User:Captain Occam/Race and crime

The relationship between race and crime is a political, criminological and psychological controversy in the United States and several other countries. Although the fact that certain ethnic groups are over-represented in prisons is well-documented, and therefore not subject to much dispute, there is an ongoing debate as to the reasons for this.

Statistics

Crime statistics should be considered with caution and may not always adequately reflect reality. Correlation between two factors does not imply causation; see Correlation does not imply causation.

By race

United States

Further information: Race in the United States and Crime in the United States

A February 1997 report on rape and sexual-based crime published by the United States Department of Justice gave figures broken down by "race" as defined by the US census. According to the

Of the crimes surveyed, 56% of arrestees were "white", 42% were "black", and 2% were of "other races". The report additionally noted that "[v]ictims of rape were about evenly divided between whites and blacks; in about 88% of forcible rapes, the victim and offender were of the same race." In 2006, the most recent year for which data is available, 50.6% of instances of rape and sexual assaults against white victims were committed by white perpetrators, and 43.0% against black victims were committed by black perpetrators. For interracial rape and sexual assault, 16.7% of attacks against white victims were committed by blacks, and 0.0% of attacks against black victims were committed by whites. The figure of 0.0% means that fewer than 10 cases of it were reported.

A United States Department of Justice report which surveyed homicide statistics between 1974 and 2004 stated that of the crimes surveyed, 52.2% of the offenders were black, 45.9% were white, and 2% were "other races." Of the victims in those same crimes, 51% were white, 46.8% were black, and 2.1% were "Other Races." The report further noted that, "most murders are intraracial", with 86% of white murders committed by whites, and 94% of black murders committed by blacks.

70% of prisoners in the United States are non-whites.

A 2005 United States Department of Justice report on violent crimes stated that of the "perceived race" of the offenders in single-offender violent crimes, 43.3% were white, 21.0% were black, and 9.6% were "Other", with the remaining 26.0% of offenders of unknown race.

Hate crimes

In 2006, the most recent year for which data is available, 66.2% of racially-motivated hate crimes were motivated by anti-black bias, while 21.3% were motivated by anti-white bias. According to James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter, in their book Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics, crimes committed by whites are more likely to be classified as hate crimes than crimes committed by blacks, even when the motives for the crime are the same. They cite Colin Ferguson’s 1993 rampage in a Long Island commuter train, which was not classified as a hate crime despite its clear racial motivation: “Police recovered from Ferguson’s pocket a handwritten note titled, ‘Reasons for This.’ It expressed hatred towards whites, Asians, and ‘Uncle Tom blacks,’ and stated that Nassau County, Long Island was chosen as ‘the venue’ because of its predominantly white population.”

Analysis

Advocacy groups and media organizations have been criticized for allegedly distorting the state of interracial crime in the United States, particularly as regards sexual crimes and hate crimes. This includes accusations of the double standard mentioned by Jacobs and Potter, as well as of depicting anti-black hate crimes and interracial rape/sexual assault as being more frequently committed by whites than they are committed by blacks against whites, when the reality is the opposite of this. (Adjusted for population in the latter case.)

This issue came to national attention with the Matthew Shepard Act, which would provide the Federal government with additional powers to prosecute perpetrators of what it considers hate crimes. The accusation of a double standard has been applied here also.

Britain

A report by Britain's Home Office for the years 2003, 2004, and 2005 stated that of the "ethnic appearance" of persons arrested for "notifiable offenses", 84.3% were white, 8.8% were black, 4.9% were Asian (South Asian), and 1.4% were Other, with the remaining percentage classified as "Unknown". Additionally, the report stated that when cases of crime went to court, those of either black or white ethnic appearance were convicted 51% of the time, and those of Asian appearance were convicted 24% of the time. It further stated that, "[b]lack and Asian people experience a higher likelihood of being stopped and searched. Moreover, black defendants are more prominent in the Crown Court caseload, although this is partly due to a tendency to elect for jury trial more often than other ethnic groups, including white. Furthermore, black people are also overrepresented in the prison population reflecting, at least in part, the longest average sentence imposed upon them."

In London in 2006, 75% of the victims of gun crime and 79% of the suspects were "from the African/Caribbean community."

By ethnicity

Further information: Immigrant criminality

Sweden

Immigrants are overrepresented in Sweden's crime statistics. During the period 1997-2001, 25% of the almost 1,520,000 offences were committed by people born overseas, while almost 20% were committed by Swedish-born people with a foreign background. Those from North Africa and the Middle East were overrepresented.

Indigenous populations

Further information: Indigenous people

Canada

Main article: First Nations social issues

First Nations make up about 2% of Canada's population, but account for 18% of the federal prison population as of 2000.

Australia

Main article: Indigenous Australians criminality

According to the Australian government's June 2006 publication of prison statistics, indigenous peoples make up 24% of the overall prison population in Australia. ("Indigenous" meaning those identifying themselves as being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin)

New Zealand

Main article: Maori social issues

In 2004, Maori made up just 15% of the total population but 49.5% of prisoners. Maori were entering prison at 8 times the rate of non-Maori.

A New Zealand study performed in 2006 found that a variant of the gene MAOA which has been linked to aggression, and dubbed a “warrior gene”, is twice as common among Maori as it is among Europeans. While this variant of the gene is found in 30 percent of Europeans, it is found in 60 percent of Maori. However, it is has not been determined how much of Maori’s over-representation in prisons is attributable to this.

Interpretation

Historical approaches

Further information: Anthropological Criminology

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, some researchers attempted to explain these statistics by means of physical differences between human groups. This approach has largely been rendered obsolete by modern psychology and genetics.

