Crime Debate Reduced to Incarceration Debate

By George Will

If crime revives as an issue, it will be through liberal complaints about something that has reduced the salience of the issue — the incarceration rate. And any revival will be awkward for Barack Obama. Liberalism likes victimization narratives and the related assumption that individuals are blank slates on which “society” writes. Hence liberals locate the cause of crime in flawed social conditions that liberalism supposedly can fix.

Last July, Obama said “more young black men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities.” Actually, more than twice as many black men 18-24 are in college as there are in jail.

TIMEOUT - Someone please snd to the Obama campaign and other ignorant folks…

In August the Justice Policy Institute generated a lot of headlines and broadcast news college with a study claiming that there were more black men in prison than in college. But a close look at the numbers finds the study doesn’t add up.

In a press release summarizing their findings, the Justice Policy Institute said,

Cellblocks or Classrooms? also reports that in 2000, there were an estimated 791,600 African American men in prison and jail, and 603,000 in higher education.

But as Iain Murray noted in a column for TechCentralStation.Com, the Justice Policy Institute’s estimate of the number of African American men in college is too low. According to the Census Bureau, there were an estimated 804,000 African-American men in college in 2000. So, in 2000, there were (barely) more black men in college than in jail or prison.

Of course the comparison is of little use since people of all ages are sent to jail, whereas college students tend to be 18-24 year olds. Murray tracked down the respective figures for those age groups and found that for African American men 18-24, there were 480,000 in college and 180,000 in prison or jail. An young African American male is, in fact, two-and-a-half times as likely to be in college as prison or jail.

The figures are even more impressive when African American women are included. Murray notes that there were 747,000 African American women 18-24 in college as opposed to only 9,000 in prison or jail in 2000. So, in total, there were 1,216,000 young African Americans in college compared to 189,000 in jail or prison.

As Murray sums it up,

What is perhaps most annoying about the way the Justice Policy Institute chose to present its figures is that it helps perpetuate the stereotype that a young African American male is likely to be a troublemaker or jailbird. In fact, as a careful look at the figures shows, he is much more likely to be carrying books than a gun. Tremendous advances have been made in crime reduction in the African community . . . which should not be hidden by presentation of statistics that, however well intentioned, show that community in a negative light.

BACK TO THE WILL COLUMN…

Last September he said, “We have a system that locks away too many young, first-time, nonviolent offenders for the better part of their lives.” But Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute, writing in the institute’s City Journal, notes that from 1999 to 2004, violent offenders accounted for all of the increase in the prison population. Furthermore, Mac Donald cites data indicating that:

“In the overwhelming majority of cases, prison remains a lifetime achievement award for persistence in criminal offending. Absent recidivism or a violent crime, the criminal-justice system will do everything it can to keep you out of the state or federal slammer.”

Obama sees racism in the incarceration rate: “We have certain sentences that are based less on the kind of crime you commit than on what you look like and where you come from.” Indeed, in 2006, blacks, who are less than 13 percent of the population, were 37.5 percent of all state and federal prisoners. About one in 33 black men was in prison, compared with one in 79 Hispanic men and one in 205 white men.

But Mac Donald cites studies of charging and sentencing that demonstrate that the reason more blacks are disproportionately in prison, and for longer terms, is not racism but racial differences in patterns of criminal offenses: “In 2005 the black homicide rate was over seven times higher than that of whites and Hispanics combined. … From 1976 to 2005, blacks committed over 52 percent of all murders.” Do police excessively arrest blacks? “The race of criminals reported by crime victims matches arrest data.”

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 29th, 2008 at 10:05 pm and is filed under Blacks, 2008, Crime and Punishment, Obama Watch.
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