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Here's a little bit of incomplete thinking about the classic "13/53" number, which is a ballpark figure (varying year to year) that represents the fact that black people are overrepresented by a factor of about 5x in crime. I see a lot of people tend to interpret this number as "black people are 5x more likely to commit crimes", but that might not actually be the case.
Concretely, there's two ways this stat could come about:
a. There are 5x as many black criminals per capita and each black criminal commits crimes at 1x the rate of white criminals.
b. There are 1x as many black criminals per capita and each black criminal commits crimes at 5x the rate of white criminals.
There is of course a continuum between them, but I think it's useful to focus on the two endpoints because the endpoints have totally different policy responses and also suggest totally different causes.
For example, the policy response to (a) is that we need more police to catch a lot more black criminals. The policy response to (b) is that we need longer prison sentences for the criminals we have in order to prevent the same guy from doing 4 more crimes.
They also suggest different causes. Scenario (a) suggests something (HBD, special kinds of poverty not reflected in census stats) causes blacks to have a higher criminal propensity, whereas (b) suggests police might just be extra lenient towards black criminals thereby giving them more time on the street in which they commit more crimes.
Interestingly, while the theory of police abandonment will get you cancelled today, it was very much the theory pushed by black community leaders in the 90's. It was one of the things leading to "3 strikes" laws (long prison sentences for the 3'rd crime in order to get rid of the very worst criminals).
I have recently discovered some weak evidence in favor of theory (b) while going down an internet rabbithole on a totally different topic. Specifically, look at the first graph in this analysis:
https://github.com/propublica/compas-analysis/blob/master/Compas%20Analysis.ipynb
The "decile score" of the x-axis is a reasonably predictive index of a convicted criminal committing new crimes. The dominant features in the model generating the index are things like "# of previous crimes", "was the current crime violent", etc. As can be seen from the graph, white criminals are overrepresented on the left tail (little repeat crime risk) of the graph, whereas black criminals are spread evenly. Of course, this evidence is very weak - it's only about criminals up for parole in a certain region of Florida.
Does anyone know of more data on this?
Two thoughts
Someone mentioned below of 35 being a big age where people just become less criminal and lose their young male behavior
Tabarrok has done a lot of work on America having far more people in prison and less policing than the developed world. And higher crime rates. More policeman= higher chance of getting caught versus locking career criminals up long term. Theoretically what works elsewhere would seem to be shorter jail sentences but vastly increasing the chance of being caught
I think this approach is optimal. I think America's police are much more effective compared to foreign police, such as being better trained and having more firepower, as much as both sides complain about American policing (either being inadequate, corrupt, etc.). This means fewer police are needed. The UK or French police seem inept and doesn't evoke the sort of fear or intimidation compared to American policing. In Europe, short sentences means lots of recidivism and a need for a lot of police to keep re-arresting the same criminals.
"The Bundeskriminalamt trains its own CID officers. Officer candidates receive their training during a three-year course of studies at the Federal College of Public Administration as preparation for service. The course of studies is broken down into 21 theoretical and 15 practical training months."
Swedish police training requires 2.5 years of training, including 6 months of paid internship.
I think Japan has the lowest training time at 6 months if you have a university degree and 10 months if you don't.
Compare this to the US training times:
"All special agents begin their career at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, for 20 weeks of intensive training at one of the world’s finest law enforcement training facilities. During their time there, trainees live on campus and participate in a variety of training activities. Classroom hours are spent studying a wide variety of academic and investigative subjects, including the fundamentals of law, behavioral science, report writing, forensic science, and basic and advanced investigative, interviewing, and intelligence techniques. Students also learn the intricacies of counterterrorism, counterintelligence, weapons of mass destruction, cyber, and criminal investigations to prepare them for their chosen career paths."
Washington, D.C., requires the most police academy training hours in the nation, at 1,120. That's 28 weeks of training.
So, there's an overlap between the hardest training in the US and the easiest training in the rest of the first world, but most foreign police are better trained than most American police.
That's not something you should use as a metric for police.
It is more effective as a deterrent
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