Talk:Race and crime in the United States/Archive 5

A collection of sources that don't seem to be cited in our article.
This academic bulletin here talks about the race and crime correlations within U.S. and cites a couple of excellent, citable, papers there that I urge editors to take a look at. Please discuss here what we can summarize from those papers.

ratios (for example capital murderers per cohort) make more sense than absolute numbers
The percentage of individuals in each racial demographic arrested for murder in 2013 (with 2016 population estimates) was:


 * 1) 0.0102% of Black or African American population (4,379/42,975,959) (lowest IQ according to IQ data)
 * 2) 0.0023% of American Indian or Alaska Native population (98/4,200,658)
 * 3) 0.0019% Hispanic American population (1,096/57,516,697)
 * 4) 0.0014% of White American (3,799/198,077,165)
 * 5) 0.0010% of Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander population (6/646,255)
 * 6) 0.0005% of Asian American population (101/18,418,268)[52][54] (highest IQ)

(You are silly if you kill fellow humans, so don't do it! Be wiser than your cohort. You are a person, not a cohort. Yes you can!)

utility of gross (NOT per-capita) data?
Directly under 'Theories of causation', there is a paragraph providing gross proportions (e.g. Whites consistituted the majority of total arrests etc) which are not provided on a per-capita basis (first sentence notwithstanding). Given that whites are the majority of the population (79.8%), it is not informative to provide this information (as the majority is expected based solely on population). There would be actual utility in providing per-capita figures, which are not made useless by proportional differences. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.70.109.183 (talk) 08:23, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

this has been fixed J25rober (talk) 09:18, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

They're the largest population - so it stands to reason they'll be observed the most. Close observation and grounds for arrest tend to be correlated ... the breakdown is when you get in to the degree of crime; that is to say, Felony arrests aren't 'induced by observation' ...

This is a reason by which blacks are actually under-prosecuted: There are too FEW police in their communities; and are responding to actual police calls. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TrumanLA (talk • contribs) 02:17, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Narrow article focus
The focus of this article is oddly narrow. A couple of additional topics that I might expect in such an article: ...and undoubtedly many others. The article really doesn't reflect the diversity of ways in which crime & race/ethnicity have intersected throughout American history... CordeliaNaismith (talk) 23:32, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
 * A historical perspective on race-based discrimination in the American legal system (for example, segregation, slave codes, People v. Hall.
 * Race-based hate crimes and hate groups (for example,Mass racial violence in the United States, Nadir_of_American_race_relations, Ku Klux Klan).
 * Organized crime (for example, American mafia, Irish mafia, Russian mafia).
 * I agree completely.·Maunus· ƛ · 19:11, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Just dropped by; casual interest. I'm not sure whether the focus is overly narrow or not, and I suppose it would depend on how the article is viewed. I, personally, was looking for recent statistics on inter-racial crime and incarceration in the United States. This article forms a nice sub-article for Crime in the United States, and I could see where articles on slave codes and segregation as well as the mafia, the russian mob, terrorist cells, and so forth would branch nicely from that parent as opposed to broadening the focus of this article. TreacherousWays (talk) 17:01, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Of course - hate crimes are a great idea. Would that also include the ultra high-consistent rate of victimization by the 1/5th sized-african-american community which targets Asians and Whites?

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

In this -- you see that whites are a fraction of the black-murder rates ... especially when they're strangers to one another. I.e., opportunity is less likely to compel murder ..?

But sure - we could infuse things to animate racial hatred in a biased way, further. It's not like the media calls blacks who attack whites "teens" and makes it a point to not show it -- while amplifying the nearly-non-existent case (3% !!) of violence by whites towards blacks ... who're responsible for 19% of white murders. Why DON'T we stoke that anger..? Should be fun to sit back and watch.

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/race-and-homicide-in-america-by-the-numbers

(From the article)

...The statistics show that the 500 killings of white people attributed to blacks last year were the most since black perpetrators were determined to be responsible for the homicides of 504 white people nationwide in 2008. Last year's total was up 12 percent from the 446 recorded in 2014 and 22 percent from the 409 seen in 2013, a year that saw the lowest total this century and one that capped seven years of general declines in black-on-white homicides. Prior to that, 2006 saw the most black-on-white killings since 2001, with 573.

The 229 black lives taken by white killers last year, however, marked an even larger leap from 2014, jumping more than 22 percent from the 187 black victims killed by whites that year, which was the second-lowest total since 2001. The tally was last exceeded in 2008, when 230 blacks were slain by whites. The highest total in the last 15 years came in 2007, when 245 black people were killed by whites...

Compare the writing styles:

statistics show 500 killings of white people attributed to

vs.

taken by white killers SLAIN by whites 245 black people were killed by whites

Further, the other is also particularly offended by the change in murder rates:

First Paragraph: ...up 22 percent from the 409 seen in 2013 Second Paragraph: ...jumping more than 22 percent from the 187 black victims killed by whites that year, which was the second-lowest total since 2001.

In paragraph 1, we only had to go back a couple of years to see an example where blacks had a range of murders which went up by 91 !! In paragraph 2, ANOTHER 12 YEARS BACK ... white people killed only 187 -- but last year, it was 229; a difference of 42.

But wait, that means that the author is MORE ANGERED by a group of 250 million people committing a change of 42 murders annually ... than a group of 42 million people who reliably commit around 400+ ... who, meh, just went up to 500 !.

When you make that spinoff paragraph IN ADDITION to the Wikipedia article: White Supremacy

... will you also be making a wiki page for the use of the word TEENS by the MSM ..? And who that refers to? And why?

