A Note About Race And Crime

by | Jul 27, 2019

My last two articles were race related, so I was thinking about the subject of race while reviewing them.  It led me to a thought that I just felt was worth sharing.

So, people sometimes say that black kids commit way more crime, and regardless of the reason for that we have to admit that this is a cause for why some people are nervous about race.

Here’s data on youth robbery –

Source: https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/JAR_Display.asp?ID=qa05263&selOffenses=4

Wow, okay, black kids really do commit WAY more crime.  What’s up with that?  Well, here’s another graph –

Out of 100,000 people, 100 white kids will commit crime to 500 black kids.  So, the blank space you see above in the graph is all the black kids that didn’t commit a robbery.

If you see a gang of white boys vs a gang of black boys, chances are about the same for whether they’d rob you.  Frankly.  The chances of being robbed by the black kids are not meaningfully higher.

In your newspaper, 5/6 robberies will be by a black kid.  But, if you see a black kid your chance of being okay is 99.5% compared to 99.9% for a white kid.  Would you punish 99,500 kids for a 0.4% chance?

My point is that the state, and statist-mentality thinkers, think in terms of 5/6 robberies.  They never notice what 99,500 invisible people are doing.

This point applies to terrorism as well.

About Zack Sorenson

Zachary Sorenson was a captain in the United States Air Force before quitting because of a principled opposition to war. He received a MBA from Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan as class valedictorian. He also has a BA in Economics and a BS in Computer Science.

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