Cartwright

In 1851, Samuel A. Cartwright, a physician, explained the tendency of slaves to run away (and thus disobey the law) because of what he identified as a medical condition which he called "drapetomania." Carwright also described Dysaethesia Aethiopica, "called by overseers 'rascality'" which "is much more prevalent among free negroes living in clusters by themselves, than among slaves on our plantations, and attacks only such slaves as live like free negroes in regard to diet, drinks, exercise, etc." Indeed, according to Cartwright, "nearly all [free negroes] are more or less afflicted with this mental disorder, that have not got some white person to direct and to take care of them." Such claims have been since denounced as forms of scientific racism.

Italian school

Race and crime were studied by criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso, who belonged to the Italian school of criminology of the end of the 19th century. Lombroso divided Northern Italian and Southern Italians in two different "races." Henceforth, he thought that "Southern Italians were more crime-prone and lazy because they were unlucky enough to have less "Aryan" blood than their northern countrymen ." Enrico Ferri, a student of Lombroso, considered black people to be of an "inferior race" and more prone to crime than others .

Modern debate

It is widely believed that prior to the civil rights era of the 1960s, the United States justice system unfairly discriminated against blacks. However, it is unclear how much this remains the case, and how much of blacks’ current over-representation in prisons is due to other factors.

This question has received national media attention following the arrest of Henry Louis Gates.

The following explanations are not mutually exclusive from one another, and may all play a role in causing the variation in incarceration rates. Some modern interpretations of this data incorporate more than one of these explanations.

Conflict theory

Further information: Racial profiling

According to the conflict theory of race and criminology, the varying proportions of races represented in prisons are the result of disparities in prosecutions and sentencing, rather than differences in actual crime rates. Proponents of this theory point to the particularly strong penalties for possession of crack cocaine, which are far more severe than those for possession of powdered cocaine, and the fact that more than 90 percent of persons in federal prisons for possession of crack cocaine are African Americans. However, as of 2004 the portion of federal inmates serving time for violent and property crimes is over three and a half times the number serving time for drug offenses. For this reason, while disparities in drug sentencing may contribute to the proportions of races serving time in prison, they are unlikely to be the only explanation.

Chicago school

The Chicago school of environmental criminology has explained the disparity in crime rates on the basis of social, economic and cultural factors. "The slim economic opportunities and turbulent living conditions of young disadvantaged and black men may lead them to crime.In addition, elevated rates of offending in poor and minority neighborhoods compound the stigma of social marginality and provoke the scrutiny of criminal justice authorities."

Biological/psychological theory

Further information: Race and intelligence

The American Psychological Association points out that IQ positively correlates with law-abidingness, and that that the average IQ of African-Americans is approximately one standard deviation lower than that of Caucasians. Although the APA rules out socio-economic status and test bias as possible causes for this difference in IQ, they state that a genetic explanation also lacks empirical support. They conclude "At present, no one knows what causes this differential."

Arthur Jensen and J. Philippe Rushton have speculated that psychological differences between races, including both IQ and criminology, are the result of human populations becoming adapted to different environments during the millennia that they spent separated from one another. However, it is important to note that even if genes are found to play a significant role in African-Americans’ over-representation in prisons, this would not mean their higher crime rate is irremediable, as the genes currently known to contribute to criminal behavior have also been shown to express themselves differently depending on environmental factors.

Bibliography

• Willem Adriaan Bonger, Race and crime, Issue 34 of Criminology, Law Enforcement, and Social Problems Series, Patterson Smith, 1969.
• Margaret C. Simms, Samuel L. Myers, The Economics of race and crime, Transaction Publishers, 1988, ISBN 9780887387555.
• Darnell Felix Hawkins, Ethnicity, race, and crime: perspectives across time and place, SUNY Press, 1995, ISBN 9780791421956.
• Samuel Walker, Cassia Spohn, Miriam DeLone, The color of justice: race, ethnicity, and crime in America, Contemporary issues in crime and justice series, Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1996, ISBN 9780534262266.
• Randall Kennedy, Race, Crime, and the Law, Random House Value Publishing, 1998, ISBN 9780517284582.
• John D. Wright, Race and Crime, Mason Crest Publishers, 2002, ISBN 9781590843789.
• Anthony Walsh, Race and crime: a biosocial analysis, Nova Publishers, 2004, ISBN 9781590339701.
• Shaun L. Gabbidon, Helen Taylor Greene, Race, crime, and justice: a reader, Routledge, 2005, ISBN 9780415947077.
• Ruth D. Peterson, Lauren Joy Krivo, John Hagan, The many colors of crime: inequalities of race, ethnicity, and crime in America, New perspectives in crime, deviance, and law series, New York University Press, 2006, ISBN 9780814767191.
• Katheryn Russell-Brown, Protecting our own: race, crime, and African Americans, Perspectives on a multiracial America series, Rowman & Littlefield, 2006, ISBN 9780742545717.
• Gregg Barak, Paul Leighton, Jeanne Flavin, Class, race, gender, and crime: the social realities of justice in America, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007, ISBN 9780742546882.
• Shaun L. Gabbidon, Helen Taylor Greene, Race and Crime, Sage, 2008, ISBN 9781412967785.

See also

• Loïc Wacquant
• Nature versus nurture
• Genetics and violence
• Immigrant criminality
• Marvin D. Free Jr.
• Race and intelligence
• Racial profiling
• Steven Levitt
• William Bennett
• Sex and crime