Bullying pt 2: Race, Crime, and the Police

This is part two on bullying as an emergent social/political behavior and an exploration of the basic thesis that in a dispute between two people, elites will justify or outright lie about violence toward the lower status individual. For a longer explanation, see Part 1: Everything Adults say about Bullying is Bullshit.

Let’s start with this graph, helpfully supplied by Slate Star Codex’s extensively researched article, Race and Justice: much more than you wanted to know, but originally from Mother Jones Magazine:

shootinggraph

“I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back,” said Ms. Morrison, who also has won the Pulitzer Prize for her work, which includes the bestsellers “Beloved” and “Song of Solomon.” “And I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then when you ask me, ‘Is it over?’, I will say yes.”

(From the Washington Times, “Police kill more whites than blacks, but minority deaths generate more outrage“)

Picture 15

(Source: Washington Post )

Welp. That took all of 5 seconds to find via Google. Does Ms. Morrison not own a computer? Or is she ignorant by choice?

The Mother Jones data (above) records not a single white who shot at the NYC police, yet whites were 20% of those shot by the police. Approximately 70% of the people who actually tried to shoot a police officer were black, but only about 40% of those shot by the police were black. Hispanics make up about 30% of those who shot at the police, and 40% of those shot by the police.

In other words, NYC police officers appear to be preferentially shooting whites and Hispanics, not blacks.

Even when we compare the “fired upon by police” bar vs the “struck by police” bar, we notice that the police seem to be much better shots when shooting at whites than at blacks. When they shoot at blacks, they appear to be trying not to actually hit them, whereas they appear to have no such compunctions when shooting at whites.

So where are all of the protests and marches for whites and Hispanics murdered by the police? Does even Stormfront give enough of a shit about murdered whites to block a highway or steal a microphone?

But that is just Mother Jones and the WaPo. What stats do other folks cite?

Peter Moskos, assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, decided to use figures from the website Killed by Police. …

“Adjusted to take into account the racial breakdown of the U.S. population, he said black men are 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white men. But also adjusted to take into account the racial breakdown in violent crime, the data actually show that police are less likely to kill black suspects than white ones.

““If one adjusts for the racial disparity in the homicide rate or the rate at which police are feloniously killed, whites are actually more likely to be killed by police than blacks,” said Mr. Moskos. …

Peter Moskos, assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, decided to use figures from the website Killed by Police. Based on that data, Mr. Moskos reported that roughly 49 percent of those killed by officers from May 2013 to April 2015 were white, while 30 percent were black. He also found that 19 percent were Hispanic and 2 percent were Asian and other races. …

“Adjusted to take into account the racial breakdown of the U.S. population, he said black men are 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white men. But also adjusted to take into account the racial breakdown in violent crime, the data actually show that police are less likely to kill black suspects than white ones.

“If one adjusts for the racial disparity in the homicide rate or the rate at which police are feloniously killed, whites are actually more likely to be killed by police than blacks,” said Mr. Moskos, a former Baltimore cop and author of the book “Cop in the Hood.”

But do others agree with Mr. Moskos’s numbers?

“The investigative journalism website ProPublica came up with a similar percentage in an Oct. 10 article, reporting that 44 percent of all those killed by police were white, using FBI data from 1980 to 2012.

“The fact-checking website PolitiFact concluded in August 2014 that police kill more whites than blacks after the claim was made by conservative commentator Michael Medved. PolitiFact cited data from the Centers for Disease Control on fatal injuries by “legal intervention” from 1999 to 2011.

“Over the span of more than a decade, 2,151 whites died by being shot by police compared to 1,130 blacks. In that respect, Medved is correct,” said PolitiFact.”

(Quotes from the Washington Times article.)

But anyone who says, “All Lives Matter” (or “White and Hispanic lives matter,”) is, of course, a terrible racist. Thankfully, I’ve found a helpful article to sort out why for us: The next time someone says ‘all lives matter,’ show them these 5 paragraphs

“Imagine that you’re sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don’t get any. So you say “I should get my fair share.” And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you, saying, “everyone should get their fair share.” Now, that’s a wonderful sentiment — indeed, everyone should, and that was kinda your point in the first place: that you should be a part of everyone, and you should get your fair share also. However, dad’s smart-ass comment just dismissed you and didn’t solve the problem that you still haven’t gotten any!”

So, the article is saying that we should be out in the streets marching and protesting about the preferential killing of whites and Hispanics by the police? Because this is, of course, what the data actually shows.

But what about that pesky matter, crime?

The Baltimore Sun has a widget that lets you see where all of the homicides in Baltimore have been committed since 2007:

Baltimore homicides, 2015
All Baltimore homicides in 2014
Baltimore Homicides as of August 13, 2015
Baltimore Homicides as of August 13, 2015

I’m guessing the year’s total will come out somewhere around 280, breaking the general trend of falling homicide rates.

Baltimore isn’t alone:

“Milwaukee, which last year had one of its lowest annual homicide totals in city history, recorded 84 murders so far this year, more than double the 41 it tallied at the same point last year. …

“The number of murders in 2015 jumped by 33% or more in Baltimore, New Orleans and St. Louis. Meanwhile, in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, the homicide toll climbed 19% and the number of shooting incidents increased by 21% during the first half of the year.”

But sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words:

Screen-Shot-2014-11-25-at-12.30.37-PM incarc rate by race & gender - web page8 page7-2 page7 page3 Inprisonment_Rates Violent_crime_rates_by_race_of_victim_1973-2003 2008-R-0008-1 2008-R-0008-2

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I’m going to quote a few bits from the Slate Star Codex article linked at the top:

“Then I found a huge review paper on the subject, written by a Harvard professor of sociology, which concluded after analyzing sixty pages of exquisitely-researched studies that:

“‘Recognizing that research on criminal justice processing in the United States is complex and fraught with methodological problems, the weight of the evidence reviewed suggests the following. When restricted to index crimes, dozens of individual-level studies have shown that a simple direct influence of race on pretrial release, plea bargaining, conviction, sentence length, and the death penalty among adults is small to nonexistent once legally relevant variables (e.g. prior record) are controlled. For these crimes, racial differentials in sanctioning appear to match the large racial differences in criminal offending. Findings on the processing of adult index crimes therefore generally support the non-discrimination thesis.’ …

“Police records consistently show that black people are arrested at disproportionally high rates (compared to their presence in the population) for violent crimes. For example, blacks are arrested eight times more often for homicide and fourteen times more often for robbery. Even less flashy crimes show the same pattern: forgery, fraud, and embezzlement all hover around a relative risk of four. …

“The second hypothesis has been strongly supported by crime victimization surveys, which show that the percent of arrestees who are black matches very closely matches the percent of victims who say their assailant was black. This has been constant throughout across thirty years of crime victmization surveys. …

“Summary: Blacks appear to be arrested for drug use at a rate four times that of whites. Adjusting for known confounds reduces their rate to twice that of whites. However, other theorized confounders could mean that the real relative risk is anywhere between two and parity. Never trust the media to give you any number more complicated than today’s date. … Older national data skews more toward the New York City side with little evidence of racial bias, but I don’t know of any recent studies which have compared the race of shooting victims to the race of dangerous attackers on a national level. There is no support for the contention that white officers are more likely than officers of other races to shoot black suspects. …

“a more recent Bureau of Justice Statistics finds that 66% of accused blacks get prosecuted compared to 69% of accused whites; 75% of prosecuted blacks get convicted compared to 78% of prosecuted whites. …

Summary: Most recent studies suggest a racial sentencing disparity of about 15%, contradicting previous studies that showed lower or no disparity. Changes in sentencing guidelines are one possible explanation; poorly understood methodological differences are a second. Capital punishment still sucks.”

