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I'm not a sociologist nor a criminologist, but I do drink with them. There are a lot of factors: 1 - there really was (an almost certainly environmental lead-

by x0x0 11y ago

I'm not a sociologist nor a criminologist, but I do drink with them. There are a lot of factors: 1 - there really was (an almost certainly environmental lead-triggered) crime wave that is finally mostly over. Also mix in crack and other drugs. 2 - there was the advent of 24x7 tv news, and when you need something to fill that air time, scary black man randomly killing white people suits perfectly. Even though that is a tiny minority of murders. 3 - people don't understand type 1 and type 2 error: every time a person is set free, some tiny fraction will recidivate (baring incarceration until death.) Mix this in with #2, and you see how sentences increase monotonously. 4 - republicans discover racism motivates voters. See, eg, the Willie Horton commercials [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton

refurb 11y ago
Wow! Calling out the fact a convicted felon shouldn't have been let out to murder again is racism?
- x0x0 11y ago
  Thanks for perfectly demonstrating #3! And yes, the Willie Horton commercials as run by Lee Atwater were indeed racist. Lee Atwater's famous quote is You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Guess who was running George HW Bush' campaign? Republicans picked up the Horton issue after Dukakis clinched the nomination. In June 1988, Republican candidate George H.W. Bush seized on the Horton case, bringing it up repeatedly in campaign speeches. Bush's campaign manager, Lee Atwater, said "By the time we're finished, they're going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis' running mate." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton
  - tsotha 11y ago
    But Atwater wasn't talking about himself or Bush, was he? This is just your typical moral preening, where he gets to say how much better he is than some other (unnamed) guy, which is something you see from Democrats on a regular basis. This is what he says later in the same interview: "But Reagan did not have to do a southern strategy for two reasons. Number one, race was not a dominant issue. And number two, the mainstream issues in this campaign had been, quote, southern issues since way back in the sixties. So Reagan goes out and campaigns on the issues of economics and of national defense. The whole campaign was devoid of any kind of racism, any kind of reference. And I'll tell you another thing you all need to think about, that even surprised me, is the lack of interest, really, the lack of knowledge right now in the South among white voters about the Voting Rights Act." The problem Democrats have when discussing crime is they don't realize people on the other side don't see life through a racial prism, so to us Willie Horton was about crime and not about race.
    - x0x0 11y ago
      Oh, Atwater may well have claimed he didn't do the same thing. That's contra basically all available evidence, even as supplied in the quote -- you move on to economics. What did Reagan move on to -- economics. viz your (implied) claim the Willie Horton ad wasn't racist, well, people on the other side don't see life through a racial prism because they're either racist themselves or sufficiently privileged they can ignore it. See the confederate flag debates. In reality, there's abundant evidence everywhere you look. For one of many examples, see the weird way black people randomly just somehow up and die in police custody. Or Nate Silver: “If you’re a white person your chance of being murdered every year is 2.5 out of 10,000," he told Halper. "If you’re a black person it’s 19.4, so almost eight times higher." [1 for quote, 2 for data] [1] http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/nate-silver-black-americans-murder-rate http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/nate-silver-black-amer... [2] http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/black-americans-are-killed-at-12-times-the-rate-of-people-in-other-developed-countries/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/black-americans-are-kille...
      - tsotha 11y ago
        >That's contra basically all available evidence, even as supplied in the quote -- you move on to economics. Not the way I read it at all. He's just preening. >viz your (implied) claim the Willie Horton ad wasn't racist, well, people on the other side don't see life through a racial prism because they're either racist themselves or sufficiently privileged they can ignore it. Ah, yes, the old infinitely malleable "sufficiently privileged". Let me provide another possibility: People on the other side don't see things through a racial prism because they treat other people as individuals, and it's just not natural for us to treat people as part of a different, larger organism. I'm not sure why you threw in the Nate Silver quote, or why you didn't bother to go to the data instead of relying on someone to tldr it for you. https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/... The fact is black guys get murdered by other black guys. What does this have to do with the discussion? If the makers of the Willie Horton ads were really playing the race angle they would have found someone who murdered a black guy.
  - refurb 11y ago
    The fact that someone could use Willie Horton to stoke racism or political gain doesn't change the story. The fact remains that Dukakis supported a program that caused a woman to be raped. Shouldn't he have to defend his decisions?
silverlake 11y ago
> every time a person is set free, some tiny fraction will recidivate In the US the recidivism rate is over 60%. That's a gigantic fraction.
- x0x0 11y ago
  Amongst those convicted of homicide, it is nowhere near that. Estimates place it at 20-30%, and of those, the highest proportion is for those convicted of homicide during a felony while others such as those who where convicted of DV-related homicide recidivate at closer to 10% (which makes a certain macabre sense.) see eg http://nj.gov/corrections/pdf/REU/Recidivism_Among_Homicide_Offenders.pdf http://nj.gov/corrections/pdf/REU/Recidivism_Among_Homicide_... I meant the phrase "tiny fraction" in light of the discussion of T1 and T2 errors: no matter what rule is made, unless you incarcerate all felons until death, some fraction will recidivate. How to correctly weigh type 1 errors is difficult.

