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At first glance, when using crime reporting databases like the FBI’s UCR (Universal Crime Report), it seems like this argument is justified. Numberswise, a bigger percentage of the Black population commits crimes than other races, 00.43% of the Black population committing violent crimes as opposed to 00.08% of the white population committing violent crimes. Whites (75% of America’s population) made up around 48% of violent offenders; Black (13% of America’s population), 46%.
Notice I wrote, “seems” like it is justified.
Like all statistics, numbers don’t tell the whole narrative. People can twist the numbers to obscure the real meaning. The numbers may be accurate, but they can be wildly off topic.
A common example of this is the correlation between the number of T.V’s in households and the quality of life in a country. In countries with more T.V.’s, the quality of life tends to be higher. You could argue T.V.’s increase a country’s quality of life, and the data seems like it supports that; but we can’t just ship a bunch of T.V.’s to poverty stricken nations and expect poverty to disappear. Rather, the T.V.’s are a result of a higher quality of life, which depends on many things like income, crime rates, and job opportunities. See, numbers and stats aren’t the end all be all; they can be manipulated to tell the story that you want to tell, which might not necessarily be true.
The same thing goes for statistics regarding crime and race.
Crime statistics aren’t just affected by the number of criminals and victims. A myriad of factors -- ability to obtain legal counsel, police judgement, the reliability of eyewitnesses, the agenda of whoever is reporting the data (in this case, the police) -- color the report of who commits what crimes.
These numbers don’t account for economic and power disparities. They don’t account for false arrests and wrongful convictions. They don’t account for the prejudice built into our justice system from America’s unsettling legacy of racism.
From the numbers, we don’t see how the less privileged can’t afford the legal counsel they need in order to exonerate themselves. We don’t see how they can’t fight out legal battles to prove their innocence just because they don’t have the money. While everyone is entitled to a lawyer in America upon arrest, it doesn’t mean they will be a good lawyer. If an innocent person is convicted, they’ll have that arrest or conviction on the record, which skews the statistics. In addition, most people who go to court, innocent or not, will take a plea bargain, even if they’re innocent, just because it would cost them more to go through a trial. By taking a plea bargain, defendants plead guilty or no contest and accept a judgement without going through a trial.
From the numbers, we don’t see how the police judge people based on their race and arrest them because of their prejudice. We don’t see the numbers of people who now have a record because the police acted on their prejudices or because an eyewitness wrongfully identified them as guilty based on bias.
From the numbers, we don’t see how the legal system systematically works against Blacks’ favor. We see this prejudice in the different prison sentences Blacks receive compared to the sentences whites receive for the same crime. We see this prejudice in the overreaching force the police use to arrest Blacks. But, we don’t see it in the statistics.
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