But don’t just take my word for it; go read Scott’s whole post. Obviously he put a lot of effort into it.

What do our elites have to say on the subject? Other than, of course, calling for a “National conversation on race?

Presidential hopeful and US Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign website helpfully explains his thoughts on the matter:

“Issues: Racial Justice

“We must pursue policies that transform this country into a nation that affirms the value of its people of color. That starts with addressing the four central types of violence waged against black and brown Americans: physical, political, legal and economic.

“Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Samuel DuBose. We know their names. Each of them died unarmed at the hands of police officers or in police custody. The chants are growing louder. People are angry and they have a right to be angry. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that this violence only affects those whose names have appeared on TV or in the newspaper. African Americans are twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police. …”

CNN weighs in on the Bernie Sanders/Black Lives Matter incidents:

“Many observers are perplexed by the decision of some Black Lives Matter activists to twice disrupt attempted addresses by presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“Well, I am not perplexed. The new generation of civil rights activists never accepted “trickle-down economics” from conservatives. Today they are rejecting “trickle-down justice” from the liberals. …

“But we have needed and wanted more. Our economic problems include an unemployment rate that is double that of whites, racially biased policing and court systems, predatory lenders who deliberately target black neighborhoods and public schools that expel black children at staggering rates for minor offenses. …

“Sometimes, it seemed some Democratic politicians were happy to publicly name and embrace every part of the Democratic coalition — immigrants rights defenders, womens’ rights advocates, environmentalists and champions of LBGT equality. But not black people.”

Yes, clearly the one thing Democrats fail to talk about is Black people. Really, I’ve hardly heard anyone talking about black people and their issues for the past few decades. Maybe during the LBJ administration there was some talk about black people, but that was ages ago.

“In case anyone missed the memo after Ferguson, Baltimore and Charleston, here it is: the Obama era of black silence on issues that matter to us is over.”

That’s what you call “silence”?

“It turns out the Seattle activists’ actions were aimed less at Sanders himself and more at racist practices and policies being tolerated by local liberals in a supposed progressive bastion like Seattle. The Seattle Police Department has been under investigation for years for racist scandals and problematic use of force. Black children in King County schools are suspended at higher rates than their white peers. And the region is wasting $210 million on a new jail instead of investing in communities. … any fair discussion of “income inequality” must necessarily include a denunciation of our racially biased criminal justice system. Always.”

Time Magazine weighs in with, “Bernie Sanders Is Wrong To Ignore ‘Black Lives Matter.’” I don’t think I need to quote fro the article for you to get the gist, but I’m going to, anyway:

“This is the Civil Rights Movement Part II, and our leaders should want to get in on the side that promotes human rights—full stop. … You cannot look at a group of people living in fear and dying in droves and tell them they are protesting incorrectly. It’s easy to sit back and critique the method when it isn’t your life on the line. But if someone were being choked, the last thing they would need is a passerby saying, “I’d love to help you out. But could you at least say “please?” Convince me why I should save your life, and do it politely.” White people have the time and the luxury to wait for the system we created to work in our favor.”

Also:

images  IMG

How about Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton? MSNBC reports, “Hillary Clinton: ‘Yes, black lives matter’“:

“Attempting to soar where her rivals have recently floundered on issues of racial justice, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton addressed a crowd of nearly 400 in South Carolina Thursday and said unequivocally: “Yes, black lives matter. …

“Last weekend, black activists interrupted a presidential candidate forum at the Netroots Nation conference … O’Malley has since apologized for adding “white lives matter, all lives matter” to the protesters’ calls.

On a larger scale, however, the exchange targeted the progressive movement as a whole for allowing racial justice issues to fade into the background.”

There’s that “we haven’t been talking about race lately” idea again.

CNN tells us that “Clinton meets with #BlackLivesMatter protesters after they were barred from her event,” but notes in the article that,

“…the protesters showed up slightly before the event started and, according to the Clinton campaign, were not allowed into the main event because the room has been shut down due to capacity by the United States Secret Service.

“A Secret Service agent on site confirmed this to CNN.”

How about those evil racists on the Republican side?

Well, here’s a quote from Rand Paul’s campaign-launching speech:

“I see an America where criminal justice is applied equally and any law that disproportionately incarcerates people of color is repealed.”

So… Rand Paul wants to repeal almost the entire body of criminal law, including homicide and rape? I confess to being not particularly impressed with whatever train of thought produced this promise.

Even the Harvard Crimson weighs in, with perspectives from some of America’s future (and current) movers and shakers:

 Picture 21

The Naked Truth: Black Lives Matter

“In our stern voices, we chanted: “Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter!”

“Confused, boisterous, and starkly naked, they replied: “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

“During this year’s Primal Scream, we were a part of a group of students who stood in front of Hollis Hall as part of a peaceful protest in response to the recent non-indictment of Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo, police officers who are responsible for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, respectively.

“With the support of the administration, we hoped to delay primal scream with a 4.5-minute moment of silence, symbolic of the 4.5 hours that Brown’s body lay on the street after his death. Black lives matter, and we wanted to engage the larger Harvard community on some of the most salient issues of our time: systemic racism, oppression, and brutality on black and brown bodies. And yet, to our dismay, the efforts of several administrators who rallied for students to respect the moment of silence were muted by the chanting of the naked mass.”

In case it’s not obvious, “Primal Scream” is one of those old-school college traditions in which (probably drunk) students strip naked and run through Harvard Yard at midnight on the night before finals. Oh, and it’s in the dead of winter, which means it’s really fucking cold. Probably not the best time to try to get a hundred or so drunk, naked people get on board with an agenda of standing around in the cold for a few minutes.

Picture 17 Picture 18 Picture 19 Picture 20

Demonstrators Continue ‘Black Lives Matter Campaign’ in Central Square March

“More than 200 demonstrators poured onto the streets of Central Square in Cambridge Wednesday evening, extending a series of marches and protests both nationwide and in the Greater Boston Area against racial prejudice in the criminal justice system.

“This is just a continuation,” Divinity School student Rachel A. Foran said, clutching a sign on which read “White silence is state violence.” Foran, like others at the event, emphasized the need for uniting in protest following two separate non-indictments of white police officers late last year who killed unarmed black men. …

“Along the way, organizers handed off a milk crate podium to one another as they invited individuals to decry prejudices against African American men and implore Cambridge residents to join the movement.”