Will you also include something about the massive contrast between your group concern ... vs. group violence ?

(just curious) ...

PS: Men are more violent than women, right?

Then why do black women commit more murders than white men in the US .. ?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/26/rate-murder-fbi-increase

Search the page for: Murder rates by race and sex — Preceding unsigned comment added by TrumanLA (talk • contribs) 02:47, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Removed my addition on "Race and IQ".
I wrote a fair and objective section on one proposed explanation for race and crime. There was no stated opinion, there was no bias. However it was quickly removed (within several minutes) for not being politically correct. The guy cited that I used "original sources", but this is ridiculous- every single claim I wrote is backed up by at least 1 scholarly journal. This is a simply ridiculous.

I see complaints above about people being "anti-science", yet when something with scientific backing is written with which they disagree, it gets bombarded by a horde of people.

News flash: you don't need to agree with a theory to present it. A theory doesn't need to be presented in a modern scientific journal to be discussed; only the data must be backed up. You certainly didn't remove my post because I mentioned Phrenology - which has not been presented as a theory in the past century - did you? You people are jokes.

Apparently what I edited in had "too many problems to count". Please tell me what line, what paragraph, is incorrect in any academic way. Here is what I wrote; "Race and IQ

The most controversial and divisive attempt to explain the largely disproportionate criminal representation of African Americans in the criminal justice system has to be that of race. Historically speaking, attempts at attributing behavior to race have been generally discredited in academia, such as the long-abandoned pseudoscience of Phrenology to name one. Such ideas - and many like them - did not arise from an objective and scientific look at the data, but were instead influenced by racial prejudice and confirmation bias.

However, there are some indicators which suggest that race may play a role in African American and Hispanic criminality in the modern day. This theory is based on two assumptions: that A) there exists a correlation between IQ and criminality, and B) that there is a measurable and statistically significant difference in IQ between the races.

The idea that intelligence is related to criminality is well-supported by the macro studies and data compiled in the last several decades. Studies conducted on individuals also lend credence, showing a negative relation between intelligence and rates of criminal offense, with one showing a linear relationship between the two after controlling for all environment home variables. Further meta-analysis research done on the relationship between IQ and crime, delinquency, and related variables shows that: 60 of 68 studies (88%) on IQ and delinquency found a negative relation; 15 of 19 studies (79%) on IQ and adult criminal offending found a negative correlation; 14 of 17 studies (82%) on self-reported offending and IQ found a negative relationship; from 5 studies on IQ and anti-social personality disorder, and 14 studies on childhood conduct disorder, all 19 found a negative relationship. Thus, the vast majority of research establishes IQ as a correlate of crime and related constructs.

The conversation on the extent to which socioeconomic factors influence IQ is an ongoing debate, and past attempts at linking IQ disparities to race by figures such as Charles Murray have been criticized for not being sensitive enough to such factors. Politics, a lack of funding, and social backlash to the exploration of such ideas has made credible, peer-reviewed studies on the subject of race and IQ in short supply. However, some research shows that when holding IQ constant, racial crime differences across the board experience a significant drop, with the black-white incarceration gap being decreased by as much as 75%.

One of the criticisms that may be directed at this hypothesis is that low IQ doesn’t actually cause crime but, rather, simply causes people to perform crimes in such a way that they are more likely to get caught. Moffit and Silvia (1988) examined this question more closely and looked at crime and IQ in a sample of 654 boys using two different kinds of measures of criminal activity: self-report and police report. They found that delinquent adolescents had lower than average IQs and that their IQs did not differ depending on whether or not they had been arrested. In other words, IQ was not predictive of whether a criminal was caught.

In summary, the link between racial IQ and crime is not certain by any stretch of the imagination, and it is certainly possible that a lower IQ score is more heavily impacted by environmental factors, not racial ones. Nevertheless, this is one among many attempts to explain the racial crime disparity, and is certainly no less scientifically substantiated than the idea of police bias being responsible for this disparity."

Jay Effe (talk) 00:01, 29 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Even if one accepted the argument that blacks are less intelligent on average than whites, it still does not establish a direct connection between race and crime. In any case, you need to provide  reliable source that any experts have drawn the same conclusions.  TFD (talk) 01:02, 29 January 2018 (UTC)


 * The first two paragraphs are original research. The third paragraph is about Crime and IQ, not Crime and Race. The fourth paragraph is Bell Curve crap. The last two paragraphs are more or less ok, but it makes no sense to include them without the preceding ones.Volunteer Marek (talk) 02:46, 29 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Alright, a couple things to respond to this. To the first person, "it still does not establish a direct connection between race and crime". Are you seriously telling me that for a hypothesis to be mentioned, that a scientist has to prove that there is a DIRECT connecion 100%? This is a ridiculous standard for evidence - a standard that is A) impossible to achieve in sociology, and B) a standard that you do not apply to most any other "theory" in this article. Simply ridiculous.


 * As for the Marek's criticism, the first paragraph is simply an introduction to the studies provided in the rest of my section. The intent was to inform people that there is little other evidence to justify discrimination based on race, and the general factors such discrimination has been historically founded upon.


 * Now, Marek, are you seriously saying that in order to be included in a Wikepedia article, it is not enough that a theory is A) popular in fringe group, and B) supported by real science and data? Are you seriously telling me that every single theory shown on Wikipedia has to fall under the agenda of some academic somewhere, with a standard (paging Mr. The Four Deuces) that cannot be met in any other comparable proposition?


 * If you are seriously saying this, then Wikipedia is nothing more than an appeal to authority. Simply because there is no funding, no political pressure, and huge societal backlash on a given theory does NOT discredit it if there is real science to back it. Because stating that something is "original research" is literally the definition of an appeal to authority. And if that is all Wikipedia is, then that is really fucking sad.