by x0x0 11y ago

refurb 11y ago

Wow! Calling out the fact a convicted felon shouldn't have been let out to murder again is racism?

x0x0 11y ago
Thanks for perfectly demonstrating #3! And yes, the Willie Horton commercials as run by Lee Atwater were indeed racist. Lee Atwater's famous quote is You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Guess who was running George HW Bush' campaign? Republicans picked up the Horton issue after Dukakis clinched the nomination. In June 1988, Republican candidate George H.W. Bush seized on the Horton case, bringing it up repeatedly in campaign speeches. Bush's campaign manager, Lee Atwater, said "By the time we're finished, they're going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis' running mate." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton
- tsotha 11y ago
  But Atwater wasn't talking about himself or Bush, was he? This is just your typical moral preening, where he gets to say how much better he is than some other (unnamed) guy, which is something you see from Democrats on a regular basis. This is what he says later in the same interview: "But Reagan did not have to do a southern strategy for two reasons. Number one, race was not a dominant issue. And number two, the mainstream issues in this campaign had been, quote, southern issues since way back in the sixties. So Reagan goes out and campaigns on the issues of economics and of national defense. The whole campaign was devoid of any kind of racism, any kind of reference. And I'll tell you another thing you all need to think about, that even surprised me, is the lack of interest, really, the lack of knowledge right now in the South among white voters about the Voting Rights Act." The problem Democrats have when discussing crime is they don't realize people on the other side don't see life through a racial prism, so to us Willie Horton was about crime and not about race.
  - x0x0 11y ago
    Oh, Atwater may well have claimed he didn't do the same thing. That's contra basically all available evidence, even as supplied in the quote -- you move on to economics. What did Reagan move on to -- economics. viz your (implied) claim the Willie Horton ad wasn't racist, well, people on the other side don't see life through a racial prism because they're either racist themselves or sufficiently privileged they can ignore it. See the confederate flag debates. In reality, there's abundant evidence everywhere you look. For one of many examples, see the weird way black people randomly just somehow up and die in police custody. Or Nate Silver: “If you’re a white person your chance of being murdered every year is 2.5 out of 10,000," he told Halper. "If you’re a black person it’s 19.4, so almost eight times higher." [1 for quote, 2 for data] [1] http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/nate-silver-black-americans-murder-rate http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/nate-silver-black-amer... [2] http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/black-americans-are-killed-at-12-times-the-rate-of-people-in-other-developed-countries/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/black-americans-are-kille...
    - tsotha 11y ago
      >That's contra basically all available evidence, even as supplied in the quote -- you move on to economics. Not the way I read it at all. He's just preening. >viz your (implied) claim the Willie Horton ad wasn't racist, well, people on the other side don't see life through a racial prism because they're either racist themselves or sufficiently privileged they can ignore it. Ah, yes, the old infinitely malleable "sufficiently privileged". Let me provide another possibility: People on the other side don't see things through a racial prism because they treat other people as individuals, and it's just not natural for us to treat people as part of a different, larger organism. I'm not sure why you threw in the Nate Silver quote, or why you didn't bother to go to the data instead of relying on someone to tldr it for you. https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/... The fact is black guys get murdered by other black guys. What does this have to do with the discussion? If the makers of the Willie Horton ads were really playing the race angle they would have found someone who murdered a black guy.
- refurb 11y ago
  The fact that someone could use Willie Horton to stoke racism or political gain doesn't change the story. The fact remains that Dukakis supported a program that caused a woman to be raped. Shouldn't he have to defend his decisions?

silverlake 11y ago

> every time a person is set free, some tiny fraction will recidivate In the US the recidivism rate is over 60%. That's a gigantic fraction.

x0x0 11y ago
Amongst those convicted of homicide, it is nowhere near that. Estimates place it at 20-30%, and of those, the highest proportion is for those convicted of homicide during a felony while others such as those who where convicted of DV-related homicide recidivate at closer to 10% (which makes a certain macabre sense.) see eg http://nj.gov/corrections/pdf/REU/Recidivism_Among_Homicide_Offenders.pdf http://nj.gov/corrections/pdf/REU/Recidivism_Among_Homicide_... I meant the phrase "tiny fraction" in light of the discussion of T1 and T2 errors: no matter what rule is made, unless you incarcerate all felons until death, some fraction will recidivate. How to correctly weigh type 1 errors is difficult.