I think Central Square, Cambridge is significantly blacker than Harvard.

Iconic Revolutions: Art and Protest at Harvard

“The energies that fuel art are similar to the ones that power politico-economic movements, and the line between the two can often blur. The protest can be considered a form of performance art, and movements at Harvard and beyond have utilized the intersection between the two. …

“Harvard is in a unique position within the genre of protest-performance art, organizers say. And since Harvard is constantly scrutinized by the media, revolutionary art produced on Harvard’s campus—protest-based or otherwise—has unusual reach and staying power.

“PERFORMING PROTESTS

“Harvard is familiar with the tradition of performance art as a form of protest. For instance, Divest Harvard, a group that calls for Harvard to divest from fossil fuel companies, recently used a tactic that showcases performance art: They initiated the Divest Harvard Fast, a hunger strike in all but name. The hunger strike is an age-old tactic, used by groups ranging from suffragettes to Indian nationalists to Cuban dissidents. The act of fasting has a peculiar evocative power to it: an asceticism that brings up images of emaciated fakirs and a willingness to use the body as a canvas, a la Marina Abramovic.”

I am reminded here of Nydwracu’s recent post detailing the Harvard Crimson’s long support of the Khmer Rouge, well-known for being one of history’s most genocidal regimes, which you really should read:

“If the American government were sincere about wanting peace in Cambodia, it would stop supporting a repressive dictatorship, and allow the people of Cambodia — represented by the Khmer Rouge and the supporters of the deposed Prince Norodom Sihanouk — to determine their own destiny,”

and of Slate Star Codex’s recent review of “Chronicles of Wasted Time,” the memoirs of a liberal journalist who got his wish to visit Stalin’s utopia, witnessed Holodomor first-hand, and then couldn’t get anyone back home to publish his articles about it or pretty much anything that wasn’t uplifting lies about the awesomeness of the USSR, which you should also read:

“He is reduced to sending secret messages at the bottoms of people’s suitcases, only to find to his horror that even when they successfully reach the Guardian offices back in Britain, his bosses have no interest in publishing them because they offend the prejudices of its progressive readership. …

“The plan goes without a hitch, he passes himself off as a generic middle-class Soviet, and he ends up in Ukraine right in the middle of Stalin’s Great Famine. He describes the scene – famished skeletons begging for crumbs, secret police herding entire towns into railway cars never to be seen again. At great risk to himself, he smuggles notes about the genocide out of the country, only to be met – once again – with total lack of interest. Guardian readers don’t look at the newspapers to hear bad things about the Soviet Union! Guardian readers want to hear about how the Glorious Future is already on its way! He is quickly sidelined in favor of the true stars of Soviet journalism, people like Walter Duranty, the New York Times‘s Russia correspondent, who wrote story after story about how prosperous and happy and well-fed the Soviets were under Stalin, and who later won the Pulitzer Prize for his troubles.”

Speakerpedia claims that Tim Wise commands a $10,000 speaker’s fee to lecture about White Privilege to college students (and other groups) across the country; he has apparently spoken at over 800 colleges. Does anyone ever get invited to speak about black crime, the targeting of whites and Hispanics by the police, or black on white crime at universities? I bet Jared Taylor would speak for free.

Black Lives Matter has the official support of Harvard University, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Twitter, and the mass media establishment.

(No, seriously this is what the inside of the Twitter headquarters looks like:

rlvikkw0xkfyubtrhbtn blacklivesmatter

Source, source.)

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Everyone lies. All the damn time. Most lies are completely inconsequential, of course, but lying about who is murdering whom seems like the kind of lie that could result in real consequences: people dying. But even to mention the truth in public carries serious consequences: ostracization, loss of job, harassment, banning, etc. Only low-class losers care about crime against whites; rich people, of course, have no such petty concerns. Maybe because they can live in million dollar neighborhoods where the gates/ferry rides “keep out the riff-raff.”

Whose lies are believed? Whose are not?

 

Conclusions: The police and whites who worry about getting killed (or get killed) are low-status. Blacks and wealthy whites who proclaim how much they love blacks are high-status.

 

Does this sound counter-intuitive?

Why? Socially, blacks are more popular than whites.

As I noted yesterday,

“White people want to have black friends; it lets them prove to themselves (and others) just how non-racist they are. It makes them feel better about themselves and assuages some portion of guilt. To have a black friend makes a white person feel like a good white person. …

“Black people, by contrast, have no particular desire to prove how non-racist they are.”

The imbalance puts whites in a position of lower social value, attempting to get social status via black approval. But don’t just take my word for it. Remember that article in the New Yorker about the Vermont couple who adopted 20 kids?

“All the teen-ages were nervous about being black in Vermont, but Fisher and Lilly were wildly popular in high school. Lilly was a track star, and Fisher was cool and good-looking.

Fisher: I was popular. It went to my head, I won’t lie to you. All the little white girls saw I was the best dancer in the school, and I was the only black guy.”

Fisher dropped out of college, got three girls pregnant and went to prison for beating one of them.

Were you popular enough with women to have three kids before your mid-twenties?

Newsweek has an interesting article on childhood popularity and race: By Third Grade, Black Students who Self-Segregate are more Popular:

“In NEWSWEEK magazine this week, we suggested that part of the problem [racial self-segregation among students] stems from white parents’ refusal to talk to their young children about race and ethnicity. This inadvertently teaches children that race is a taboo topic. …

“Nevertheless, the scholars are finding stunning racial patterns in the kids’ responses. They found that black kids who self-segregate ─ who only hang out with other blacks ─ are more popular than black kids who have white friends.

“This means that an average black student could increase her popularity by hanging out with other black students. Meanwhile, if she chooses to have white friends, she could put her popularity at risk. Many kids don’t have the social capital or confidence to make this tradeoff.

“When the scholars ran the analysis a second time, substituting how much kids were liked for how popular they were, a similar troubling pattern emerged. Black kids who self-segregated were liked by more black children. Having white friends decreased a black child’s “likeability” ─ at least in the eyes of other black children.

“For white children, in contrast, self-segregating hurt their popularity. …

“Overall, black students were more popular than white students. And both the white and black kids in his study agreed which black kids were popular.”

Newsweek concludes the article by claiming,

“Twenty or thirty years ago, no black kids would have been seen as popular by white kids ─ and few black kids would have had social influence. Black kids would not have been setting the social standard, school-wide. Now they are.”

Really?

In “Blacks in the White Establishment,” Zweigenhaft and Dumhoff write about the effects of the ABC program–A Better Chance of Andover–established in 1967 to give scholarships to black and other minority students so they can attend Andover High School:

 “Perry’s study found that ABC students felt themselves to be popular. In fact, in response to an item asking, “How popular do you think you are in school this year in comparison with all the other students in your grade,” black ABC students indicated they felt more popular than did a control group of white students at their schools. (More than one-third of the black respondents felt themselves to be among “the most popular” and less than one-tenth thought themselves to be among “the least popular.”)

