User talk:Captain Occam/Race and crime

Comments

The new article suffers from some of the same problems (as the old). More than half the article is a listing of the racial breakdown of crime statistics. The second part of the article, the part labeled 'interpretation', does not interpret these statistics but presents a series of theories that bear no relation to these statistics. The original consensus for merging Race and Crime into Anthropological Criminology (here) was based on the assumption that meaningful material (mainly, IMO, the material under 'interpretation') from the Race and Crime article could be included in Anthropological criminology. As far as I can see, that is still the case. --RegentsPark (sticks and stones) 22:38, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. So it sounds like in order to make this article acceptable, what I’ll need to do is add more specific information about how the statistics themselves are interpreted, rather than just general information about explanations that have been proposed for the disparity in incarceration rates. Is that correct?

And is there anything else that you think needs to be added? --Captain Occam (talk) 19:26, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

In the original merge discussion, there were two rationale for merging that seemed to have some support: (1) the material could and should be a part of Anthropological criminology and (2) Race and crime is a troll magnet. The latter rationale, while weak (troll magnet is not a sufficient condition by itself), still stands. The only way to get around it is to convince the community that a separate Race and crime article is necessary. I'm neither convinced nor unconvinced at this point. My suggestion is that you post a message on the article talk page pointing to this draft and ask for feedback. You may want to ping some of the original discussants in the merge discussion. We'll take it from there. --RegentsPark (sticks and stones) 19:50, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

On what talk page are you suggesting that I bring this up? For the most part, the Anthropological criminology discussion page seems to have the attention of nobody except you and Verbal nowadays, as can be seen from that fact that you and he were the only people who participated in the discussion when I brought this up there before. So if what you mean is that you’re suggesting I post about this again there, I don’t think that’s likely to accomplish anything additional. (Verbal obviously knows about this draft already, as can be seen from its history.)

If there’s somewhere else that you think it would be beneficial to bring this up, though, I’d like to know more specifically where you suggest that I do. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:25, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Try WP:FTN, or is there an anthropology project? Verbal chat 21:07, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

What on earth does this topic have to do with fringe theories? The statistics are documented by the U.S. government, and the governments of many other countries also. While I suppose fringe theories probably exist about the reason for this correlation, I don’t see why they should receive any more coverage in this article than they would in an article about any other topic. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:57, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

This topic is often used by people to push fringe (or racist) theories. However, my pointer to FTN was simply because you will find a lot of editors there who might be willing to help, or give an opinion on what is needed. The previous article clearly fell within the racist POV pushing scope. I agree that fringe theories should not be put forward in this article. Nor should raw stats. Verbal chat 09:56, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I know you think the previous article was unacceptable for POV reasons, and that raw stats should not be used in it, but I hope you’re aware that both of these opinions go against the consensus that was established in the previous article’s discussion. As I mentioned to you before, Wikipedia’s policies also explicitly allow raw stats to be included, as long as certain parameters are followed.

As can be seen from the previous version’s history, you engaged in an edit war over that article, removing all of the statistical information multiple times without discussion, despite consensus having already established that this information should not be removed. When the article is recreated, please don’t do so again. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:22, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Er, no. The consensus was that the raw stats shouldn't be included in the form of the previous article which you have largely reproduced here. That was why the page is salted - due to the reoccurring racist implications that were being made. At no time did I edit war, and I'd ask you to keep you ad hom personal attacks to yourself. You asked where you could solicit more input, and I have given you an answer. Verbal chat 18:25, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Look, we both have access to the article history. I can see what happened there.

The first time you removed the statistics was on July 13th of 2008. Completely wiping the statistics was the first edit you ever made to this article, it was done without discussion, and Iivarkson immediately reverted your edit with the reason “no consensus”. On July 14th you wiped it again, and this time Yukichigai reverted it, with the explanation “Revert. No new reason given since the last time I reverted this. There's nothing wrong with using primary sources so long as it doesn't run afoul of WP:SYNTH” You wiped the statistics a total of five separate times, and each time that another editor put them back, they explained that you were repeatedly removing them without obtaining consensus for it. That is the definition of an edit war.