 * And, by the way, Mr. Fucking Marek, the 1st sentence of the 4th paragraph levies a criticism at the "Bell Curve crap", and includes a 2nd relevant source that is NOT the Bell Curve. And either way, who the flying fuck made you the arbiter of what book is crap and what book is not? I'm sorry, was there an election that nominated you as the purveyor of knowledge? Unless you can cite academic studies refuting what is written in the Bell Curve, then you don't have a leg to stand on. I'm just applying your standard for evidence.


 * Jay Effe (talk) 03:09, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Calm down. The Bell Curve is a highly contested, generally unaccepted work with dozens of rebuttals. It's rather fringe in  that sense (though Walsh reignited the debate last year). Generally speaking, this article would do best to rely on WP:SECONDARY sources. Do we have meta analyses or reviews of this topic?  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) 03:23, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, there's a review from the APA on 30 years of research. It seems to affirm a link between IQ and race. 88.114.37.82 (talk) 20:30, 27 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Noted. I'll do my best to keep it civil hereon out.


 * I would refer you to the latter half of my 3rd paragraph, which provides a meta-analysis on IQ and crime, the data of which I showed. Thus, if you accept that IQ is a credible metric - and the vast majority of psychiatrists and sociologists do accept this - then the onus is on the person standing in opposition to provide the evidence that IQ tests are, for some reason, not relevant to African Americans specifically.


 * You said that the Bell Curve has been lambasted by academics. I've read many of those criticisms, and some stand some to scrutiny, some don't. There are none I have seen that refute all the connections Murray has made, and I don't think there is a single scientist who will go on the record to say that there is 0% correlation between race and IQ. As such, his body of work is still relevant as far as the data contained within. The fact that many people disagree or do not like the extent to which he extrapolates that data should be of no rational concern; again, this is an appeal to authority.


 * I can, of course, look for a meta-analysis which comes to the conclusion that there is a correlation between race and crime, but as I said, this study will be nigh impossible to find. Not for academic or scientific reasons, but because this is a simply untenable position to hold due to popular politics and culture.


 * The best anyone can do in regards to presenting a fringe theory on Wikipedia, I think, is honestly propose the theory whilst including information which critiques it and information which supports it. Anything outside of that is to be intellectually dishonest and partisan. At least that is what I honestly think.

Jay Effe (talk) 03:37, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

To: Jay Effe... PLEASE email me: TrumanHW@gmail - there are wiki pages I'd like to work on with you; and "objective, realists, intellectually honest" don't appear to be "special interest groups" that are going to get added to these wikis without us self-identifying and collaborating.

Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Racial_bias_in_criminal_news_in_the_United_States

Look at who contributes to that. Look at THIS university (Michigan I believe) who've been assigned this project -- then look at where these colleges stand to someone like Jonathan Haidt and his efforts to create objective metrics for universities.

SPOT ON. All evidence supports that position. The only challenges are based on claims that the data is unreliable; but the pattern is ubiquitous; further, the larger the data set, the more pronounced it is.

To Jay's opponents:

To get deviations people have relied on small(er) data sets.

We can use a secondary metric however: We can look at white behavior / crime rates amongst whites with IQs from 70 - 100 ... which covers 75% of black population if I'm not mistaken (I'll check standard deviation info later).

There was scholarly articles I prev. had access to when in L.E. which showed the breakdown of IQ by the types of Crimes committed ... and contained data that showed:

If you separated prisoners by the crimes they committed, you'd also sorted them by race and IQ.

Even the minnesota adoption studies included the following info:

The 29 children with two black parents achieved a mean IQ score of 96.8. The 68 with only one black parent scored on the average 109.0.

It goes on to point to confounding factors -- all of which could be seen as the cause or the effect. Bottom line: Irrespective of WHY ... is WHAT. And we can see "WHAT" clearly. There're just some groups of people who deserve their OWN chapter within the Race and IQ debate in which we discuss their opposition to data and how many different ways they try to obscure the facts -- and what their emotional motives are -- as well as their demographics; much like those members of the media who're insistant on referring to some people who've committed crimes as "teens" and never showing their faces; but when there's a role reversal, suddenly there's a public interest.

Why we can't talk honestly about data should literally be a wikipedia page. Race and IQ a chapter, Crime and Race a chapter, IQ and income a chapter ... and which types of people go to what kinds of lengths to obscure / deny the data. THAT would be informative. Hell, maybe we could make them another internet -- where they could have the kind of censorship their brains/limbic system yearns for ... and the rest of us can have a plausible, useful, logical basis to facts (reserving those "racist facts" for the censorious internet) ... and we can each see what kinds of lives we each lead. Who's surprised when someone's raped // murdered // robbed, etc.

I don't know WHY anyone's offended by [data] ? I wish I were smarter, and it's plausible that being 1/4 native american is -- if anything is predictable, the genetic origin of my confusion when I have it ... but that has little to do with how I deal with failures / success. And it certainly doesn't make anyone else at fault when I fail. And I CERTAINLY don't need a team of liberals excusing my failures do to my heritage.

Irrespective why I'm "smart or dumb" only informs my ego; as the hedonic treadmill suggests my happiness is independent ... In the final analysis, how smart I am merely lends itself to pride; but that emotion wasn't fun anyway. I didn't earn my gifts. So why should I gloat about them? My weaknesses aren't my fault -- but I sure can work to remedy them.

