One of the issues with following a crime rate is that it perpetuates discrimination.
Even if two groups have the exact same probability of, for example, carrying illegal substances, racist targeting will mean your crime rate will continue to reflect that one group “seems worse”.
You don’t spot crime where you dont look for it.
That’s why it’s important to tackle these issues and make sure there is no racial targeting.
Imagine, for the sake of argument, both white people and black people have a 50% chance of possessing weed (not that weed should even be criminalized, but you get the idea).
Now also let’s take a group of 100 people, assuming 80 are white and 20 are black. Given the above weed possession rate, we can say there are 40 weed-carrying white people and 10 weed-carrying black people.
Now imagine cops last year searched 20% of the total population, 90% of those searched being black and 10% being white. Thus, last year, 18 black people were searched and only 2 white people. Of these searched people, 9 black people were caught in possession of weed vs 1 white person.
Thus, the newspapers can now publish “9 black criminals for every 1 white criminal!”, and so the police decide to continue mostly searching black people this year.
Same underlying crime rates, but searching one demographic more skews the resulting arrest record and seemingly justifies further discriminatory enforcement.
I know from my days as a young white guy that enjoyed extracurricular activities that I could do damn near anything in front of cops while smelling like extracurricular activities and cops never hassled me…
Meanwhile my Black friends constantly got hassled even if they never broke laws.
Cops see nervousness as indication of guilt. So if you’re afraid of cops (because they may kill you over nothing) the cops are going to see that as reason to hassle you.
Even if it’s not explicit racism on the cops behalf, the racist environment of policing means it’s going to affect how they do their job and who they hassle. That’s why people keep saying it’s a systemic issue.
Cops are a lot like dogs or wild animals. They don’t often use higher logic like normal people. Because they’re trained to “trust their gut” even tho absolutely no science backs it up. It’s easy and makes them feel smart, so that’s what they do.
Weird how you keep asking “questions” like this after you were already shown that the stops were extremely disproportionate. It’s almost like you didn’t care about the answers to the questions at all, and were just using “questions” as a vehicle to insert your already formed opinions.
Black and Latino people are “much less likely to get arrested because the stops are bogus from the get-go,”
so, no. the disproportionate number of stops is not because of differences in crime rates. but also, it should be pretty obvious that white people (who are around 30% of the NYC population) should account for more than just 5% of crimes, even considering that more crime will be committed by poor people, and that poor people will be disproportionately non-white.
Skin color has nothing to do with crime rates. You can tell if a system is racist by looking at its rates compared to demographics. Only stopping 5% white people when their population in the area is 60% is a red flag. Essential being a white criminal in that area was like being invisible.
Yes. Most studies show blacks commit a majority of the crimes but not 95%
That logic only works under the assumption everyone that commits a crime is caught…
Which is incredibly naive.
You should use “convicted of crimes” not “committed crimes”. And even then, that’s ignoring how our justice system uses insane prison sentences to make people take plea deals. So innocent people are coerced into pleasing guilty to avoid jail.
There are literally no valid, trustworthy crime statistics in the US. Police only stop people they want to stop, they more often than not lie in court to secure convictions, public defenders have obscene caseloads that leave them entirely unable to provide a competent, effective defense, and, as you said, defendants are all but forced into shit plea deals for crimes they usually either didn’t commit or shouldn’t be imprisoned for.
The US justice system isn’t just broken, it’s nearly nonexistent and should be treated as entirely illegitimate.
Actually commit, or arrested for, or convicted for? I’m on mobile and can’t dive the PDF, but “commit” sounds like it’s a denominator, not a numerator.
I’m not sure that attacking the idea of the plea itself is right. Plea deals are useful in a well-run juridical model.
Instead, prosecutors should be barred from overcharging as a form of coercion, which is plainly what they often do today. Some combo of state legislators, the state supreme courts, and the ABA should create guardrails for charging decisions.
Finally, as I understand its history, the broad use of overcharging is a fairly recent development that arose because other parts of our system broke down or were overwhelmed, often because of underfunding and/or political expedience.
This just simply isn’t true at all. A prosecutor just has to coerce and intimidate you into a plea deal or use unreliable and generally false police testimony to convince a group of average dipshits off the street.
We’re not talking about arrests we’re talking about stops of pedestrians, so none of what you said after the first sentence is relevant.
The NYPD has stopped tens of thousands of pedestrians since Mayor Eric Adams took office – claiming someone “fit a relevant description” or citing a vague reason like “other.” Just 5% of them were white, revealing racial disparities even starker than at the height of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “stop and frisk” era.
Is that disproportionate to the crime rate? If not, then I’m not sure how this is Mayor Adams’ fault.
One of the issues with following a crime rate is that it perpetuates discrimination.
Even if two groups have the exact same probability of, for example, carrying illegal substances, racist targeting will mean your crime rate will continue to reflect that one group “seems worse”.
You don’t spot crime where you dont look for it.
That’s why it’s important to tackle these issues and make sure there is no racial targeting.
As an example:
Imagine, for the sake of argument, both white people and black people have a 50% chance of possessing weed (not that weed should even be criminalized, but you get the idea).
