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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32171 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Option c: blacks are 5x as much "overpoliced" or white criminals are 1/5 as likely to be caught and convicted.

I took a college class that claimed that black drug users were much more likely to purchase and use drugs in public, where the cops eventually catch them. White drug users buy and use illegal drugs in private residences. White and black Americans have comparable drug use rates, but the black ones are caught more.

This obviously doesn't explain differing homicide rates. And take stuff a college class asserted with a big grain of salt. But to some degree maybe white people are better criminals and cops don't typically crack down on upstanding whites.

White and black Americans have comparable drug use rates, but the black ones are caught more.

This data is self reported, so is very questionable. Even then the self reported rates are pretty significantly different IIRC. Something like 20-30% higher for black people.

The difference in jail time/convictions for drug use is mostly down to a difference in dealing anyways. IE black people aren't actually caught for personal use that much more, but are a disproportionate amount of dealers (or at minimum, dealers who are caught)

Option c: blacks are 5x as much "overpoliced" or white criminals are 1/5 as likely to be caught and convicted.

Studies based on the National Crime Victimization Survey show a close match between the racial demographics of criminals as reported by those claiming to have been victimized and the racial demographics of those arrested for those crimes. The 13/53 figure is specifically based on murder and is thus technically not covered since murder victims cannot be surveyed, but violent crimes in general are included and show a similar but somewhat lesser disparity. (Generally the racial disparity is larger the more violent and severe the crime is, so murder has a larger disparity than violent crime in general, which has a larger disparity than crime in general. So while the crime victimization survey also doesn't cover crimes without victims, those have a smaller disparity to begin with, and white criminals with victims answering the National Crime Victimization Survey don't seem to be getting away with it more.)

White and black Americans have comparable drug use rates, but the black ones are caught more.

Iirc, Scott looked into this at one point. The takeaway was that the "within the last year" rates were reported to be similar, but the "within the last week" rates showed a large discrepancy. And anecdotally similar to the "in public" point, when I encounter people out in the world who show signs of drug use, such as blatantly smelling like weed, they are almost always black, wildly in excess of any plausible discrepancy in use rates. I assume the real difference is how much people worry about being caught.

White and black Americans have comparable drug use rates, but the black ones are caught more.

Is this based on self-reports, or actual research?

But to some degree maybe white people are better criminals and cops don't typically crack down on upstanding whites.

This is exactly why OP with homicide rates, and not drug convictions. In fact, it is Black murder victims that have lower clearance rate, which combined with the fact that most crime is intraracial, implies that, if anything, it is Black people who are likely to get away with murder.

What would you expect other than self reporting? These are illegal acts done (by sensible people) in private. Other than asking people or performing random drug testing we aren't going to get use rates.

I mean, given that blacks have both higher rates of mental illness and lower average iq, we can expect far fewer of them to be sensible people(hence, public drug use).

Low effort, highly inflammatory, no argumentation or evidence. Don't post like this, please.

This does nothing to address TIRM's point. It's just a low-effort swipe at black people.

Counter point to that theory is crime victimization surveys. Arrest rates match rather closely with self reported victimization rates. If there were any relevant amount of white criminals going underpoliced you would see that discrepancy in the victimization surveys.

I'd also argue, as a counterweight to the idea that black criminals are more policed relative to white criminals, that black criminals are more likely than white criminals to get away with serious crimes without being arrested due to the sheer amount of crimes being committed in the areas that make up the bulk of black crime rates. Like, for example, in Chicago where the majority of homicides go unsolved.

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