Again, to re emphasize the hedonic relativism, my sense of happiness will habituate; and be short-lived based on the time it takes to habituate to any changes I may earn or suffer.

WHY do people need to make excuses ... with the only result being that we have LESS USEFUL DATA NOW THAN EVER.

Isn't the epistemic value of data / theories their predictive capacity !?

No matter how 'smart or dumb' a group is ... the individual's psychometric performance is unchanged. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TrumanLA (talk • contribs) 03:34, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Wrong number of white people used
0.0014% of White American (3,799/198,077,165)

The 3,799 does not match the number is the section prior to it. The number for the other races do.

Either someone made a mistake, or someone is disparaging White people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.174.132.12 (talk) 13:36, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

......no clue why that link is showing up! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.174.132.12 (talk) 13:39, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Opinions
I removed some opinions from the article. This is an area where there is extensive academic study, and statements by media personalities and public figures will inevitably be viewed in the light of the reader's personal opinons of that person, so I think it's safest to stick with the copious academic sources. Guy (help!) 08:25, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Scrubbing of content that relates to discrimination by police, juries and judges
If police, juries and judges show racial discrimination in arrests, convictions and sentencing, then that clearly affects the relationship between race and crime in the US. It couldn't be more relevant to this page. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 15:48, 16 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi, Snooganssnoogans, thanks for posting on the talk page where we can discuss this in more depth. In order to understand the causes of discrepancies between races in crime rates in the data, we have to understand how the data is collected. There are two main sources, as the article says. The NCVS is based on surveying people and asking what crimes they have been victims of and who the perpetrator was, regardless of whether they told the police or whether the person was arrested or convicted. So it doesn't rely on data from the criminal justice system in any way. The UCR relies on data provided by law enforcement (though not the judicial or prison systems), so it could be influenced by policing practices. This is why I initially left the section on discrimination by law enforcement in when I removed some other out-of-scope material.


 * However, I then examined the individual sources being cited and it became clear that none of them discussed the nature and extent of the impact of discrimination by law enforcement on crime statistics. Therefore, it violates WP:SYNTH and perhaps WP:OR to invoke these articles in support of a conclusion they did not draw. If you have sources that do draw this conclusion, please add them! However, it is not entirely straightforward to conclude this has biased the crime statistics, for two reasons. Firstly, as the article says, research shows NCVS and UCR data have come to very similar conclusions (despite no potential for bias in the criminal justice system biasing the NCVS data). Secondly, while most of the research cited in the relevant section of the Race in the United States criminal justice system page points to a level of discrimination by police, some research (also cited on that page) has disagreed (see D'Alessio & Stolzenberg, 2003). (It seems to be more unanimous that there is discrimination in sentencing, but again, judicial system data is not being used by either data source.)


 * So no, I was not "scrubbing" anything from the page. I was trying to ensure it complied with Wikipedia guidelines. That said, if I have misunderstood something, let me know so we can move forward with improving the article. Gazelle55 (talk) 17:25, 16 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree with Gazelle. David A (talk) 17:29, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * As someone who is obsessed with fear-mongering about immigrants and running interference for anti-Muslim conspiracy organizations like the Gatestone Institute, that does not surprise me at all. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 17:41, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually, I am just obsessed with statistics in general. I find them far more reliable than ideological propaganda. David A (talk) 17:56, 16 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Please explain how a study which concludes that black people are more likely to be convicted than similar white people (when the underlying facts of the case are the same) has no relevance for the black-white gap in crime. The removal of it is a clear-cut NPOV violation (removal of peer-reviewed research). It's as on-point as it is possible to be. I have no idea what relevance all the crime statistics you bring up has. It sounds like you're doing WP:OR and arguing that studies that explicitly find racial bias can't be correct because of your own glancing at raw numbers. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 17:35, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, I personally much prefer raw data/statistics over subjective interpretation. David A (talk) 17:41, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The contents removed were peer-reviewed studies published in top journals, not "subjective interpretations." Thank you for your thoughtful input though. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 17:44, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, this is also a page that is focused on the raw statistics. As far as I understood, what you inserted has already been thoroughly covered in another related article. David A (talk) 17:49, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * This is absolutely not an article about "raw crime statistics". Snooganssnoogans (talk) 17:50, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * It seems like I misunderstood the situation here, and should have stayed out of this. David A (talk) 17:23, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

I have started a discussion on the NPOV noticeboard. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 18:14, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

The discussion at the NPOV noticeboard is closing now though the original issue is unresolved. I won't be making any more major changes here except perhaps once I become less busy. For the benefit of future editors I will just copy the relevant portions of the discussion on the noticeboard here. Best wishes, Gazelle55 (talk) 17:03, 18 June 2020 (UTC)


 * (i) "it became clear that none of them discussed the nature and extent of the impact of discrimination by law enforcement on crime statistics." The studies were all about racial biases in police stops, police arrests, and jury/judge convictions and sentencing. You maintain that these studies have nothing to do with the relationship between race and crime? For example, can you explain how this study in the top econ journal has nothing to say about the conviction rates of blacks? (ii) Your other rationale for removing peer-reviewed studies is that you personally believe that two existing datasets on crime show no racial bias and that there is a 2003 study that finds no evidence of racial bias, thus all those other studies must be wrong. If sources disagree, then the solution is not to scrub the peer-reviewed literature from the page, but to include the rebuttal studies. 20:01, 16 June 2020 (UTC) [I (Gazelle55) believe this was Snooganssnoogans, though it was unsigned]