Now also let’s take a group of 100 people, assuming 80 are white and 20 are black. Given the above weed possession rate, we can say there are 40 weed-carrying white people and 10 weed-carrying black people.
Now imagine cops last year searched 20% of the total population, 90% of those searched being black and 10% being white. Thus, last year, 18 black people were searched and only 2 white people. Of these searched people, 9 black people were caught in possession of weed vs 1 white person.
Thus, the newspapers can now publish “9 black criminals for every 1 white criminal!”, and so the police decide to continue mostly searching black people this year.
Same underlying crime rates, but searching one demographic more skews the resulting arrest record and seemingly justifies further discriminatory enforcement.
Don’t even need to imagine it when every study shows that is an accurate description.
Sure, but a lot of people need it very clearly spelled out for them.
What a wonderful, easy to understand example. Thank you for this
Thank you and the poster above you for explaining that so well.
Yep.
If you’re only stopping people in cargo shorts to search them for drugs, you’re only going to find drugs on people wearing cargo shorts.
Doesn’t mean they’re the only ones carrying drugs around. They’re just waaaaay more likely to get caught because they’re the ones getting searched
That makes sense. Do you think that there’s a large amount of drug crime among white folks that is presently being ignored?
No cop ever searched me for drugs, even when I obviously smelled like weed. Total white privilege.
I know from my days as a young white guy that enjoyed extracurricular activities that I could do damn near anything in front of cops while smelling like extracurricular activities and cops never hassled me…
Meanwhile my Black friends constantly got hassled even if they never broke laws.
Cops see nervousness as indication of guilt. So if you’re afraid of cops (because they may kill you over nothing) the cops are going to see that as reason to hassle you.
Even if it’s not explicit racism on the cops behalf, the racist environment of policing means it’s going to affect how they do their job and who they hassle. That’s why people keep saying it’s a systemic issue.
Cops are a lot like dogs or wild animals. They don’t often use higher logic like normal people. Because they’re trained to “trust their gut” even tho absolutely no science backs it up. It’s easy and makes them feel smart, so that’s what they do.
Weird how you keep asking “questions” like this after you were already shown that the stops were extremely disproportionate. It’s almost like you didn’t care about the answers to the questions at all, and were just using “questions” as a vehicle to insert your already formed opinions.
Lol, true. Let me show you how a real man deals with this troll the Rex Kwan Do way.
Come at me with a “question”.
“Why don’t they just follow the rules like everyone AHH!”
See, I just block and walk away. Block and walk away.
from the article:
so, no. the disproportionate number of stops is not because of differences in crime rates. but also, it should be pretty obvious that white people (who are around 30% of the NYC population) should account for more than just 5% of crimes, even considering that more crime will be committed by poor people, and that poor people will be disproportionately non-white.
Funny thing about the crime rate, if you only hunt for the black criminals, that’s what you’re gonna find.
Skin color has nothing to do with crime rates. You can tell if a system is racist by looking at its rates compared to demographics. Only stopping 5% white people when their population in the area is 60% is a red flag. Essential being a white criminal in that area was like being invisible.
I was coming here to post that certain people will use this statistic to claim 95% of crime is committed by non-whites.
But I think you just saved me the trouble by demonstrating my point
Derailing answer for a good faith inquiry.
Yes. Most studies show blacks commit a majority of the crimes but not 95% https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/year-end-2022-enforcement-report.pdf
The arrest rate is around 43% for black people. White is about 17%.
The issue, though, is this is stop and frisk. It is just an excuse to stop people. It isn’t effective law enforcement.
That logic only works under the assumption everyone that commits a crime is caught…
Which is incredibly naive.
You should use “convicted of crimes” not “committed crimes”. And even then, that’s ignoring how our justice system uses insane prison sentences to make people take plea deals. So innocent people are coerced into pleasing guilty to avoid jail.
There are literally no valid, trustworthy crime statistics in the US. Police only stop people they want to stop, they more often than not lie in court to secure convictions, public defenders have obscene caseloads that leave them entirely unable to provide a competent, effective defense, and, as you said, defendants are all but forced into shit plea deals for crimes they usually either didn’t commit or shouldn’t be imprisoned for.
The US justice system isn’t just broken, it’s nearly nonexistent and should be treated as entirely illegitimate.
Actually commit, or arrested for, or convicted for? I’m on mobile and can’t dive the PDF, but “commit” sounds like it’s a denominator, not a numerator.
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Better than anyone else?
I’m not sure that attacking the idea of the plea itself is right. Plea deals are useful in a well-run juridical model.
Instead, prosecutors should be barred from overcharging as a form of coercion, which is plainly what they often do today. Some combo of state legislators, the state supreme courts, and the ABA should create guardrails for charging decisions.
Finally, as I understand its history, the broad use of overcharging is a fairly recent development that arose because other parts of our system broke down or were overwhelmed, often because of underfunding and/or political expedience.
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Not even close. The vast majority of wealthy nations have far better justice systems than the US.
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This just simply isn’t true at all. A prosecutor just has to coerce and intimidate you into a plea deal or use unreliable and generally false police testimony to convince a group of average dipshits off the street.
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We’re not talking about arrests we’re talking about stops of pedestrians, so none of what you said after the first sentence is relevant.