Review: The Color of Crime, 2016

When I was doing research on homicide rates and attempting to determine what the primary factors were that resulted in varying homicide rates between states and nations, I came across the 2005 version of The Color of Crime.  The study looks at crime and tests hypotheses about crime and arrest rates in the United States that have been forbidden from general discourse in the media.  The topic is beset by unproven assumptions and political correctness.  The Color of Crime has been updated to use the latest data available as of early 2016, and now includes a section on police killings of suspects.

The research uses government sources for data; there is little else to go by.  Some cities and states collect data that the federal government has stopped collecting. 

The results of the evidence and analysis are startling, and turn many modern political assumptions on their head.

In The Color of Crime, for example, the authors compare 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 show that overall, blacks are arrested at a slightly lower rate than the rate that they actually commit crimes.    Thus, if there is a bias, it is against black victims, rather than against black criminals.

The 2016 updated version is loaded with bar charts showing the statistical differences in crime rates between Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites.  There is also a fairly new category: “other” which appears to suffer from varying definitions in the government data.

The study analyzes new data dealing with officer shootings and killings of suspects, an area for which there is little official data or analysis.  Using data collected by the Washington Post,  it was 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.  Black people are arrested for violent crimes at 5.35 times the arrest rate of White people.

There is little editorializing in the research, with a small amount of speculation that crime rate differences have something to do with economic status.

The study gives numbers and measurement to the stark facts that the vast majority of residents of large cities in the United States already know, and know that it has become politically correct to ignore.

There are no dearth of speculation for 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.

If you wish to be knowledgeable about differing crime rates, arrest rates, and incarceration rates, and whether these rates can credibly be laid at the feet of bias in the judicial system, The Color of Crime is a must read.

©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
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