“Not only were black ABC students popular, they were also valued as leaders in dealing with teachers and administrators. … the student body of 840 students (40 of whom were black) surprised many people (including the faculty, the administration, the New York Times, and, most likely, themselves) by electing blacks as presidents of the sophomore, junior, and senior classes for the 1969-70 academic year. As the New York Times breathlessly and historically informed its readers, Andover, “the alma mater of the Lees and Washingtons of Virginia and the Quincys and Lowells of New England, has elected three Negro students from the ghettos of Chicago and Oakland as class presidents for 1969-70.” (Bold mine)

Of course, 1969 is 40 years before the Newsweek article was published, not 20-30, so perhaps black kids got a lot less popular sometime between the 60s and the 80s. Or maybe Newsweek just employees people who want certain fictions to be true.

Here’s another study on the same subject, with the same findings, African American and European American Children in Diverse Elementary Classrooms: Social Integration, Social Status, and Social Behavior:

“African American—but not European American—children had more segregated relationships and were more disliked by cross-ethnicity peers when they had fewer same-ethnicity classmates. African American children’s segregation was positively associated with same-ethnicity social preference and perceived popularity and with cross-ethnicity perceived popularity. European American children’s segregation was positively associated with same-ethnicity social preference but negatively associated with cross-ethnicity social preference and perceived popularity.”

Normal humans are perfectly aware of what would be impolitic to claim: from Yahoo Answers, Why are “blacks” considered more popular in any school?

I’ve been to many different middle schools and highschools (we moved alot for dad’s job) and it always seemed as though blacks are more “popular” than anyone else in the school?

My area is majority white…and most of the Black people at my school(and there isn’t a lot) are quite popular. Same with a lot of the Asian kids at my school.

Well usually I feel as though they have more culture…I don’t know.. more fun then just and I am not trying to “Generalize” the american girl population, but most of us are annoying slutty brats, who just want to take pictures all the time in the same god damn position.

We’re just always expected to be cool and popular, honestly…and it’s just that most blacks are raised to be more outgoing, so it carries on with them through school. I get along with most people, but I’m not that popular.

the blacks in my school tend to be popular because some of them make trouble.  Source(s): im black,and im not popular”

The general explanation for black crime (if you get one at all) is that blacks feel bad because of racism, they have low self-esteem, they’re unpopular, people are constantly mean to them, they suffer microaggressions, etc.

The “self esteem” racket is quite a thing, and has been going on for quite a while (since the ’80s, at least). I recently happened across a treasure trove of old books a former kindergarten teacher was giving away for free because she was retiring, and gratefully took the whole stack. Many of the books were on the expected topics of “Kindergarten is awesome” and the ABCs, but a substantial subset were books aimed at raising black self-esteem, such as, “I Like Myself”

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Actually, there were two copies of this book in the stack.

Here’s a page from the book:

Picture 1

People the MC would not like to be: a baby, an old woman, or a police officer–all white.

And another page:

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Remember, whites get bullied more than black kids, but how many books do you think you can find in the average kindergarten class depicting a white kid being bullied by a black kid, and encouraging the white kid to be proud of themself?

Black Girl Dangerous helpfully reminds us:

“Teach your kids to constantly question the media’s narratives, especially about black people, including what stories the media tells and doesn’t tell, what images they show and don’t show, and the ways that black people and other people of color are made less than human by the media, while white people, even mass murderers, are allowed full humanity. Point out to them the differences in headlines and language used to describe people of color vs. white people and make sure they understand the motives behind them.”

The Cosby Show must have been really hard on her self-esteem.

Of course, the whole self-esteem business is a canard; popular kids have high self-esteem. From Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan (2004):

“More recent findings have documented that Blacks have higher self-esteem than Whites (Adams, 2003; Crocker & Lawrence, 1999; Crocker, Luhtanen, Blaine, & Broadnax, 1994; Harris & Stokes, 1978; Gray-Little & Hafdahl, 2000; Milkie, 1999; Porter & Washington, 1979; Rosenberg & Simmons, 1972; Simmons, 1978; Taylor & Walsh, 1979; Tashakkori, Thompson, Wade, & Valente, 1990; Twenge & Crocker, 2002). …

“By the 1970s, a majority of empirical studies found that Blacks had high self-esteem (Simmons, 1978; Taylor & Walsh, 1979; Rosenberg & Simmons, 1972; Harris & Stokes, 1978; Porter & Washington, 1979). Cross (1991) also reviewed studies published from 1968 to1980, and found that 74% of the studies reported that Blacks had equal or higher self-esteem than Whites. …

“a plethora of quantitative and qualitative studies have reported that Black adolescent girls consistently present high self-esteem scores (Adams, 2003; Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1999; Brodsky, 1999; Brown et al., 1998; Dukes & Martinez, 1994; Gray-Little & Hafdahl, 2000; Makkar & Strube, 1995; Milkie, 1999; Twenge & Crocker, 2002). In an empirical review of race comparative research published from 1980-2000, Adams (2003) found that 23 of 26 studies reported that Black girls had higher self-esteem than White girls. Black adolescent girls may be facing difficult circumstances but they consistently rate higher on self-esteem than any other racial group (Twenge & Crocker, 2002).”

 

Meanwhile, Pistol-whipped detective says he didn’t shoot attacker because of headlines:

“A Birmingham, Alabama, police detective who was pistol-whipped unconscious said Friday that he hesitated to use force because he didn’t want to be accused of needlessly killing an unarmed man. …

“”We don’t want to be in the media,” he said. “It’s hard times right now for us.” …

“Adding insult to injury: several bystanders, instead of helping, took pictures of the bloodied officer as he was facedown on the concrete and posted the images on social media, where the officer was mocked. …

“”Pistol whipped his ass to sleep,” one user wrote, employing the hashtag #FckDaPolice. Another mockingly offered the officer milk and cookies for his “nap time.””

 

Who has status in America?

Anarcho-Tyranny

Important Update: Looks like my sources were wrong and Lt. White has not been charged, but is considering charging him. The text below has been changed accordingly.

Anarcho-tyranny is when the state itself imposes anarchy on its population and punishes them for trying to rectify the situation. It refers most egregiously to situations where people cannot legally defend their own lives or property, or where they are charged with crimes after defending themselves.

In today’s anarcho-tyranny, the Navy is considering charging Lt. Commander White with unlawful possession of a firearm on Navy property after he stopped a gunman in the midst of a mass-murder.

You remember this case. A man–we shall call him a Muslim terrorist–walked into a Navy recruitment office and opened fire. The center’s commanding officer, Lt. White, returned fire, probably killing the shooter (there was another gun on the premises that may also have been used, but that shooter is dead and so won’t be charged with any crimes.) and saving the lives of many people. Lt. White faces a minimum of 20 years in prison for bringing a firearm onto a no-guns Federal property.

Now, as far as gun laws themselves are concerned, I’m pretty agnostic. I’m neither on the “everyone should have their own machine gun” side, nor on the “all guns are evil” side. It is pretty obvious to me that different conditions–like, are there bears in your neighborhood?–should probably lead to different laws. I am in favor, however, of not punishing people for good deeds, and for letting them defend themselves.

