You are trying to dilute the impact the racist history of US has had on minorities via the justice system. Justice and policing policies disproportionately target minorities. Sure the poor are affected by lack of proper representation, but minority populations also happen to be disproportionately affected by poverty. Stop and frisk, racial profiling, less lenient prosecutory discretion, mandatory minimum sentencing, and the War on Drugs all disproportionately impact minority groups compared to Caucasians[1]. If you just think we need to solve the poverty problem, a significant part of that problem is rooted in systemic racism too.
Per the Innocence Project, 70% of the cases they have exonerated have been of a minority group, and often these cases involved underlying racial prejudice to railroad an innocent person into a long-term prison sentence or death.[2]
>As of November 2019, 367 people previously convicted of serious crimes in the United States had been exonerated by DNA testing since 1989, 21 of whom had been sentenced to death.[9] Almost all (99%) of the wrongful convictions were males,[19] with minority groups constituting approximately 70% (61% African American and 8% Latino).
Racist policing and racist sentencing seem like they could easily make up for the proportion.
Most white people don't get charged when they are caught commiting a crime, and the ones that do get light sentences that can keep them out of the correctional system
I think you're saying minorities are better off with a justice system than without. Maybe everyone is technically better off with a justice system, than with something like vigilante justice, but the US has always had some level of justice system even during slavery. Was it really to their benefit at that time? Can we say things have improved, yes, very slowly, but systemic racism still exists.
>You can't use that stat in that way, presumably they picked the most egregious cases which would be the poorest, etc.
No, you cannot just ignore ingrained racism within the judicial system from day one as simply being a class issue. You can read more from the National Registry of Exonerations about racial bias in exonerated cases[1].
It's been shown that while blacks have similar rates of drug use, blacks have a much higher rate of arrest, conviction, and higher sentencing. I think this is the point that was being made: the criminal justice system itself is racially biased, thus eliminating past convictions as a factor is in the spirit of eliminating racial bias.
Proof of higher incarceration is not proof of unequal application of law. Additionally, sentencing takes into account past actions of the individual.
Did they commit more crimes?
Additionally if the whole racial bias theory is true (i don't agree that it is) then why should be incarcerating blacks less? I think the appropriate response would be to incarcerate white people more often.
Minorities aren't a monolith. For example, Asians are incarcerated at a lower rate than whites and you can figure out why this is by examining crime statistics.
The fact that there are racial biases in what prosecutors offer between black and white is misleading at best. It simply follows from the facts that we already have: blacks are convicted more often. If blacks are convicted more often, they have longer rap sheets on average. You are unlikely to get a better plea deal if you have a history of committing crime.
Now, if they had gone and showed that first time offenders, for example, had shown a racial bias between blacks and whites, you'd have me impressed.
In effect, you are going back to the original argument, that it's just systemic racism. Unfortunately, you have not provided any falsifiable evidence that this is true.
Another article that notices a racial disparity in prison sentences then infers the cause must be racial inequality in the sentencing.
I'd like to see jaut one analyze the socio-economic and educational levels of these offenders and see if there are factors that go beyond race. Overly harsh punishments are a problem for everyone but maybe there are other factors at play here that funnel minorities into the justice system in higher numbers.
It just so happens that blacks statistically have worse criminal records, and people with worse criminal records tend to commit more crimes in the future.
Right, but there is plenty of evidence that this (the statistically worse criminal records) is an artefact of sentencing[1].
Using that biased feature as an input is going to make it worse: the algorithm will recommend higher sentences because previously blacks had previously had more severe sentences.
This is almost the exact definition of implicit bias[2]
I think there are statistics showing that black people are much more likely to be arrested for committing the same crime as a white person, and thus more likely to have a criminal record even if they don't commit more crimes.
Often, yes. Because the statistics themselves can be distorted. For example, consider any of the openly racist police forces in the Jim Crow south. Any naive system based on their data would mirror the racism of their practices.
And that's ignoring more complicated feedback loops. Since colonial times, American whites have often used their dominance to keep black people impoverished. [1] Poverty and crime are correlated. Wealth is correlated with getting away with crime. So if a system looks at crime statistics without considering at the history, it would be easy to perpetuate the ugly parts of that history.
[1] See Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning" for the colonial-era laws and practices, and Loewen's "Sundown Towns" for the Nadir up through suburbanization.
I recall reading a story in the book Weapons of Math Destruction [1] about a system used to assess people’s recidivism risk which judges were relying on for sentencing hearings. The problem is that the system showed a clear racial disparity in the risk scores yet at the same time it was more accurate.
That means if we try to tune the system to make it less racist, we’ll be making it less accurate. In essence, the system isn’t really racist, it’s a reflection of the racism in society which is leading to these outcomes. Ultimately, the problem is that putting someone in jail increases the likelihood that their relatives will commit crimes. It increases the likelihood that both they and their friends and family will reoffend. It’s a vicious cycle and it doesn’t appear to have any technical solution.
There is an inherent racism to a lot of US sentencing and prison policies, as well as an assumption that those who commit crimes are irrevocably criminal. It's a very dated view of why people become criminals.
Justice should be blind in terms of punishment. Easy show systemic racism by looking at the number of African Americans in jail for drug offenses for drug when comparing across races. Drug use by race is relatively consistent in terms of percentage. I would consider that a big problem with our justice system.
Because they commit more and worse crimes. They are not more likely to be arrested and convicted than a white person. And we know this because of surveys of victims and crime reports that record the race. Like that chart I posted.
The only part of the system that shows any possible racial bias at all is sentencing. And it's only 19%, much smaller than claimed elsewhere. It's well within the margin of error in this stuff as well, given they can't possibly control for every relevant factor (e.g. if their crimes actually are 20% worse. In fact I can't see in this study they even controlled for region, and some states have harsher sentencing than others.)
It's worth noting that ugly people get sentences twice as long as attractive people (but are also not more likely to be convicted.) That's 10 times the disparity observed for blacks. Judges give much harsher sentences before lunch, when they are hungry.
Sentencing is just a shitty system that should be replaced. Some states have tried to replace it with statistical algorithms that predict recidivism. And people like you are the first to protest that.
No, but there are plenty of statistics showing that every step of the criminal justice system is biased against minorities from stop and frisk , to traffic stops, to tickets vs warnings, to the “War on Drugs”.
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