Give this a read
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_criminal_justice_system.html
So, the very first sentence of that article shows where the author's agenda lies,
but I still skimmed it to see if the piece contained any worthwhile information.
It appears to contain all of the same distortions and misinterpretations as the
earlier piece you posted.
I'm not gonna do a line by line analysis, which wouldn't be worth it, as I'm sure you are already typing
your response about my selective liberal comprehension, but here are two things that jumped out.
He says that Michael Tonry wrote this:
“Racial differences in patterns of offending, not racial bias by police and other officials, are the principal reason that such greater proportions of blacks than whites are arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned,”
...but glosses over the fact that the very next sentence in the book is this:
"Those on the far right are likely to be offended by my conclusion that cynical policies of the Bush and Reagan administrations,
and not racial differences in patters of offending, are the principal reason that racial disparities in the justice system
steadily worsened after 1980."...which is what I said.
The author of that piece also says this:
The media’s favorite criminologist, Alfred Blumstein, found in 1993 that blacks were significantly underrepresented in prison for homicide compared with their presence in arrest.Though he seems to think that info supports his case, it actually does the opposite, if blacks are being arrested significantly more than they are being convicted, that means they are being falsely arrested at significantly higher levels.
For the record, I never said that blacks don't commit crimes at a higher proportional rate. I have actually agreed with that a few times in this thread. That doesn't change the fact that we are also arrested falsely more often, targeted for minor offenses more often, sentenced disproportianately,etc.