The whole point of having a gun-free zone is to prevent violence; if the government cannot guarantee the safety of people in those zones, then the government has failed. People must be able to go about their business without fear of random violence; if violence is a problem, then people must be allowed to take steps to protect themselves, like installing metal detectors or taking self-defense classes, or the government must step in and protect them, say, by increasing police patrols. To prevent the former while failing to do the latter creates the conditions of anarcho-tyranny–people are legally prohibited from defending themselves while the gov’t does nothing to defend them.

Lt. White’s violation of the law saved the lives of multiple people. His actions are a clear case that should not be prosecuted; rather,the government should investigate ways to make its no-gun areas safe.

The over-proliferation of laws–legal over-criminalization and over-regulation–is partly a side effect of an over-large government that’s been around for longer than almost any other government on Earth (no, seriously, most governments got their start post-WWII) and so had a long time to make legislation, and partly a side effect of trying to get a bunch of different people with different social norms to get along together in one big country.

For example, Freedom of Speech–one of our core American values–allows one to insult the leaders of major religious groups. But Muslims tend to really dislike seeing their Prophet disrespected. Put both groups in close contact, and one or the other (or both) is liable to be highly unhappy. The result–more laws trying to clarify when it’s okay to be offensive and when it’s not–tends not so much to make people happier, as to make life a bigger pain in the butt for everyone involved. (The obvious solution, IMO, is that people who want to insult Mohammad and people who don’t want to see Mohammad insulted shouldn’t talk to each other.)

More and more regulations are a creeping, silent tax. Small businesses especially hare hard-hit by ever-increasing regulations to keep track of and comply with; eventually the winners are those with the spare budget to afford armies of lawyers to wade through the legislation, or those who cheat. Increasing regulations disincentivise honesty.

Gun laws, as I understand them, have gotten to a similarly complicated state. Of course, there is always some conflict between keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, and keeping guns in the hands of people who would defend themselves from criminals. In this case, I am inclined to think that Navy officers probably aren’t criminals, whether on Federal property or not.

The reasons for the gun-free zones like the one Lt. White was caught in probably stem from the crime wave of the late ’80s/early 90s–the “Gun Free School Zones Act,” for example, was passed in 1990. That crime wave had nothing to do with Naval officers carrying guns at Naval recruitment offices, but everything to do with the impact of the crack/cocaine trade on inner city ghetto (black and Hispanic) homicide rates and gang wars.

Anarcho-tyranny is using laws intended to stop black and Hispanic gang violence to punish whites for defending themselves against Muslim terrorists.

Rupert Murdoch is a Lying Liar

Picture 22

Oh?

The Huffington Post reports that The Murder Rate for Hispanics is Twice that for Whites. HuffPo is talking about victimization rates–that is, the number of Hispanics murdered, not murdering. But murder is largely a within-group phenomenon–that is, people tend to target their own–so most of those dead Hispanics were probably killed by other Hispanics.

The Color of Crime reports incarceration rates that match HuffPo’s victimization rates: Picture 5 Picture 4

(And, in general, the Color of Crime report demonstrates that incarceration rates reflect actual offending rates.)

Note that the Color of Crime graph is not an absolute rate, but a multiple–a multiple of 1 means that the crime rate is equal to the white crime rate; a multiple of 2 means it is twice the white crime rate; a multiple of 0.5 means the rate is half that of whites. Asians tend to offend at statistically insignificant rates. Pacific Islanders apparently really like stealing cars (maybe it’s just easier to find stolen cars on a small island in the middle of the ocean than on a big continent.) High manslaughter among the Indians is probably a result of drunk driving. And Hispanics commit all crimes at a rate of slightly less than 2.5 times that of whites.

“Ah, but “Hispanics” and “Hispanic immigrants” are not the same group,” I hear you saying. That is irrelevant; the children of immigrants only get here via their parents immigrating, and it appears that the children of immigrants actually have much higher crime rates than their parents. No one is comforted that their attacker’s parents were immigrants, rather than immigrants themselves. Either way, immigration is at play.

Other people estimate other crime rates:

Picture 3

Source: La Griffe du Lion, Crime and the Hispanic Effect. In this case, the match between the HuffPo data and the Color of Crime data makes me trust it better than La Griffe du Lion’s, even though I normally find La Griffe pretty credible.

Why such debate over crime rates? Because the FBI hasn’t historically counted “Hispanics” in its crime stats (though I hear they are going to start.) “Hispanic” isn’t a race, it’s just a word that means that you or your ancestors spoke Spanish. Hispanics therefore can be–and are–members of any race.

Now, there is quite obviously something major going on in our data: the black crime rate. Yes, the Hispanic crime rate is lower than the black crime rate.

Let’s play with some numbers. Let’s suppose we’ve got 320 million Americans. We’ll estimate the black crime rate at 20 out of 1000, the white at 5/1000, and the Hispanic at 10/1ooo.

If our population is 10% black + 90% white = 2 black crimes / 1000 + 4.5 white crimes / 1000 = 2,080,000 total crimes. (This reflects the demographics of 1920.)

If our population is 10% black + 65% white + 25% Hispanic = 2 black crimes / 1000 + 3.25 white crimes / 1000 + 2.5 Hispanic crimes / 1000 = 2,160,000 total crimes. (This is closer to our modern demographics.)

That is, 80,000 extra crimes per year.

(Obviously I am simplifying by leaving out small groups like Indians and Asians, [who don’t particularly commit much crime, anyway.])

Why yes, Barbie, math is hard. But this is 5th grade math. Murdoch really ought to have mastered it already.

But what about El Paso? According to Wikipedia list of cities by crime rate, Plano, TX, has 1/3 the violent crime rate of El Paso. Its murder rate is less than 12% of El Paso’s. If you’ve ever been to Plano, the reasons are obvious: It’s full of Asians and middle class whites, and Asians don’t commit much crime. Lincoln, Nebraska is also safer than El Paso, and Portland, Oregon has a lower murder rate.

El Paso’s relatively low crime rate is because violent crime in the US is largely driven by black crime rates, and there aren’t a lot of blacks in El Paso. If you happen to replace a black community with an Hispanic one, you will get a lower crime rate. But unlike whites, blacks as a percent of the US haven’t really been dropping, so this would only be a local effect.

Also, I do wonder whether El Paso’s not-legally-in-the-country sub-population is very likely to call the police when crimes against them occur.

At any rate, let’s have a look at Mexico’s murder rate:

Murder rate per 100k people in 2012: light blue = 0-1; darkest blue > 20
Murder rate per 100k people in 2012: lightest blue = 0-1; darkest blue > 20

Mexico is one of the top scorers, at 21.5. The US rate is 4.7.

Now, immigration is not random, so a country’s emigrants aren’t necessarily going to reflect the country’s overall crime rates. But since criminality does have a fairly large genetic component, the Mexican (and other Latin American countries’) crime rates are high enough to give pause.

