1987 was 8.3/100K while in 1990 it was 9.4 and in 1993 it was 9.5. The rate now is half that level. Despite the statistics in the paper, it's impossible to say if the current low level is a direct result of those actions to diversify the police force. I also think the baseline is rather short, and we have another 30 years of the same sort of data, so it really need to be repeated with a larger data set before I can place any sort of trust in it.

fluidcruft 12y ago

Are these standards that you are saying were lowered applied at entry to police training or at graduation?

jaxytee 12y ago

Did he define exactly what these "Standards" are?

dalke 12y ago
Based on the paper at http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/56.Lott_.Police.pdf http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/56.Lott_.Police.pdf , "standards" here refers to various tests, including tests for cognitive skills, that police departments used during employee selection. The tests ended up with a negative bias towards minority groups. This is important because of the 1989 Supreme Court decision in City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co. which imposed a strict scrutiny test to ensure that job qualifications fit the goal 'so closely that there is little or no possibility that the motive for the classification was illegitimate racial prejudice or stereotype.' Eg, and quoting from the paper: > After spending “$5.1 million to have consultants develop unbiased exams, only to have minorities fare poorly again,” Chicago moved to a heavily weighted seniority system for promoting police officers and a lottery system for hiring firefighters (Spielman, 1996, p. 16) Thus, the supposition in the paper is that those cognitive tests correctly measured skills needed for law enforcement, and with that in supposition in place, it tries to estimate the impact of the changes, concluding that they were negative. I don't find the paper persuasive. I don't think the hypothesis is tested well enough, I don't see a model for how the police force composition could change so drastically after only 5 years, and I don't like the short baseline of the analysis.

aaronbrethorst 12y ago

This, of course, would be the same guy who has "massaged" data in his papers, and invented a fake identity to defend himself and attack critics online: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2003/10/double-barreled-double-standards http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2003/10/double-barreled-...

dalke 12y ago

Lott has also said "[A] nation's wealth [is maximized] if a crime is not deterred when the benefit to the criminal of a particular crime is greater than the total social cost of that crime." - a very Chicago School view of the world. Therefore the obvious question is, is the purported increase in violent crime outweighed by other advantages in total social cost? If so, then by his own statements, it's worthwhile. (Eg, does violent crime then decrease by 5% in the second year?, does the number of petty crimes drop by 50%?, is there an increase in the tax base?, etc.) Without that, picking out only a single negative is not enough to be actionable. Also, the data for the paper comes from 1987, 1990, and 1993, and it uses murder rates as a estimate to judge if there are confounding factors. (The paper rightly points out the numbers are based on reported crimes, and not actual crime numbers. It's possible that the report rates go up if, say, black citizens are more likely to report crimes if they feel there won't be a racial bias against them.) However, the homicide rate in the US in the 1987 was 8.3/100K while in 1990 it was 9.4 and in 1993 it was 9.5. The rate now is half that level. Despite the statistics in the paper, it's impossible to say if the current low level is a direct result of those actions to diversify the police force. I also think the baseline is rather short, and we have another 30 years of the same sort of data, so it really need to be repeated with a larger data set before I can place any sort of trust in it.