Don’t ignore the facts, the media and public service messages remind us. Science matters says the bumper stickers. Statistical analysis is a good thing when you have a truly representative data set, when there are no individuals but instead are things that are entirely alike, such as machines churned out of a factory.
Most people agree that the criminal justice system should not treat blacks different than whites. That people shouldn’t be judged based on skin color or denied housing or a job because they are black. They note skin color isn’t something you can change. But what about science and statistics that say elsewise? It’s a very proactive but morally fraught question. That say that an African American is more likely to have drugs or be engaged in criminal activity? It doesn’t take a lot of analysis of arrest or jail records to find that there is a nexus between race and involvement in the justice system.
However, that is a bad analysis for a couple of reasons. For one, if police officers are applying this analysis in their everyday business – racial profiling – then they are biasing the sample. Stop more black motorists and search their cars, of course you are going to find more drugs and crime from black motorists. Put more cops in low income neighborhoods, then you are going to have more people arrested for crime there, as cops are looking for crime there.
Then you have the issue of individuals being unique. Statistics are just that – averages or median values, what exists in the middle but not in reality. Just because a person’s skin color is dark, doesn’t mean they are automatically a criminal. Likewise, just because a person lives in a low income neighborhood doesn’t mean they are committing crime.
Everybody accepts that race isn’t a good tool to judge people by as it’s not changeable. But other characteristics, while potentially changeable – occupation, income, housing location, dress, affiliation with groups or organizations – aren’t very good either as looking at statistics doesn’t necessarily describe an individual.
Observing statistics is a powerful tool. Combined with maps, you can really get an idea of problematic areas via means and medians. You can find inliers and outliers, help you evaluate risks. The problem with using statistics isn’t that they don’t provide good information – they do – but they don’t adjust for bias caused by the observer or the uniqueness of individuals.
Ultimately the problem with profiling and pigeon holing individuals is its not fair or just. Individuals are automous, they are not solely defined by one characteristic or attribute. Racial or any other type of profiling might be effective policing – in a statistical sense – but it’s not fair to individuals its applied to. Liberty comes at a cost, and sometimes that involves ignoring statistical evidence, instead choosing to respect human freedom and dignity over stopping and prosecuting more crime.
But what’s happening with homicides is not part of some broader “crime wave.” In fact, many crimes, from larcenies to robberies to rape, dropped during the pandemic, and continued to fall during the first few months of 2021. “Crime” is not surging. Even the broader category of “violent crime” only increased about 3% last year, according to the preliminary FBI data from a large subset of cities. It’s homicide in particular that has increased, even as other crimes fell.
Early data also suggests the homicide increase isn’t happening at random, but that much of the additional violence is clustered in disadvantaged neighborhoods of color that were already struggling with higher rates of gun violence before the pandemic, according to Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist who has authored multiple national reports on crime and violence trends.
I don’t get why the politicians are talking so much about crime lately. Maybe it’s because I don’t own a color television but I’ve not noticed any difference in the crime levels locally. I’ve not been a victim of a crime nor do I know anyone else lately.
It does seem like Downtown Albany is a little rougher now, although some of that has to do with real estate speculation on Lark Street and rebuilding from the disorder in Albany last summer. But I feel like it’s hard to say crime is out of control.
In New York, there’s an anti-loitering statute that has come to be known colloquially as the “Walking While Trans” ban. Advocates say that the law, which is ostensibly meant to target sex workers, allows officers to arbitrarily arrest and detain New Yorkers for simply walking around or standing on the street. It allows police to decide, for instance, that a woman’s skirt is too short, or that she’s been lingering too long on one street corner, and to apprehend her based on suspicion that she’s “loitering for the purpose of prostitution.” Trans women — and particularly trans women of color — are disproportionately targeted this way, activists say. “Whether you are ho-ing or not ho-ing, even if you look like you might be trans, you are going to jail,” Tiffaney Grissom, a trans woman from the Bronx who has been arrested multiple times under the law, told The Village Voice in 2016.
The U.S. government collects detailed data on who’s dying in which jails around the country – but won’t let anyone see it. So, Reuters conducted its own tally of fatalities in America’s biggest jails, pinpointing where suicide, botched healthcare and bad jailkeeping are claiming lives in a system with scant oversight.
By setting PSBs at rates unaffordable for many defendants, criminal justice advocates and public defenders say, judges, who have complete discretion, have in effect nullified a program instituted by the legislature to free more poor people from jail.
“The battle for bail reform isn’t over, and right now, combatting PSB abuse is the front line,” said Martin Kaminer, founder of the Emergency Relief Fund, a bail fund that has been working on this issue.
A man charged with running a drug syndicate was offered a plea deal in July if he would name Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old Black woman killed by police in her Louisville, Ky. apartment, as a member of his alleged criminal gang, according to the man's attorney.