What about the claim that all immigrants have a lower crime rate than Americans?

That depends, I suppose, on how we define “all immigrants.” Are we speaking globally of the aggregate of all immigrants headed anywhere? I have no idea if anyone has even collected such data. According to the Wikipedia page on Immigration and Crime,

The Handbook of Crime Correlates (2009), a review of studies of correlates with crime, states that most studies on immigrants have found higher rates of crime. However, this varies greatly depending on the country of origin, with immigrants from some regions having lower crime rates than the indigenous population. In the US, studies have found lower crime rates among immigrants than among non-immigrants. Other studies suggest that immigration generally does not lead to an increase in crime, and may in some instances, suppress such trends. Other statistics, such as those from Europe, show higher crime rates among immigrant populations.”

In other words, trying to aggregate all immigrants is dumb, because different immigrant groups (and their children) commit crime at different rates. Japanese immigrants in LA have a different crime rate than Somalis in Minneapolis (and not because of any inherent differences between LA and Minneapolis.) Indonesian immigrants have low crime rates; Moroccans have higher rates.

Here are some more quotes from the Wikipedia page on immigration and crime:

“the relative proportion … of crimes by non-Japanese is substantially higher than those by Japanese … per capita Africans are responsible for 3.5 times as much crime as Japanese natives.

“According to the figures from Danmarks Statistik, crime rate among refugees and their descendants is 73% higher than for the male population average, even when taking into account their socioeconomic background. A report from Teori- og Metodecentret from 2006 found that seven out of ten young people placed on the secured youth institutions in Denmark are immigrants (with 40 percent of them being refugees).

“According to official statistics, 21.0% of rapes have been committed by foreigners in Finland. Foreigners comprise 2.2% of the population.

“A 2006 study found that the share of immigrants has a positive and significant impact on the crime rate …

“In Berlin, young male immigrants are three times more likely to commit violent crimes than their German peers.

“Official statistics show that immigrants are responsible for about half of the criminal activity in Greece. The Greek police have admitted that armed gangs entering the country from neighbouring Albania or Bulgaria could have been attracted by reports that many people have been withdrawing cash from banks and stashing it in their homes.

” More than half of Moroccan-Dutch youths aged 18 to 24 years in Rotterdam have been in trouble with the police for the suspicion of a crime. Young Antillean and Surinamese Rotterdammers are strongly overrepresented in crime statistics. Of them, 40 percent have been suspected. Of indigenous young people aged from 18 to 24, 18% percent already came in contact with criminal law. … of 447 criminal files, 63% teenagers convicted of serious crime are children of parents born outside the Netherlands. … The proportion of these persons in the suspect population is therefore almost twice as high as the share of immigrants among the Dutch population. The highest suspect rates per capita are found among first (4.9) and second generation (7.1) male migrants from a non‐western background. Rates for so‐called ‘western migrants’ are very close to those of the native Dutch.

“The report shows that, of 131 individuals charged with the 152 [Norwegian] rapes in which the perpetrator could be identified, 45.8% were of African, Middle Eastern or Asian origin while 54.2% were of Norwegian, other European or American origin.

“In Switzerland, 69.7% of prison population had no Swiss citizenship, compared to 22.1% of total resident population (as of 2008).

“[In Sweden,] immigrants were found to be four times more likely to be investigated for lethal violence and robbery than ethnic Swedes. In addition, immigrants were three times more likely to be investigated for violent assault, and five times more likely to be investigated for sex crimes. Overall, North Africa and Western Asia were strongly overrepresented in the crime statistics.”

Okay, so clearly some immigrants, in some places, commit crime. But what about immigrants in the US?

“According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2001, 4% of Hispanic males in their twenties and thirties were in prison or jail, compared to 1.8% of non-Hispanic white males.”

Occidental Dissent has done everyone a favor and disaggregated the Arizona Crime data by race, producing these colorful pie charts:

Picture 9 Picture 10 Picture 11 Picture 12

The crime rate among Asian immigrants, by contrast, is of course very low–down around 30% (or less) of the white rate. It makes a big difference where your immigrants come from.

Now, there is more to life than crime rates. But I reserve the right to decide which kind of risks and how much of them I am willing to take, based on actual, honest data, not based on mass media billionaire owners lying to me.

Why is Murdoch lying?

Perhaps he’s just really dumb. Or maybe he lives in a really rich area where crime (and unemployment) just aren’t things people worry about. Maybe he’s just trying to signal liberal tribal identity. Or maybe–like many people in the business of employing other people–he stands to personally benefit from the importation of millions of low-wage migrants.

 

While we’re at it:

Picture 2

No, no. That’s Ron Paul. Ron Paul is a libertarian. Rand Paul is a regular ol’ conservative. I know they’re easy to confuse since their names sound similar, but if I can keep them straight, then so can you.

BTW, Murdoch isn’t a Jew.

The Police

The flipside of criminals is, obviously, the police. No consideration of criminality can be complete without some consideration of the folks making the technical determination.

That involves more people than just the police, of course.

Much of the time, the police do a decent job. But the Legal/Justice System is out of whack. Has been for as long as I’ve been paying attention.

Some major issues:
1. Major corporations use lawsuits to destroy their competition. Maybe good for them; definitely bad for humanity.
2. Corporations and the wealthy pass laws that benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else.
3. The wealthy have way more ability to use the system to their advantage.
4. Politicians pass a lot of laws just to sound good, with terrible effects.

5. Prosecutors pursue convictions even when they know they probably have the wrong guy; judges are complicit. (This is a biggie.)
6. Plea bargaining.
7. Prisons are shitty.

It is fairly easy to imagine the police (and related folks,) after dealing day in and day out with criminals, begin to think less in terms of specific crimes, and more in terms of making sure that dangerous “criminal types” stay behind bars for a good, long time. So what if the guy didn’t commit this particular crime? He looks like a criminal; he probably did something.

Statistically speaking, they’d probably be correct. Take recidivism rates; knowing that 84% of carjackers will commit another crime, how eager would you be to let a carjacker out of prison? Would you try to find some reason to keep them in?

But what about the 16% who never commit another crime again in their lives? (Or at least, don’t get caught). It is unfair to imprison them for the rest of their days for the sins of others, after all. Next we’ll be imprisoning people for pre-crime.

The Justice System involves a lot of people who have to deal with a lot of very dangerous people in stressful situations; mistakes will be made. To be clear: this is a hard job, and one mistake can have quite disastrous consequences. In a nation of >300 million people, you will hear horrible stories of things gone horribly wrong no matter how great things are overall. Thus the importance of determining whether we are just hearing about tragic but basically random accidents, or regular, systematic abuses that we can actually do something about.

Unfortunately, I suspect we tend to focus on the former, rather than the latter–probably because the latter involves reading things like DOJ statistics, which appeals to most people like moldy pie.

In a good world, people can trust the police. Our justice system, unfortunately, does not inspire trust. This really needs to be changed, or else I just don’t see how the country can function.