 * Okay, I think I understand better the misunderstanding that has taken place. I agree that any racial bias in police arrests will influence arrest numbers, and that racial biases in juries and judges influence sentencing/convictions. So I don't think I disagree with your reading of the study you linked to above in any way. It is the context in which these studies are being invoked that I disagree with. Crime statistics are not the same as arrest statistics or sentencing statistics or incarceration statistics. There are ways of differentiating between the rates of crime vs arrests vs sentencing vs incarceration. This is why, for example, reliable sources argue that African Americans and Hispanic Americans are disproportionately arrested, sentenced, and incarcerated for drug crimes, even though all races commit drug crimes at similar rates. My point is that we as editors should not be the ones to make that link between crime statistics and arrest/sentencing/incarceration statistics. That additional step needs to be made by reliable sources. If there are sources that make this step, then they belong in the article. But the existing ones are discussing a different topic, that is arrest statistics or sentencing statistics or incarceration statistics, and as I said I checked and none of them claim this infers the crime statistics are biased.


 * My point was not that I "personally believe" there is no bias in the NCVS and UCR data—I was saying we need reliable sources to say so. Also, I was not saying that one 2003 study on violent crime and arrests invalidates other studies—I was making a side point that we could not treat it as self-evident that the UCR must be biased because it relies on law enforcement data (given the absence of sources drawing that link). Again, my point is just to leave things to WP:RS. Anyway, I would be happy to discuss this further on the talk page (which is why I have left the material in until we can resolve this), but I certainly don't think I have been violating NPOV. Gazelle55 (talk) 22:05, 16 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Also, a bit of an aside, but I think the article should have a section on drug crimes, where I understand the racial disparity in crime does not exist. This would help provide a more holistic view on race and crime. I will need to find sources first, though. Gazelle55 (talk) 22:10, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose to merge Race in the United States criminal justice system into Race and crime in the United States. The two are on the exact same topic. The existence of two pages on the same topic will result in a worse treatment of the topic (doing a disservice to Wikipedia's readers and undermining the efforts of Wikipedia's editors), because efforts will be divided between improving two different pages rather than creating one coherent comprehensive article. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 02:18, 13 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi, Snooganssnoogans, I can see that the pages are intertwined and if other editors agree I think a merger would be reasonable. However, we should keep in mind that Wikipedia guidelines say pages should usually be split after exceeding 60kB of readable prose. They are around 40kB and 56kB right now, so if we just merge all the content it would mean creating an article that is too long. I think if an overarching article is created, to make the length manageable it should be shortened and have links to "Main" articles on some of the longer specific topics ("Race and crime in the United States", "Race and police use of force in the United States", "Race and sentencing in the United States", "Race and incarceration in the United States" probably being the ones with enough material). In fact, there is already a separate article for "Race and the War on Drugs".


 * For the title of an overarching article, I would tend to think "Race and the United States criminal justice system" would be the broadest terminology rather than "Race and crime in the United States". I actually think race and crime in the US is reasonably self-contained, since the NCVS data doesn't rely on the criminal justice system and the UCR data relies on law enforcement data but not other stages of the criminal justice process, so it could stay roughly how it is as one of the smaller pages under an over-arching article. Gazelle55 (talk) 08:45, 13 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree that "Race and crime in the United States" would be a better overarching name. I'm also fine with creating appropriate forks for subsets of the article if the text gets too unwieldy and large. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 14:17, 13 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I think that it would be better to keep the two articles separate. One of the pages seems to focus more on the historical context and incarceration rate, and the other on the crime statistics themselves, and none of the valid information within them should preferably be lost. It might be an idea to rename each of them slightly for clarification purposes though. David A (talk) 15:10, 13 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree, David A, that any merger should not be at the cost of losing information. I would say that since the existing "Race and crime in the United States" article is already 2/3 of the maximum advisable length and could use expansion at points, it needs to remain its own article to avoid losing content. There is already a section on discrimination by law enforcement as a causal factor. (That said, I think that as a matter of abiding by WP:SYNTH we should remove sources there that don't discuss how this would influence crime statistics, and instead place them in "Race in the United States criminal justice system".)


 * I am okay with having a single overarching article, but this one should remain intact and be linked to as "Main" in one of the sub-sections of the overarching article. This is why I think the overarching article should be "Race and the United States criminal justice system", not "Race and crime in the United States". It is the only way to prevent the length becoming excessive without removing information -- because the sub-sections I mentioned above can be made into their own articles with only summaries in the overarching article. Gazelle55 (talk) 20:02, 13 June 2020 (UTC)


 * The more I think about it, while I think having one overarching article tying the topics together would make Wikipedia more informative, I'm not sure a merger would be the best way to do it. Instead, we could just expand Race in the United States criminal justice system to cover more. Gazelle55 (talk) 20:05, 13 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I also want as much matter of fact statistics as possible out there for the public, so things might have a better chance to calm down from the current situation. David A (talk) 21:46, 13 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I tend to think these are not the same topic, though they are intertwined. Things that are not "crime" but are "the criminal justice system" include: police and policing (including demographics, policing approaches, and the history of police), prisons, criminal courts, sentencing, and racial motivations and effects around the criminalization of various acts. Complete coverage of the latter issues will tend to expand the article "criminal justice system" article, making merging less appropriate.--Carwil (talk) 11:31, 14 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Disagree, I would keep the articles separate. The two are not the exact same topic, and a merged article would be oversized and muddled. Karpouzi (talk) 09:50, 20 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Unsure. But regardless of what is done, all potentially ambiguous articles like the two in question should cross-reference each other in a meaningful way to discourage divergence and redundancy. Tom Haws (talk) 00:36, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Appropriate scope of page
There seems to be a lot of overlap between this page and the "Race in the United States criminal justice system" page. I'm going to move things to the appropriate pages but just want to clear up the appropriate delineation before changing too much. In particular, where does recidivism fit? It seems to be a matter of both re-offending (crime) and re-incarceration (criminal justice system). On the other hand I think law enforcement, judges, juries, sentencing, the bail system, incarceration, rehabilitation, and parole are all part of the criminal justice system whereas crime rates, demographics, trends, and causes are part of crime. Thanks for input. Gazelle55 (talk) 14:56, 11 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I very strongly do not believe there should be two pages about virtually the same topic. The two pages should be merged. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 02:11, 13 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I do get why you moved the content to the other page (if one had to come up with a rationale for dividing content between the two pages), but discrimination in the criminal justice system affects clearly affects crime rates (e.g. sentencing disparities, treatment by law enforcement). Which just goes to show that there shouldn't be two pages on the same topic. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 02:26, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

