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An AI facial recognition model trawled through 1.5 million mugshots and determined that the Hispanic crime rate is underestimated by 30%
The Hispanic crime rate has been discussed in the context of the immigration debate. I recall that the relatively insignificant difference between the White and Hispanic rate has been used as an argument in favor of migration from Hispanic countries. The math changes if the Hispanic crime rate is 30% higher than previously believed, and the White rate ~6% lower than believed.
Additionally, the analysis above needs to be supplemented with an analysis of the crime clearance rate. Not every crime is solved, meaning that not every crime is logged. If the Hispanic clearance rate is lower than the White clearance rate, due to myriad factors like documentation issues and hesitancy to work with police, then this must be factored into the crime rate too. Indeed, there is a substantial 19% difference of clearance between murders where the victim is Hispanic and murders where the victim is White, with more “Hispanic victim” murders going unsolved. What to do with this information is a little bit tricky. Most homicides are within-race and gang homicides are especially likely to go unsolved. So it’s reasonable to assume that nearly all of the 19% difference in homicide clearance are homicides committed by an Hispanic offender (we can only tell the race of the victim here). This is somewhat complicated by the possibility that unsolved white victim homicides may be more likely to have an Hispanic offender than the solved homicide rate, but figuring that out is annoying.
Putting this all together: the Hispanic crime rate is likely 50% higher than expressed in the official and common crime data. This weakens the argument that Hispanic migration would be a net economic positive, given the high cost of crime via secondary / tertiary effects.
I recently saw a news story involving a Mexican citizen with a hyphenated last name like Gonzalez-Rodriguez being convicted federally, and when I looked up his Bureau of Prisons info to see his release date, his race was listed as white. A single example, but when the stats are that blatantly false, I have a hard time believing it's a solitary mistake. So your link surprises me not at all.
The criminal justice system is an absolute statistical mess when it comes to making sense of the data.
I remember a number of years ago when the book The New Jim Crow came out, how widely panned it was and popular it became. Not a lot of people know that among criminal justice scholars behind the scenes, it's a textbook case of how not to do criminal justice research. To take an example. Let's compare a young black guy and a young white guy who are guilty of possession of marijuana. If you compare certain profiles in a database you'll see odd things like this white guy got off with community service for a joint and this black guy got 3 years in prison. And some activist will come along and see this and declare "This is evidence of racism!," with no other context given. Here's what actually happened.
When the white guy was pulled over and caught, all he had was a joint on him. When the black guy was pulled over and caught he had a joint on him and also possession of a firearm. The police officer offered to show clemency to him by dropping the gun charge on him in exchange for 3 years in prison on the marijuana charge. So the gun charge disappears from the database. In other words, the police are granting you a tremendous amount of leniency here. Being a young guy, the police don't want to ruin your future and opportunity for growth when there's a gun charge lingering somewhere on your background when a prospective employer looks at you. Incidentally as well, if you live in a blue state with more stringent gun control measures and laws against owning firearms, guess who's often going to suffer disproportionately as a result? Minorities and those living in bad communities who can't escape.
Yes, there are also bad cops. Asshole cops. Racist cops. Some cops are outright evil. I've had my share of interactions with them when I was younger and on the wrong side of the neighborhood. I have had interactions with cops who were such assholes that if I were black guy and the exact same interaction went down, you certainly would've walked away from that situation, thinking the cop was racist. I'm a huge supporter of law enforcement but I know what it's like to also wonder "... are all cops like this?," because police do treat people like shit. But then again, they're often dealing with the worst of society on a daily basis. The good ones unfortunately have to suffer their reputation for what the bad ones do. But the criminal justice system in this country is so fucked up from an analytical standpoint I see little hope at the chance there's going to be substantial reform to it in my lifetime.
This kind of thing is endemic and leads to all kinds of bad data and questionable arguments. The endless "X% of people in prison are there for drug offenses" is the king of it. Yes, the client took a plea to drug possession and he's in prison for that conviction... but he took that plea agreement to get a violent crime charge dismissed, and the prosecutor was willing to offer a drug plea agreement to get a conviction because the victim was shaky and the prosecutor didn't want to deal with them at trial. Or as you note, getting a gun charge dismissed. Or any long list of crimes that could have collateral consequences after prison (or even in prison with offenses that will limit parole). Or it really was just drug possession and nothing else, but it was his 15th strike, so mandatory minimums were finally going to send him away for a long time and the plea agreement was better.
Yup. Failing to understand the basic point that discretion in charges leads to misleading criminal records is how Biden (or "Biden") ended up pardoning a witness killer. Though in that case the lower charge was not about leniency but the opposite.
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