Man arrested more than 70 times; released again

Nicholas Limpert from Spokane has been arrested more than 70 times. Now charged again, prosecutors are working to find a way to keep a career criminal off the streets. 

His first offense? Murder, at the age of 15.

“Prosecutors told KREM 2 News on Wednesday that they plan to get tough on Limpert with his latest trial.”

“Larry Haskell, the Spokane County prosecutor, said Limpert’s history of crimes could final[ly] be catching up to him.”

70th time’s the charm, right?

“”I think every day what I could’ve done to prevent myself from getting into trouble,” Limpert told a judge.”

Not get caught; clearly this man needs to work on his skills at not getting caught.

It is possible that Limpert actually has some desire to not get into trouble, but simply lacks any ability to control his actions and act in a non-criminal manner. It is also possible that Limpert just doesn’t want to go to jail for his criminal activities. Either way, nothing’s going to change.

Sorry, Les Mis: Criminals gonna Criminal

“3 in 4 former prisoners in 30 states arrested within 5 years of release” (from the Bureau of Justice Statistics press release, April 22, 2014.)Inspired by my recent musings, I thought I would refresh my memory on recidivism stats–I have a vague memory that murderers tend not to recidivate, (murderers tend to stay in prison for a very long time) and that car jackers do, but it’s a bad idea to make claims based on vague memories of old data.

So here’s what the press release has to say:

“An estimated two-thirds (68 percent) of 405,000 prisoners released in 30 states in 2005 were arrested for a new crime within three years of release from prison, and three-quarters (77 percent) were arrested within five years…

More than a third (37 percent) of prisoners who were arrested within five years of release were arrested within the first six months after release, with more than half (57 percent) arrested by the end of the first year.”

We could probably save some time and effort if we could effectively identify those third before releasing them. HOWEVER, I don’t know what percent of these people are being re-arrested on parole violations that the rest of us might not really consider “crimes”, like missing a meeting with one’s parole officer or forgetting to register one’s address.

“Recidivism rates varied with the attributes of the inmate. Prisoners released after serving time for a property offense were the most likely to recidivate. Within five years of release, 82 percent of property offenders were arrested for a new crime, compared to 77 percent of drug offenders, 74 percent of public order offenders and 71 percent of violent offenders.”

I’m guessing violent offenders spent longer in prison, and thus were older when released.

“Recidivism was highest among males, blacks and young adults. By the end of the fifth year after release, more than three-quarters (78 percent) of males and two-thirds (68 percent) of females were arrested, a 10 percentage point difference that remained relatively stable during the entire 5-year follow-up period.

Five years after release from prison, black offenders had the highest recidivism rate (81 percent), compared to Hispanic (75 percent) and white (73 percent) offenders.”

So, while while the chances of being a criminal vary widely between groups, criminals from all the groups recidivate at fairly similar rates. This suggests that we are probably actually arresting the subset of people who are criminals most of the time.

“Within five years of release, 61 percent of released inmates with four or fewer arrests in their prior criminal history were arrested, compared to 86 percent of those who had 10 or more prior arrests.”

Maybe guys with 10 prior arrests shouldn’t be released until they’re well over 40?

Some finer grain on recidivism by specific crime, after five years (note: this does not tell us the new offense,) from the PDF:

Violent: 71.3%
Homicide: 51.2
Murder: 47.9
Nonnegligent manslaughter: 55.7
Negligent manslaughter: 53.0
Rape/sexual assault: 60.1
Robbery: 77.0
Assault: 77.1
Other: 70.4
Property: 82.1%
Burglary: 81.8
Carjacking: 84.1
Fraud/forgery: 77.0
Drug: 76.9%
Possession: 78.3
Trafficking: 75.4
Public order: 73.6%
Weapons: 79.5
Driving under the influence: 59.9

Looks like my vague memories were correct. Murderers are the least likely to recidivate, probably due to the personal nature of many murders (you’ve got to really hate that guy,) and murderers being older when released, but they are still folks who aren’t great at solving inter-personal problems or running their lives. Rapist probably figure out non-illegal ways to have sex, or else get old enough to be less interested in it. Drunks probably learn to call a cab when drunk.

Relatively speaking, of course. A 50 or 60% recidivism rate still isn’t something that inspires great confidence. To be clear, again, this is not data on how many released murderers commit another murder or how many released rapists commit another rape–this is arrest for any crime. A further breakdown of re-arrest by new crime vs. old crime would be interesting.Carjacking, by contrast, looks like the Xtreme sports of crime–people attracted to this form of violent thrill-seeking seem unlikely to change their spots or find more legal alternatives.

On a related note, The role of parenting in the prediction of criminal involvement: findings from a nationally representative sample of youth and a sample of adopted youth.

From the abstract: The role of parenting in the development of criminal behavior has been the source of a vast amount of research, with the majority of studies detecting statistically significant associations between dimensions of parenting and measures of criminal involvement. An emerging group of scholars, however, has drawn attention to the methodological limitations-mainly genetic confounding-of the parental socialization literature. The current study addressed this limitation by analyzing a sample of adoptees to assess the association between 8 parenting measures and 4 criminal justice outcome measures. The results revealed very little evidence of parental socialization effects on criminal behavior before controlling for genetic confounding and no evidence of parental socialization effects on criminal involvement after controlling for genetic confounding.

In other words, looks like my basic thesis is holding up. Overall, I suspect it is far easier to fuck up a kid so they don’t meet their full potential (say, by abusing/neglecting) than to get rid of the effects of negative traits. It’s probably best to try to work with people’s inclinations by finding them life-paths that work for them, rather than trying to mold them into something they aren’t.

Lotteries

Oh look, W. Hunter posted about Lotteries.
“Lotteries can be useful natural experiments; we can use them to test the accuracy of standard sociological theories, in which rich people buy their kids extra smarts, bigger brains, better health, etc.

David Cesarini, who I met at that Chicago meeting, has looked at the effect of winning the lottery in Sweden. He found that the “effects of parental wealth on infant health, drug consumption, scholastic performance and cognitive and non-cognitive skills can be bounded to a tight interval around zero.” “

I count this as evidence in favor of my theory that winning the lottery does not have a significant effect on a person’s likelihood of committing crimes (eg, drug consumption,) and that the converse, becoming suddenly poor, probably also has no major effect.

There’s also a somewhat garbled reference in the article to an interesting 1800s land-lottery in Georgia; I recall the longer post on the subject and recommend it if you can find it.

Criminality–a WIP; your thoughts appreciated

I’ve been thinking about criminality, inspired by a friend’s musings on why didn’t he turn to crime during his decades of homelessness and schizophrenia. My answer was relatively simple: I think my friend just isn’t a criminal sort of person.

To clarify what I mean: let’s assume, similar to IQ, that each person has a “criminality quotient,” or CQ. Like IQ, one’s relative CQ is assumed to basically hold steady over time–that is, we assume that a person who rates “Low CQ” at 20 will also rate “Low CQ” at 30 and 60 and 10 years old, though the particular activities people do obviously change with age. Absolute CQ decreases for everyone past 35 or so.

