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points by ToucanLoucan 2 days ago | 0 comments

Except crime occurs in pretty constant amounts over large populations. What really sets minority neighborhoods apart is far more aggressive policing, which finds more crime to be prosecuted for. Which is then used as both evidence backing racist claims by politicians, and reason to increase patrols further, which then find more crime, and so it continues.

It's also worth noting that numerous crimes, the most egregious examples probably being cocaine/crack and marijuana, are explicitly racialized in their enforcement. Cocaine in rich white suburbs is a health issue. Crack in the ghetto is a crime wave. It's literally the same substance, the only difference is how it looks and who is taking it. (and if it was possibly supplied by the CIA...)

Meanwhile white offenders of pot abuse get off with a few months here and there, and black people caught with it frequently, you know, fucking die.

[–] andix 2 days ago

This is not true in practical terms. Crime is highly dependent on the culture and the living conditions of a group of people. For example many immigrants are not allowed to buy guns and therefore commit more violent acts with knifes. Which creates a clear correlation between ethnicity and their preferred weapons. Their choice of weapon is not based on their ethnicity, but it still correlates.

[–] Windchaser 2 days ago

Yeah, I remember reading that a study found that white and black youth used marijuana at roughly equal rates, but black youth were about 4x as likely to be arrested for it. Due to differences in the # of stops, then differences in searches, then differences in actual arrests, with white youth getting more lenient treatment at each step.

And then this just reinforces the idea: "well, look at the crime statistics, black kids are more crime-prone, right"

[–] ToucanLoucan 2 days ago

And to be clear, I was IN this. We got busted for pot YEARS ago, but again, we're white, middle class. We confirmed what we took, we confirmed it was all gone, and I never saw so much as a fine. Cops asked to look around my house, I said sure thing help yourselves, they looked through maybe 1/3 of my home, and then left. And I've never heard a thing about it since then.

The fact that this is the same kind of life event that can literally, without any hyperbole, cost a black person their life, fucks with me sometimes.

[–] the_doctah 2 days ago

Now do firearm related crimes.

Anecdotes fall apart when we don't cherry-pick.

[–] Windchaser 2 days ago

Ancedotes are personal stories, like "oh, my dad was down at the post office the other day, and he saw..."

This is not a personal story, not an anecdote. I'm reporting on a study that looked at incarceration rates for drug use vs the drug use itself.

Why is that important? Because the study itself is solid, and it shows that there is some sort of bias between police/policing and african-american communities.

Sure, maybe that bias doesn't show up in other areas like firearm-related crimes. Or: maybe it does, and we haven't yet figured out how. Or, maybe it plays an indirect role, further eroding the relationship between the AA communities and the police, gradually building up a mutual dynamic that subjects black people to an unhealthy chronic level of stress and despair and harassment while also "justifying" the prejudicial activities of the cops.

There are whole books written about this. But at a minimum, I can't imagine just brushing over a 4x higher arrest rate for the same level of crime. That's pretty damn big.

[–] the_doctah 2 days ago

You're literally just describing a chicken-and-egg problem. Curious what your brain thinks is the reason African-American communities are policed more intensely. Surely every police organization in the United States is just racist.

[–] scheme271 2 days ago

So there is data on some policing in NYC. Because the police need to record stop and frisk encounters, it turns out that black populations get stopped and searched at 2-3 times the rate that other racial groups get stopped and frisked (whites got 10% of the encounters despite being something like 33% of the pop and black+latinos got 90% of the encounters). And it's not like the frisks turned up anything, with the vast majority (90%) of the frisks finding nothing. I believe there's similar data for police in other cities.

At the very least, this suggests that police in NYC and probably elsewhere were disproportionately singling out Black (and Latinos) for intrusive searches without evidence and on a pretextual basis.

[–] ToucanLoucan 2 days ago

I mean their officers keep getting caught posting racist shit, participating in racist chats, police unions regularly donate to republican politicians, and they murder black people so often that the phrase “driving/walking while black” is common slang for when the aforementioned African Americans get gunned down for every day misdemeanors.

So, every police institution? I’m sure there are exceptions, but there’s enough of a preponderance to safely assume it and the data bears that out.

[–] yieldcrv 2 days ago

it's all related

most of the violent crimes are from people with prior crimes, but the prior crimes themselves weren't necessarily violent, but just enough to marginalize that person from ability to participate in society with steady jobs

such as the possession of now-legalized substances, and the possession stop itself was based on flimsy pretexts that could have been fought, but it made more sense to take a plea-deal for that person or they were not aware of how to not engage with police and damned themselves without a lawyer present

[–] kbrannigan 2 days ago

What is a criminal? What is crime? In the USA, it was a crime for an enslaved Black American to learn to read and write? Attempting to escape was also a crime.

What about the crimes happening in company boardrooms rather than on the street corners?

People often call crime, individual offenses and think of certain racial groups, while ignoring real crimes committed by corporations led by other racial groups.

The crazy thing is that the greatest harms are caused by people who are not target of surveillance technology .

[–] ToucanLoucan 2 days ago

It will never not blow my mind that wage theft, the act of employers by one way or another fudging compensation to employees, eclipses every other form of larceny combined, and authorities do basically nothing about it.

If you work at a store and you take $100 from the register, you can be detained and jailed. Maybe prosecuted depending where you are.

If you work at a store and short five workers $20 each on their checks, and pocket it, they all have to individually pursue it as a civil matter, which itself costs money and time they probably don't have. It's fucking wild behavior.

I have to disagree though, it's not that crazy. Crime has always been a social construct much as that triggers a certain kind of person to hear, it just is. We decide the bounds of "good" behavior as a society and then determine punishments for those who transgress but at the same time, the law enforcement and justice systems are themselves systems made of people, and therefore inherit their biases. There have always been crooked cops, crooked judges, crooked prosecutors, etc. Like this isn't revolutionary shit I'm talking about, this is a standard plot point in movies going back to before movies had sound.

[–] the_doctah 2 days ago

Literally every single thing you said needs some kind of supporting evidence because it's all nonsense.

[–] ToucanLoucan 2 days ago

Google "study racialized policing" and you will find thousands of articles, going back decades, from all over America. This is not new information.

Oh, unless you mean the CIA thing. Then google "Contra CIA bloods crips" and you'll find everything on that.