This probably needs to be discussed. It’s obvious that you’re determined to keep the statistical information out of this article, and your behavior thus far to that effect has been somewhat disruptive. I agree that in its current form the article needs to be improved, hence it still being a draft, but the solution (with which most others have agreed) is to better integrate the statistics with the rest of the article, not to remove them entirely. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:59, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Your summary is incorrect. I'm not interested in going over it again. Note that the material was removed, and that removal has been enforced by admins that have nothing to do with me. If you want to put it back in then you will probably fail, as consensus is against such a misleading presentation of statistics used to support fringe racist theories. Look at the Canada example on your page for an example of raw statistics which are misleadingly presented. You can blame me if you like, but I acted properly and was supported by the community. If you try to restore these raw statistics, again, you will see that, again. Instead of wasting effort, as you will just be ignored, why not improve the article and remove or otherwise fix these misleading, racist, implications. Verbal chat 20:33, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

“Note that the material was removed, and that removal has been enforced by admins that have nothing to do with me.”

The only thing they’ve enforced is that the article not be re-created after the merge.

Other people will probably be looking at this discussion page soon, so it’s important to establish what the pre-existing consensus was about this. The relevant discussion is here. First of all, you did not discuss any of your edits there—there are no posts from you in that discussion at all. And second, neither you nor anyone else attempted to argue with the point that was made there by Y|yukichigai and Zzmang, which is an explicit refutation of what you are saying here. More specifically: these are used with care, as they present only the raw statistics, no conclusions, and no erroneous details. and Lay people coming to their own conclusions reading wiki are not engaging in Original Research, unless they include those conclusions in the page. The latter is is Wikipedia’s policy, it is why no consensus was obtained for removing the statistics, and you did not even attempt to obtain a consensus by disputing this conclusion.

RegentsPark has pointed out what the only problem is with the current form of these statistics, which is a style problem rather than a POV or OR one—the statistics and interpretations need to be integrated with one another, rather than in separate sections. That is the only thing that he said needs to be changed, so if you attempt to change more than this, I doubt you’ll have his support. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:23, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

• (unindent)I was one of those getting "pinged". I agree completely with Verbal's comments above. As for the last comment by Captain Occam, WP is an encyclopedia, it is not a place to dump raw data and "let the reader decide". You can do that in some (primary) scientific journals and in some databases, not in an encyclopedia. I am happy with the current situation and see no compelling reason to re-create this article. --Crusio (talk) 23:52, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Ideally, the article should be about the political issue surrounding this data, which relates to both anti-hate crime legislation and news topics such as the arrest of Henry Louis Gates. As expressed here, RegentsPark's opinion was that the statistical data could be included, but that it should be presented as part of a discussion of these issues, rather than on its own.

The reason the statistics are still presented on their own in the current version of this article is because I haven't yet come up with a good way to integrate them with the rest of it. I also don't feel as strongly about this as you and RegentsPark apparently do. If you think the current way they're presented is a problem, though, I would ask that you help improve the article by following RegentsPark's suggestions about this, rather than just saying it's no good and doing nothing else. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:39, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

• As I said, I "see no compelling reason to re-create this article". Given that I don't see the need to do anything, it's a bit strange to reproach me for not doing anything... :-) --Crusio (talk) 17:34, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Comments by Dbachmann

I see nothing wrong with this draft as it stands. If governments publish crime statistics broken down by race or ethnicity, there can be hardly anything wrong with Wikipedia saying "here is the statistics published by government X". The only point that makes this dodgy is the distinction between "race" and "ethnicity". Do we want to restrict this article to discussing "race" exclusively, which will limit government publications to those that explicitly distinguish race and ethnicity, which afaik is the case for the US and the UK but not for any other country mentioned here. Discussion of immigrant criminality belongs on immigrant criminality. --dab (𒁳) 10:22, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

