Civilized said:
caryking said:
We have to start with one's World View. It appears your world view starts with the system is bad and it has to be fixed. I start with the system is good and perhaps we have a few bad apples.
If you really look at systems, businesses, government, etc.. and say that they are inherently good and certain people are not, then you will get farther with people that have different world view.
I can't even step into your world view as I think it has so many flaws. Things, incidents, institutions are not bad, people are.
No my world view starts with looking at data on per-capita outcomes at the macro level across the country over decades and seeing where that leads me.
Black Americans have worse outcomes in stops, arrests, police violence, charging, conviction rate, sentencing, probation hearings. Every single one. I'm not talking about "more stops" or "more murders." Historical data accounts for increased rates of criminality by Black Americans and controls for evidence to compare like-kind cases and circumstances (comparing drug arrests for marijuana, comparing case outcomes with similar evidence, etc.)
These outcomes impact hundreds of thousands of black Americans every year.
There are reasons for this, as I've said before. Economic status is a big one. Whites tend to be better off financially, and can hire a better lawyer. Better lawyer generally = Better outcome/lower sentence.
It's really that simple, IMO.
And the disparity isn't as big as some studies show.
This one is pretty comprehensive, and says this:
https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2413&context=articles"Using quantile regressions, we estimate the size of racial disparity across the conditional sentencing distribution. We find that the majority of the disparity between black and white sentences can be explained by differences in legally permitted characteristics, in particular, the arrest offense and the defendant's criminal history. Black arrestees are also disproportionately concentrated in federal districts that have higher sentences in general."
"Yet even after we control for these and other prior characteristics, an unexplained black-white sentence disparity of approximately 9 percent remains in our main sample."
Just like with everything else, you have to look at ALL the factors before you can say there's a huge difference.
Another older study said this:
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/145328NCJRS.pdf"On average, black offenders sentenced to prison during this period had imposed sentences that were 41 % longer than for whites (21 months longer). For incarcerated Hispanics, the average imposed sentence did not differ significantly from the average sentence for whites. "
"
The main reason that blacks' sentences were longer than whites' during the period from January 1989 to June 1990 was that 83 % of all Federal offenders convicted of trafficking in crack cocaine in guideline cases were black, and the average sentence imposed for crack trafficking was twice as long as for trafficking in powdered cocaine. Excluding offenders convicted of trafficking in crack cocaine, the remaining difference in length of incarceration sentences imposed on blacks and whites was 13 months."
"
White, black, and Hispanic offenders convicted of trafficking in crack cocaine differed in a number of ways, including the amount of drug sold, the seriousness of the offenders' prior criminal records, whether or not weapons were involved (and whether there were secondary offenses of conviction for firearms offenses), whether offenders pleaded guilty rather than went to trial, and whether charges were reduced in exchange for a guilty plea.
Within the category of crack trafficking our statistical analyses estimated that these differences accounted for all of the observed variation in imprisonment sentences. "
Again, look at ALL the data. ALL the circumstances.
Then there's this part:
"Some characteristics of offenses or offenders that are correlated with race or ethnicity strongly influence sentences under current Federal law and sentencing guidelines. Modifications of specific laws ?.nd/or guidelines would essentially eliminate the racial/ethnic diffl:rences, as detailed below"
I'd be all for this part.
It's not as simply as just looking at the charges on the docket vs the outcome. Drug trafficking isn't the same across the board. Neither is any other case.
Blacks tend to actually fare better in simple cases, like traffic violations:
http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/Race-based_decisions.pdf"Using municipal court data, analyses showed that police officers were more likely to cite African Americans than other races for failing to produce a driver's license or proof of automobile insurance but were less likely to ticket African Americans for committing a moving violation.
Police officers were equally as likely to ticket White and African American drivers for equipment violations, which can be used as a pretext for more intrusive police practices. Logistic regression analyses showed that African Americans were more likely than other racial groups to have their traffic tickets dismissed in court for a lack of evidence or probable cause."
Now, I know there's a little bit of difference in the judicial system for blacks.....but the point is, there is NOWHERE NEAR the disparity that you and others claim. The little bit there is can mostly be explained by economics. Again, "better lawyer=better outcome".
If there's a little bit of unexplained disparity after you account for whites having better representation on average, then we certainly could work on that.
HOWEVER.....none of this accounts for, explains or forgives the fact that blacks simply commit more crime than anyone else does (per capita) in the first place. They get "in front of" the legal system (cops/DA's/magistrates/prisons) far more often than anyone else. So if the system kind of "adjusted" to that fact and maybe DOES have a little bias....that's not ideal at all. Not the way it's supposed to work. But....it's very understandable how it got that way.
And it wasn't that the system was always like that. It wasn't. It evolved that way.
As the second link I posted from also says:
"During 1986-1988, before full implementation of sentencing guidelines, white, black and Hispanic offenders received similar sentences, on average, in Federal district courts."
Wasn't always like that. So some work on the sentencing guidelines, as indicated in that older study certainly might help.
HOWEVER.....that same study also shows that sentences prior to about 1990 used to be roughly the same, regardless of race. But black people even back then say the law was against them and they were picked on.
They'll tell you today that it's always been like this.
But it hasn't.