The titles alone may not be enough permanent documentation of the purpose of having two articles. I don't know if a header/banner of disambiguation is appropriate. But something prominent that establishes clearly and reasonably the scope of each article (in addition to the titles) may be necessary. And getting to clarity on that point may take some careful thought and discussion. Tom Haws (talk) 00:41, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

The Bureau of Justice crime statistics
Considering the current riots across the United States, shouldn't we include the official statistical crime data to help calm things down and disprove the demagogues regarding that things are not nearly as bad as they try to present them?

https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=922

David A (talk) 11:05, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Here is another study with important data. I would greatly appreciate help to incorporate it into the article: https://research.msu.edu/the-truth-behind-racial-disparties-in-fatal-police-shootings/ David A (talk) 21:47, 13 June 2020 (UTC)


 * The first source looks relevant to the article, though it may be better to find secondary sources analyzing the data across multiple years rather than using single-year data if possible. The second source looks more relevant to Race in the United States criminal justice system, unless a merger does go ahead. I would be willing to help incorporate them, though I'm uncertain what sort of help exactly you're looking for. Cheers, Gazelle55 (talk) 21:07, 14 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Well, I have an ongoing problem with figuring out how to incorporate the statistics that I find in a properly structured manner that does not interrupt the text flow of the already existing information in the articles. The second study in particular seems to provide contrary information to the claim that all police officers should be blamed for the severe crimes of some of them. David A (talk) 09:33, 17 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I see, thanks for your openness about the difficulties you've had with editing. I may find time to incorporate the sources in the coming weeks. That said, the article never said that all police officers should be blamed for the crimes of some officers. As was discussed on the noticeboard, try to focus on problems in the article(s), not on political disputes taking place outside of Wikipedia. We all have points of view but this isn't the place for them. Gazelle55 (talk) 17:12, 18 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Okay. Thank you for the help. David A (talk) 09:38, 19 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Would you or somebody else be willing to try to appropriately add this information soon? David A (talk) 07:41, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Dead merge?
At the merge tag, the proposed-to-be-merged article is red-- probably deleted or something. I'm not brave enough to delete that tag just in case there's anything I don't know. Should the tag be erased?  Gerald WL  09:58, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Can someone fix the archiving?
There are discussions from 2010 on the page. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 03:59, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ I have updated the auto-archive formatting. Threads from over 90 days ago should be archived soon. have been archived. A. Randomdude0000 (talk) 20:40, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Graph update
This: US homicide convictions by race, 1980–2008 needs an update to 2020. Zezen (talk) 07:47, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Incorrect statistic needs editing
The article states that FBI statistics attribute 52.8% of homicides to black offenders. That is incorrect, and the citation is to the wrong table for 2018 data. The right figure for 2018 is 38.7% and the cite should be to table 3. The article citation is to Table 6, which only reports on single offender-single victim homicides (a subset of homicides). In addition, the data could be updated to reflect the 2019 FBI statistics, which are white 29.1%, black 39.6%, other 2.1%, and unknown 29.3%. See https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3.xls. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jefflanning (talk • contribs) 18:12, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Rape
Where are the stats for rape? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:E6:1F0A:A401:38E2:E485:8180:D3C0 (talk) 12:21, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 December 2020
Please change the following: "African Americans were also over-represented in such homicides, although only by about 2.5 times their share of the general population." to this: "African Americans were also over-represented in such homicides, by about 2.5 times their share of the general population."

The justification for this change is that the "although only" injects a bias that the multiple of their share of the general population is diminished and less dramatic. The reader can appreciate that 2.5 is less than the other number in the comparison on their own/draw a conclusion on the multiple on their own without the bias injected by the text recommended to be removed. 2601:447:4101:C140:1015:877E:3D2B:9C32 (talk) 17:31, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done, although in future could you link to the paragraph in question - this is a long article. --Paul &#10092;talk&#10093; 17:47, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 January 2021
I'd like someone with the authority to change the provided data under the headline "Homicide", which is under the headline "Crime Statistics". The given homicide percentages are outdated since September 2020. As an example, African Americans account now for 39.6% of homicides under the most recent FBI data for the year 2019. Please change at least the first paragraph to inform people about the most recent stats.