further observations

• it turns out that the only two statistics on "race and crime" we have are from the US and from the UK.
• the US have been a multiracial country for centuries, so that it is impossible to correlate race and immigrant status. In the UK, otoh, most non-white residents will be immigrants, or immediate descendants of immigrants. This makes the figures impossible to compare. "Race and crime in the UK" will be mostly about immmigrant criminality, while "Race and crime in the US" will be mostly about the history of racial discrimination in the US. It may be worth considering to simply do a race and crime in the US article for now.
• the other statistics we have do not actually discuss race, and perhaps shouldn't be here in the first place. immigrant criminality is a stub, and data on immigrant delinquents should be exported there.
• finally, and most importantly, giving percentage figures of convicts or arrestees by race without stating that race's frequency in overall population results in extreme distortions. Stating "arrests for sex-offences in the US: 56% white, 42% were black, and 2% other" will suggest that whites are extremely prone to sex-offences, while "other races" are perfectly saintly compared to either black or whites, unless it is pointed out that US population consists of 74% whites, 14% blacks and 12% other. We see, therefore, that the statistics as given implies a massive defamation of the white demographics (by implying they are "the most criminal" in the list), and considering how tightly this article has been scrutinized, I frankly wonder that people haven't shot this down as utterly misleading before. Analogously for the UK, "84% white, 9% black, 5% Asian" needs to be put into perspective of White British:92% Black British:2% Asian British:5% (United Kingdom Census 2001). Without those figures, the percentages given are completely useless.

--dab (𒁳) 10:54, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest that we handle the race/ethnicity distinction the way Race and intelligence does. The top of that article contains a notice saying “This article also discusses issues regarding ethnicity and intelligence”, and the article itself distinguishes between the two where appropriate. The relationship between race and crime and the one between ethnicity and crime are similar enough that I think they can be covered by the same article.

I agree with your last comment, and if you can recommend a reliable source that describes the population statistics in the UK and the US, I’ll add that information to the article. As for exporting some of this information to Immigrant criminality, can you add the information to that article that you think belongs there, and I’ll edit the race and crime article to reflect this change? While I’m aware of the US/UK difference regarding immigration, you probably know more than I do about what other countries there are to which this also applies. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:13, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

See my comments below, I am now convinced that we need to make this US-specific, and delegate all non-US material to other articles. --dab (𒁳) 14:20, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Literature

Ok, I finally did a google books search on this. And guess what, this is a major, major topic in US sociology, with numerous monographs dedicated to it. There is a large field of study, simply known as "race and crime", and in light of this, the article needs to be recreated asap. But also note that the implication is "in the US". I strongly recommend we make this article about the situation in the US explicitly, and link to other topics that may be argued as falling under "race and crime" by way of disambiguation.

Here is part of the bibliography I googled,

• 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.

And these are just the ones with explicit "race and crime" in the title. Note how all of them are US publications. This article absolutely needs to base its outline of the topic on the outlines given in these books, and not in a home-rolled summary of various statistics.

I think the same set of discussions in Europe take place under the heading of immigrant criminality, simply because there are no truly multiracial societies in Europe that aren't due to recent (post-1945, and indeed mostly post-1980) immigration. The discussion in Europe isn't in terms of "black vs. white" at all, simply because Afro Europeans make for just 1% of Europe's population, and more than half of them are in fact Afro-French. There may be a perception of a "black minority" in France, where they make for some 4% of population, and perhaps in the UK, where they account for some 2%, but everywhere else in Europe there is a black population well below 1% so that they will tend to be filed under "other" statistically. There are multi-ethnic societies in Europe, to be sure, and one debate that would seem somehow cognate to the "indigenous criminality" in Canada, Australia and New Zealand may be the Roma criminality topos in Eastern Europe. In Switzerland, immigrant criminality is a big issue, as statistically foreigners are more than three times more criminal than Swiss citizens, but this isn't cast in terms of race, as the problem is most severe with immigrants from South-Eastern Europe, who are hardly distinct "racially". There may be scattered reports of "black African gangs", mostly into drug dealing, but these aren't perceived in racial terms (because they do not contrast with "white gangs"), but in ethnic terms (because they contrast with Albanian, Polish, Roma gangs, and crime statistics are by nationality, not by "race" (see Crime in Switzerland).

