I was recently researching homicide rates, attempting to determine the primary factors behind homicide rates between states and nations. I came across the updated version of The Color of Crime. The report tests hypotheses about crime and arrest rates in the United States — offering ethnicity-related analysis that the mainstream media dare not speak. The 2016 updated version is loaded with bar charts illustrating the statistical differences in crime rates between Asians, Blacks, Hispanics and Whites. The Color of Crime includes a section on police killings of suspects. The results of the evidence and analysis are startling, and turn many modern political assumptions on their head . . .
Using data collected by the Washington Post, The Color of Crime‘s author Edwin S. Rubinstein found that black people were 2.45 times as likely to be shot by police as white people. Black people were also 4.46 times as likely to kill a police officer than people of other races. (“FBI data show that from 2005 to 2014, blacks accounted for 40 percent of police killings. Since blacks were approximately 13 percent of the population, it meant they were 4.46 times more likely than people of other races to kill a police officer.”) Black people are arrested for violent crimes at 5.35 times the arrest rate of white people.
Rubinstein’s study compares victim surveys with arrest rates. Victims would have little reason to misidentify criminals; and most crimes are intra-racial. Comparing victim surveys with actual arrest rates reveals that blacks are arrested at a slightly lower rate than the rate they actually commit crimes. Thus, if there is a bias, it is against black victims, rather than against black criminals.
There is little editorializing in the research; the author’s only suggesting that crime rate differences have something to do with economic status in passing. Out in the wider world, there’s no dearth of speculation about the reason behind the differences in crime rates among Asians, whites, blacks and Hispanics. This study shows that bias in arrest rates and incarceration rates is not one of them. If anything, it points in the opposite direction.
Here are the report’s major findings:
- The evidence suggests that if there is police racial bias in arrests it is negligible. Victim and witness surveys show that police arrest violent criminals in close proportion to the rates at which criminals of different races commit violent crimes.
- There are dramatic race differences in crime rates. Asians have the lowest rates, followed by whites, and then Hispanics. Blacks have notably high crime rates. This pattern holds true for virtually all crime categories and for virtually all age groups.
- In 2013, a black was six times more likely than a non-black to commit murder, and 12 times more likely to murder someone of another race than to be murdered by someone of another race.
- In 2013, of the approximately 660,000 crimes of interracial violence that involved blacks and whites, blacks were the perpetrators 85 percent of the time. This meant a black person was 27 times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa. A Hispanic was eight times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa.
- In 2014 in New York City, a black was 31 times more likely than a white to be arrested for murder, and a Hispanic was 12.4 times more likely. For the crime of “shooting” — defined as firing a bullet that hits someone — a black was 98.4 times more likely than a white to be arrested, and a Hispanic was 23.6 times more likely.
- If New York City were all white, the murder rate would drop by 91 percent, the robbery rate by 81 percent, and the shootings rate by 97 percent.
- In an all-white Chicago, murder would decline 90 percent, rape by 81 percent, and robbery by 90 percent.
- In 2015, a black person was 2.45 times more likely than a white person to be shot and killed by the police. A Hispanic person was 1.21 times more likely. These figures are well within what would be expected given race differences in crime rates and likelihood to resist arrest.
- In 2015, police killings of blacks accounted for approximately 4 percent of homicides of blacks. Police killings of unarmed blacks accounted for approximately 0.6 percent of homicides of blacks. The overwhelming majority of black homicide victims (93 percent from 1980 to 2008) were killed by blacks.
- Both violent and non-violent crime has been declining in the United States since a high in 1993. 2015 saw a disturbing rise in murder in major American cities that some observers associated with “depolicing” in response to intense media and public scrutiny of police activity.
©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
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