Source: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3.xls Jason Wessalowski (talk) 14:11, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: Please make the edits yourself in your user sandbox and re-open the request once done. Elliot321 (talk &#124; contribs) 14:52, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, this isn't a particularly useful statistic—more relevant is that blacks make up 59% of homicide offenders in cases in which race is known. Elle Kpyros (talk) 22:26, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It's 55.9%, not 59%. And, I don't understand why this edit request was rejected. The user made a clear X-->Y request with a source.  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) 22:46, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 April 2021
The percentages 88 and 80 under “Homicide” are reversed. 2600:8800:1A4:1500:8D8F:3F2A:9DBD:FEF1 (talk) 03:21, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Yellow check.svg Partly done: Thanks for spotting this, I've fixed it. However, there was a slight problem that the data, so it required a little more than reversing, but also the numbers were inaccurate and the text didn't specify the basis of the data (ie excluding unidentified perpetrators). Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 04:09, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Aren't they people?
This user notices a trend in which Black and Hispanic people are referred to as "blacks" and "Hispanics". Didn't this article previously refer to them as "Black people" and "Hispanic people" previously? Seems unnecessarily dehumanising to refer to those who are POC as just their color. Also what's with the randomly capitalized "White" six times throughout the article? 92.5.188.248 (talk) 12:58, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

So now it's dehumanizing if you refer to blacks & hispanics without people at the end? Seriously? Obama refered to blacks & hispanics as just that but I guess it was OK when he did it but not OK for a Wiki article which can be edited by anyone to do it? Come on now, this article is actually very much slanted towards a non-white opinion and point of view. It makes a lot of statements and backs them with references from people who are clearly out to put the blame on whites or other races for everything. Just because a fact on Wiki has a reference doesn't mean that reference it worth a darn. You can find a quote for literally any side of any issue that fits your point of view. You have to read between the lines & sort out statements in any article on any site to find out what is actually fact based without any bias towards one side or the other. The article says blacks & hispanics are being purposely kept from living in low crime areas and has a reference. Google the opposite of that statement and you can find several references supporting the otherside, by the way, blacks and more so hispanics are the fastest growing suburban middle class demographic than any other race according to the 2020 Census. Someone saying it's dehumanizing for blacks & hispanics not to have "people/persons" at the end with no mention of asians, whites or native americans obviously has an "I'm the victim, everyone's racist except me, Wiki hates black PEOPLE" point of view. No one is dehumanizing humanizing, ostracizing or biggie sizing any race or person, people look for any thing to cry about so they can keep the victim card. It slows any progress of all races being viewed equally. So next time you call out an article about blacks & hispanics being belittled and white being capitalized randomly....(by the way so is black and hispanic) but fail to mention any other race, stop and think if you're looking for something to keep the racist views going or if it's just a non-issue that you're turning into one. Google "Obama blacks hispanics" and see if he didn't say it the same way without people at the end along with many other civil rights talking heads. I'm sure there was no problem when he did it, but its a problem if anyone else does. By the by, I'm native american, if any race has a valid gripe or deserves reparations it's us but no one ever mentions that. Yes blacks were kidnapped & sold, which was wrong but white people came, commited genocide by killing off 90% of us, took our land put us in concentration...I mean reservations & people think only blacks had it rough. I don't recall anything remotely close happening to another race in America. We have the highest crime rates, highest poverty rates, most illiteracy, most alcoholics & never get mentioned in the race debate. Why? Because we don't destroy businesses everytime something happens to us & think anything we don't get or doesn't go the way we want is because of our skin color. Sometimes you have to look at your own race and think maybe just maybe your race is just as much to blame for your problems as anyone else. Fix your race, you fix the problem. Don't wait for others to fix it for you. My race creates a lot of problems internally just like other races. Black on black murder is not the highest of any other race because people are racist...it's because they're to busy blaming anyone else than to see that they're the ones to blame just as much as anyone else. Fix your own race first...all races, whites included, then and only then should you complain how your are being kept down by the man. And...rant complete. That rant went places I didn't know existed. Anyways...Dehumanize beshmumanize! Jandg4206 (talk) 05:03, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Error in black multiple of white homicide rate: roughly 8x, not 6x
The current article incorrectly states that for homicide the "per-capita offending rate for African-Americans was roughly six times higher than that of whites". The numbers preceding this statement appear to be correct—that "African-Americans accounted for 55.9% of all homicide offenders in 2019, with whites 41.1%, and 'Other' 3.0% in cases where the race was known." But that would make the black rate 7.8x higher, based on Wikipedia's demographic information on the US, which is that it's 73.0% white and 12.7% black (the calculation is: 73/41.1*55.9/12.7) Perhaps the confusion lies in the fact that the FBI doesn't separate out homicide offenders by Hispanic ethnicity along with race, but reports it as a separate category? In any case, please do correct me if I've miscalculated anything—otherwise, I will go ahead and correct the article to read "roughly eight times higher". Thanks! Elle Kpyros (talk) 23:50, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Change "black or African-American" and "African-American" to "black".
While the FBI statistics specify "black or African-American" as a single "race", wouldn't it be simpler and no less accurate to simply use "black"? My understanding is that African-Americans are all blacks but that all blacks aren't African-Americans—in other words, a black Haitian immigrant isn't necessarily either "African" or "American" let alone "African-American". Thus, it seems like for FBI statistics—and, frankly, for the entire article—it would be simpler to use the widely accepted term "black". NB: I know these terms can be exceedingly sensitive for some—so please do let me know if I've accidentally given offense, as it's in no way intentional. Thanks! Elle Kpyros (talk) 21:26, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Lead oddly fails to mention nature of racial differences in criminal offending
The second sentence of this article is: "Crime rates vary significantly between racial groups." But the entire rest of the introduction fails to identify how rates vary between which racial groups. Why is this?

It's not squeamishness about mentioning racial differences in all contexts: the lead singles out "African-Americans" as being victims of "racial discrimination" and "police brutality".