I think the USA (white majority, 14% black), and perhaps South Africa (black majority, 9% white) and Cuba (white majority, black and mulatto minorities), are the only countries on earth where a meaningful discussion of "race and crime" in terms of "black, white, other" is possible. The dichotomy will be all but impossible in countries like Brazil, which have truly multiracial population, but with most of the population somewhere on a sliding scale between white, black and Amerindian. --dab (𒁳) 13:52, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

What would you suggest that I do at this point? I can read three or four of these books over the next month, but that probably won’t be enough to provide the sort of summary of the literature on this topic that you’re looking for, especially considering I don’t know which of them are the most thorough and authoritative in their coverage of it. It’ll also delay creating the article, if you want it created ASAP.

It’s going to be a lot easier to improve this article if we can get other people involved in it, and based on my experience thus far, I don’t think that’s likely to happen as long as it’s only in my userspace. You mentioned in your reply to me on your userpage that the statistics don’t need to be entirely cleaned up before the article can be recreated; is there anything specific that you think needs to be done with it before it can be added back to the encyclopedia, so that we can start getting contributions from other people? --Captain Occam (talk) 15:07, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Ah, when I posted that comment I hadn’t noticed yet that you’re already working on improving it yourself.

Are you certain that all of the available literature about black vs. white crime is focused on the United States? Judging by your comment above, I think the article ought to at least discuss the UK and France, if not the other European countries that it currently covers. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:12, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

no, no, I am not suggesting you read any of these books. I am suggesting tha the race and crime article should be built like any other article on Wikipedia, beginning as a stub, and based on academic literature.

The requirement isn't to come up with a finished article, it is to avoid WP:SYNTH and prefer a brief stub without questionable synthesis to a lengthy list-like article cobbled together from various statistics.

The problem we are having is mainly connected with the term "race". This term has a comparatively clear meaning in the US, but not in Europe. It is true that "Afro Europeans" are becoming a recognizable group in Britain and France, but this is a process that is very much ongoing, and there is not yet any settled way of dealing with "multiracial" societies on top of multiethnic ones in Europe. In the USA, we can discuss racial issues. The same discussion in Europe will surround "ethnic", not racial concepts.

Whether we discuss "race and crime" for Britain or France will of course strongly depend on whether we find decent sources to build this discussion on. For the moment, we should focus on the situation in the US, for which we definitely do have quotable literature. --dab (𒁳) 11:08, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

There’s another reason I should mention why I think it would be beneficial for this article to cover more countries than just the US, and it relates to the biological/psychological theory about this topic. For people who study the question of whether genetics contribute to the racial/ethnic proportions in crime rates, one of the main ways that this is studied involves how much these proportions remain constant across different cultures. A Google scholar search for the terms “race crime and genetics” returns around 30,000 results, both arguing for and against the idea. This theory is definitely notable enough to be included in the article, but it’ll be difficult to discuss it if the article only talks about crime rates in the United States.

Would it be possible to include just a summary of the information about Europe, even if that isn’t the focus of the article, and in parts of the article that discuss racial as well as ethnic differences, describe them in terms which can apply to both, such as “people of African ancestry”? As I said before, there’s no specific reason why the article can’t discuss both ethnic and racial differences, which is the way this is handled by most other Wikipedia articles that cover similar topics. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:19, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I have recreated the article at Race and crime in the United States for now. As for Europe, if we're going to present a comparison of the situation in the US with that in Europe, it will need to be based on such a comparison presented academically, it cannot be our own comparison. Fwiiw, I found this, a 2009 monograph specifically dedicated to international comparison. I think it is significant that the title is not "race and crime" but "race, ethnicity, crime and justice", because notions of race are not congruent internationally, and because it is impossible to assess crime (whodunnit?) independent of the justice system (who gets caught? who is convicted?). There may be an article like race and ethnicity in criminology (vel sim.) in there.