A low CQ person has very little inclination to criminal behavior–they come to a full stop at stop signs, return excess change if a cashier gives them too much, don’t litter, and always cooperate in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. They are a bit dull, but they make good neighbors and employees.

A mildly CQ person is okay with a few forms of petty crime, like shoplifting, underage drinking, pot smoking, or yelling at people. They make fun friends but they litter and their party guests vomit in your bushes, making bad neighbors. You generally wouldn’t arrest these people, even though they do break the law.

A moderately CQ person purposefully does things that actually hurt people. They mug people or hold up conbinis; they get in fights. They mistreat animals, women, and children. They defect on the Prisoner’s Dilemma. They make shitty friends and shitty neighbors, because they steal your stuff.

A high CQ person is a murderer; they have no respect for human life.

A common explanation for criminality is that poverty causes it, hence my formerly homeless friend’s confusion. Obviously poverty can cause people to commit crimes they wouldn’t otherwise, like stealing food or sleeping in public parks. But in general, I suspect the causal arrow points the other way: criminality involves certain traits–like aggression and impulsivity–that make it hard to keep jobs, which makes criminal people poor.

Good people, reduced to poverty, remain good people. Bad people, suddenly given a bunch of money, remain bad people.

I’m not sure how one would test the first half of this without massive confounders or terrible ethics,  but the latter half seems relatively easy, if you can just find enough petty criminals who’ve won the lottery and aren’t in prison–although now that I think about it, it seems like you could look at before and during data for people affected by essentially government-induced famines or poverty events. Just a friendly wager, but I bet Jews during the Holocaust had crime rates lower than American inner-city-lottery winners.

But “criminality” is a complex trait, so let’s unpack that a little. What exactly is it about criminality that makes it correlate with poverty?

Subtraits: aggression, impulsivity, low intelligence, lack of empathy, low risk aversion, high temporal discount.

Any of these traits by themselves wouldn’t necessarily induce criminality–people with Down’s Syndrome, for example, have low IQs but are very kind and have no inclination toward criminality (that I have ever heard of, anyway.) Many autistic people are supposed to be low in empathy, but do not desire to hurt others, and often have rather strong moral compasses. Low risk-aversion people can just do xtreme sports, and high-time preference people can be bad at saving money but otherwise harmless. Even aggressive people can channel their aggression into something useful if they are intelligent. Impulsive people might just eat too many cookies or dye their hair wacky colors.

But people who have more than one of these traits are highly likely to engage in criminal behavior.

However, these traits do not appear to be randomly distributed (thus, criminalitty is not randomly distributed.) Rather, they seem to belong to a complex or archetype, of which “criminality” is one manifestation.

This complex has probably been more or less the human default for most of human history. After all, chimps are not especially known for not tearing each other’s faces off. And saving up wealth for tomorrow instead of eating it today doesn’t make sense if the tribe next door can just come in and steal it. In a violent, chaotic, pre-state tribal world, “criminality” is survival.

Over at Evo and Proud, Frost has been talking about his paper on the genetic pacification of Europe via executing lots of criminals, and various counter arguments, ie, In the wrong place at the wrong time? and How many were already fathers?

To summarize, briefly, Frost proposes that the precipitous drop in W. European crime levels over the past thousand years or so has been due to states executing criminals, thus removing “criminal” genes from the genepool. The sticky questions are whether the drop in crime actually happened when and where his theory suggests, and if enough people were actually killed to make a dent in criminality.

I suspect that Frost is at least partially right–many people who might have had children were executed instead–but there is another factor to consider:

A land where criminals are executed is a land where criminals are already useless or less than useless. They have gone from assets to nuisances (horrible ones, but nuisances nonetheless), to be swatted like flies.

In a land where criminals are useful, we do not call them criminals; we call them heroes. Is Che Guevara a murderer or a freedom fighter? Depends on who you ask. Is the man who crushes enemies, drives off their cattle and hears the lamentations of their women a hero or a butcher? In Mongolia, there are statues of Genghis Khan and he is regarded as the father of Mongolia. Vlad Tepes is a here in Romania.

In a land where marauding tribes are no longer a concern, you have no need for violent tribesmen of your own. In a land where long term saving is technically possible, people who do can get ahead. In these places, the criminality complex is no longer favored, and even mildly CQ people–too mild to get executed–get out-competed by people with lower CQs.

However, I do caution that recent data suggests this trend may have reversed, and criminals may now have more children than non-criminals. I wouldn’t count on anything being eternal.

Looking back over my own thought on the subject over the years, I think this is essentially reversal of sorts. Our legal system is built on the Enlightenment (I think) idea of redeemability–that criminals can be changed; that we punish the individual criminal act, not the “criminality” of the offender. This may not be so in the death penalty or for certain egregiously heinous acts like child rape, but in general, there are principles like “no double jeopardy” and “people who have served their time should be allowed to re-integrate into society and not be punished anymore.” The idea of CQ basically implies that some people should be imprisoned irrespective of whatever crimes they’ve been convicted of, simply because they’re going to commit more crimes.

There’s a conflict here, and it’s easy to see how either view, taken to extremes, could go horribly wrong. Thus it is probably best to maintain a moderate approach to imprisonment, while trying to ensure that society is set up to encourage lawful behavior and not reward criminality.

Your thoughts and reflections are encouraged/appreciated.

Waco

My Facebook Feed is all full of articles/comments/posts about how the Waco Shootout shows just how differently the media deals with white gang violence than black gang violence.

Meanwhile, my Facebook Feed has zero articles/comments/posts about black gang violence.

So, I guess we deal with white gang violence by focusing on it, and black gang violence by ignoring it as much as possible.

In the interest of fairness, I will note that Asian gangs also exist, though Asians have a much lower overall crime rate than whites.

 

Rioting is the correct response to the wrong question

I understand rioting. I understand being really fucking mad about something. Anger is a natural and valuable response to certain conditions. If a lion is trying to eat your kid, for example, a sudden burst of anger that drives you to kill that lion or die trying is totally reasonable. In the modern world, we have a lot fewer lions, but there are still plenty of threats.

So if you really believe that your people, your community, your extended family, people who look like you, etc., are under literal, homicidal attack, then the most sensible thing to do is get mad as fuck about it. The sensible thing is to get so damn mad that no one will risk killing any of your people ever again, because if they do, you’ll burn their city the fuck down.

So rioting is perfectly sensible.

The only question is, do the police actually target any particular groups of people?

Well, no. They don’t. We’ve got some pretty good data on the subject (victimization surveys, etc.,) and the police really don’t seem to disproportionately kill black guys. Police have a very high encounter rate with blacks, yes, but this is largely due to blacks committing a lot of crime. (Again, victimization surveys indicate this.)

I read a story the other day about a white man who died after a police officer shot him in the stomach for not showing his ID while dropping a cat off at an animal shelter. I don’t see any riots for this guy, even though his death is just as awful as every other police brutality death.

I really do hope for less police brutality. But the narrative is a lie.