It certainly can't be a dearth of space—the lead includes this level of granularity, again while identifying variation in rates between specific races: "A substantial academic literature has compared police searches (showing that contraband is found at higher rates in whites who are stopped), bail decisions (showing that whites with the same bail decision as blacks commit more pre-trial violations), and sentencing (showing that blacks are more harshly sentenced by juries and judges than whites when the underlying facts and circumstances of the cases are similar), providing valid causal inferences of racial discrimination."

Why not include the obvious and most salient fact when discussing the subject—"Race and crime in the United States"—which is the obvious fact that blacks (and Hispanics) commit (virtually all types of) crimes at (often vastly) higher rates than those of whites (and Asians)? Is it really more important, in the lead of this article, to describe the particularities of differing contraband hit-rates? Elle Kpyros (talk) 23:01, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, no.  Volunteer Marek   23:51, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
 * That strikes me as as a less-than-thoughtful, even flip and sarcastic response. Is your answer that, yes, it's more important in the lead of the "Race and crime in the US" article to specify the differences between specific races in a study of contraband hit-rates for vehicle stops than it is to describe the broad differences are in criminal offending between races? Why is that? One of the single best-known and relevant facts about the article subject is that blacks offend at far higher rates than other groups—why should this be excluded, especially when esoteric vehicle-stop data from a single study are included? Elle Kpyros (talk) 20:32, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Read the archives.  Volunteer Marek   21:28, 4 August 2021 (UTC)


 * I've searched the archives, and the only really substantive discussion I see on this point is here, which refers to a completely different lead containing nothing about differing contraband hit-rates in traffic stops—and further, in which 3 of the 5 participating editors agree with my suggestion that the basic facts of racial disparities should be included (as well as that the extensive treatment of theories of possible causes is unnecessary). As I've pointed out: specific races are mentioned in the current version of the lead—including the aforementioned and even this: "Racial housing segregation has also been linked to racial disparities in crime rates, as blacks have historically and to the present been prevented from moving into prosperous low-crime areas" [emphasis mine]—which makes zero sense unless it's preceded by the fact that blacks commit crimes at higher rates. Without that, the reader is clueless as to what "racial disparities in crime rates" refers to, vis-a-vis blacks being subjected to housing segregation. This tortured coyness is not only bizarre, it's anathema to the creation of a useful encyclopedia.


 * I believe I've laid out some excellent reasons for including the broad factual strokes of the "racial disparities" that undergirds the entire lead. In response to my good-faith effort to improve our encyclopedia, it would be greatly appreciated if, rather than being flip and sarcastic or directing me to: "read the archives", you could offer a persuasive argument as to why the lead should skip over the most obvious and well-known fact about the article subject, thereby omitting the foundation upon which the entire rest of the lead in premised. Absent a compelling argument for its exclusion, the correct thing to do is to include the basic fact of racial disparities. Thanks so much!  Elle Kpyros (talk) 19:00, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

"Terminology" section fails NPOV and is only about a single term
Having the first section of an article about "Terminology" might make sense—but not in this instance, where the problems with the section are numerous and disqualifying: This section, which shares many of the problems plaguing the rest of this article, ought to be removed—or, at minimum, renamed "Use of the term 'black-on-black crime'" and moved to a far less prominent position in the article. It also needs to be preceded by the actual data on black crime rates, without which it lacks any context or meaning. Elle Kpyros (talk) 22:11, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) It's not about terminology: the entire section is devoted to criticism of the single term "black-on-black crime"—hardly a comprehensive or representative section on "Terminology" related to "Race and crime in the United States".
 * 2) It's not NPOV: eloquent arguments have been made about the need to focus on "black-on-black crime"—including by that name—but none are even acknowledged here—it's essentially a biased polemic against the use of the term.
 * 3) It lacks reliable sources. One of the two sources cited is only reliable for the personal opinion of one Troy L. Smith, an entertainment reporter, and is full of obvious falsehoods. The other is also largely an opinion piece, with zero empirical data about the use of the term.
 * 4) The claim that the term is "misleading" isn't supported by the cited sources, nor is the claim that it's "inaccurate and vague". The latter phrase is used to refer to "vague black-on­-black violence descriptions"— in an article that itself makes extensive use of the phrases "black-on-black crime/homicide/violence".
 * 5) Indeed, even the main cited source acknowledges the term is "statistically correct".
 * 6) It's completely out of context: the section begins by referencing "these crime statistics". Presumably the reference is to the vastly higher rates of violent criminal offending by blacks—except that these are mentioned nowhere in the preceding article text.

Elle Kpyros (talk) 22:11, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 September 2021
Of the 9,468 murder arrests in the US in 2017, 53.5% were black and 20.8% Hispanic. Of the 822,671 arrests for non-aggravated assault, 31.4% were black and 18.4% Hispanic.

Overall, black (49%) and indigenous Americans (48%) victims reported most often, higher than whites (42%) and Asians (40%). Serious violent crime and aggravated assault against blacks (58% and 61%) and indigenous Americans (55% and 59%) was reported more often than against whites (51% and 54%) or Asians (50% and 51%).

Based on 2019 year, and two websites that I have found from US government, the statistics above is false. The offences in US have been reported as high as 10,085,210. White race accounts for 70%, while black for 26% and American Indian 2% with Asians at 2%. https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/ucr.asp?table_in=2&selYrs=2019&rdoGroups=1&rdoData=c Aquala9 (talk) 23:39, 22 September 2021 (UTC) Good day,

What's false about it? The first person is discussing violent crime and you're discussing over all crime.Funny4life (talk) 00:41, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I would like to note that your information on Wikipedia page is false, please update it whenever you can. I have found this information very biased and seems like it is not true.

Thank you!
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:50, 22 September 2021 (UTC)