According to the introduction, Gabbidon (2009) specifically aims for addressing "the perils of using crime statistics to examine race and crime cross-nationally", which is exactly what this article has been doing. The fact that a 2009 monograph addresses the exact issues that were under scrutiny in the AfD drives home the point that this is very much a "live" topic, and we should struggle to cover it encyclopedically. --dab (𒁳) 12:41, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I think we may need to do something to prevent the user Verbal removing the statistical information from this article. He did this five separate times to its previous version, without ever discussing his edits first, even though there was no consensus for removing it. This (and the same thing from a few other people) is one of the things that made it difficult to improve the previous version of the article, and now it looks like we’re starting to the same problem with its current version.

I think I’m beyond the point where it’s reasonable to assume good faith about this. His merging of the previous version of the article into anthropological criminology, after it had survived two deletion attempts, is specifically described at Wikipedia:Content authoritarianism as an example of loopholing:

“Loopholing” is when an editor tries to achieve a specific and objectionable goal, otherwise unattainable by normal means, by doing something that fundamentally accomplishes the same thing. This is oftentimes due to obstacles presented by policy, such as the three-revert rule, and is also discussed as part of WikiLawyering. A good example of this would be a situation where, after nominating an article for deletion and having the nomination result in a consensus of "Keep", the editor effectively deletes the article anyway by merging it into a sub-section of another, keeping only a few sentences and discarding the bulk of the content.

As you can see in the “comments” section earlier on this discussion page, I’ve tried to reason with him about this, to no avail. You can try also if you like, but he’s disrupted this article enough times that I think we may be getting to the point where it would be appropriate to block him from editing it, at least temporarily. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:21, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I do not see a problem. If Verbal (talk · contribs) is disrupting the article based on a WP:POINT or WP:IDONTLIKEIT basis, by removing perfectly pertinent and well-referenced content, this is a mere issue of user conduct, and not problem with the article itself. User conduct issues should be resolved at the user level without affecting articles. --dab (𒁳) 10:01, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

There is no evidence of such disruption (from me anyway), and please discuss the article in question at the articles talk page. I seem to not be the only user who has problems with the "sources" and "theories" and "liberal vs conservative" opinions that are being included. Please keep discussion in one place. Please note I have made good faith efforts to engage with CO, but have been rebuffed every time. CO is intent on pushing motives on me, while I have continued to assume good faith in them. This should stop. WP:DR is not here. Verbal chat 14:29, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

As I said, I’ve tried discussing this with him before, and it hasn’t stopped him periodically removing the statistics. It also isn’t just him; it’s a whole group of users who have been making these kinds of changes to the article without consensus, although he’s generally been the one who did so the most.

But in any case, it’s clear from the new article’s discussion page that you’re already aware of this problem. As long as you and RegentsPark can prevent the current article being disrupted, that’s all I care about. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:09, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, a whole group of users - including me and RegentsPark, and Fences and Windows, and more - disagree with you. Please stop calling this disruption and engage properly and civilly. Verbal chat 05:55, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I am, on the article discussion page. At the moment, Crusio is the only user who's expressed agreement with what you're saying there. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:33, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Then you should read RPs comments again, and have a look at WP:FTN. Verbal chat 08:18, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

RegentsPark's comments on this discussion page are no longer relevant. As Dbachmann mentioned here, he's discussed with RegentsPark what course of action is appropriate for this article, and RegentsPark appears to now be deferring to Dab about this, since he allowed Dab to recreate the article.

The opinions of the people who commented on this on the fringe theories noticeboard aren’t very meaningful until they participate in the relevant discussion pages. They appear to be under the impression that the relationship between race and crime receives no more attention from the sociology community than any other demographic correlation, when in fact this assumption is completely unfounded, as Dab pointed out above. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:55, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I meant his comments since then, on the article. We'd all get along a lot better if you dropped the attitude. Verbal chat 09:04, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

On the current article's discussion page, RegentsPark has not expressed a problem with the statistics being included in their current form, and I challenge you to find anywhere on that page where he has. --Captain Occam (talk) 09:21, 26 September 2009 (UTC)