Do You Really Want That?

James Harris: Telling the Truth About Riverwest Violence

Get Out of the Central City?

Blogger James T. Harris lives in the central city of Milwaukee, and thus has a first hand view of realities that both suburban conservatives and East Side liberals pretty much see only through the lens of ideology.

That’s why his blog is such compelling reading.

In his most recent entry, he mulls over the question, does a black family that wants a decent environment for its kids need to simply move out.

Milwaukee is getting scary. That’s the word among friends. Yesterday, I had a conversation with a couple that is considering moving “further out.” Their neighborhood changed overnight because of one rental property.

I told them that for the first time in a long time I was feeling nervous. My son is entering high school. It’s a private school, and because of that he will stand out like a sore thumb in my neighborhood. He doesn’t have to wear a uniform, per se, but his attire is nothing close to “urban wear.” My friend sat in his chair and stared at me.

It’s the culture, stupid.

Further:

Adding fuel to the fire, the boy who was assaulted on the bus the other day is speaking out. He gave the reason for the beat down. The thugs didn’t like the clothes he was wearing. He wasn’t dressed like a gang banger, he wasn’t dressed like a rapper, so the gang bang rap wanna be thugs kicked his ass.

Obviously, we have here a self-reinforcing cycle: as people like Harris move out, the neighborhood declines, prompting others to leave.

But doing something about it requires things like tough law enforcement, school choice, and reducing welfare dependency. In other words, things liberals don’t want to do.

Crime and Race in Marquette Philosophy Class: Student Defends Cops, Forced to “Apologize”

That there is a racial double standard in academia is not news, so when a student who is a police intern defends cops against charges that they are racist, what would we expect to happen?

Exactly what happened last Thursday in Marquette’s Philosophy 151 (“History and Philosophy of Crime and Punishment”) class: the professor (one Nancy Snow) “suggested” that he apologize. Coming from an authority figure who has the power to determine your grade, such a “suggestion” is more than just a casual piece of advice.

The whole exchange got started with a class discussion of supposed “over criminalization,” the notion that government outlaws too many things, resulting in a lack of respect for the law. It then moved to a discussion of how police supposedly abuse their powers, using traffic laws as a “pretext” to stop drivers in order to, for example, search for drugs.

At this point the student, Greg Karge, chimed in to point out that police often bear the brunt of this disrespect for the law, mentioning an incident he had seen. An Hispanic who was pulled over proceeded to abuse the cops, calling them “racist.”

In spite of the fact that race was explicitly part of the context of the discussion, Snow objected to the mention of the driver’s ethnicity trying to, according to Karge, “stop me in the middle of my comment, trying to give me a wave” and then saying “why did you bring that up?” Another student remembers Snow saying “Greg, this is offensive, we have a diverse group in the room.” Another student said of Snow’s response “it surprised me because I personally didn’t find his response offensive.”

Karge also pointed out that “if you are polite and respectful to cops they are likely to cut you a break,” the implication being that truculent attitudes of many minorities are part of the problem. He also defended using traffic laws to stop people who are suspected of carrying drugs, saying there is “no other way.”

A vigorous discussion ensued. There is, of course, nothing wrong with a vigorous discussion, but a large part of it involved Karge being berated by a handful of liberal students who were “offended.” Two of the blacks in class complained about how they had been stopped because of their race (although they had not been asked to get out of their cars, had not been ticketed and their cars had not been searched). A liberal student told Karge “you have no right to look at something from one side,” a hugely ironic statement, given that the class had been looking at the issue only from the side of aggrieved minorities.

After class Snow took Karge aside and told him that his comments “could have been interpreted as offensive,” mentioning especially offense to black students. She “suggested” to him that he should write an apology to the black students. Instead, he wrote the apology to the entire class. It read as follows:

I would just like to apologize for any of my comments that I said today that may have offended anyone, that was not my intention by any means. I did not articulate my argument the way that I wanted to, but that is no excuse if I did accidentally offend anyone I would like to explain myself [and] deeply apologize.

It is obvious from several accounts of the incident that Karge articulated his position in a perfectly reasonable way, but then caved to pressure from the professor. A student in the class told us “Since Greg wants to be a police officer one day, he’s been working closely with other officers. He was simply relaying these experiences to us in class, and telling us what he saw and heard during these experiences.”

In the wake of this apology, two students from the class e-mailed him to insist that he had nothing for which to apologize. Other students, responding to our e-mails, said they saw nothing offensive in his comments, one saying “I personally didn’t consider the comments offensive. I could possibly see that some might be offended at the example he chose, but the point he was trying to convey is what I was focusing on.” And another: “From my perspective, when Greg was called upon, he was explaining that it is not as though the police officers are the bad guys, but that they are only doing their jobs.”

Thus looking at police/community relations from a “minority” point of view is perfectly alright, but looking at it from a cop’s point of view is not. And saying that minorities often show hostility toward the cops is also out of bounds. As another student in the class put it:

Everything that Greg said could be considered an observation. He mentioned something about how he had tended to see more African Americans and other minorities with a distaste for police officers. This directly correlated to what Husak, the author we are reading, mentioned in his article in terms of the cycle of overcriminalization. For some reason when Husak said it, this statement was not offensive, but when Greg said it the class overreacted a lot.

Chilling Effect?

While Snow’s response was not appropriate, it is obvious that a small handful of liberal students has, in this class at least, been able to stifle discussion. Any politically incorrect comments are met with moans, tapping of pencils and ostentatious disrespect. It is not clear to us that liberal students are in the majority, but there are enough to chill viewpoints they don’t like.

Karge told us that, when the notion of “driving while black” came up in class, “I thought about going against that, but dropped the idea, knowing where it would go.” And further he has “talked to students who have said they don’t raise issues that are controversial, because they know they will be shouted down.”

Another student said the class has a “very liberal air,” and that “anybody who feels otherwise is jumped on immediately.”

Students, for example, are required to read a “fact sheet” from the liberal Death Penalty Information Center which is rife with inaccuracies and slanted data -- for example, the claim that over 120 people have gotten off death row because of evidence of their innocence. In reality, only a minority of people on the list have gotten off because of actual evidence of innocence, as opposed to procedural issues. A clear majority actually committed the murders for which they were sentenced.

Professor Snow failed to respond to two e-mails and one voice mail asking for an interview.

It is important not to overstate this issue, since a fair number of students simply don’t want to get into any controversy, and don’t say things that other students or the professor might disagree with. This is doubtless true of our own classes, and of pretty much any class that debates controversial issues.

But the professor does play a key role. He or she can send the message that differing viewpoints are acceptable – even if they meet with vigorous disagreement – or, on the other hand, that “offensive” views (meaning conservative views) are to be avoided.

Too many professors – especially in the humanities and in education – do the latter. Pressuring a student to apologize for perfectly reasonable comments sends a strong message of politically correct intolerance.

Gender Political Correctness in Crime Reporting?

When five black males robbed a Marquette student, Marquette and the local media didn’t report the race of the robbers.

As we have discussed, this is perhaps justified, since by the time the report came out the robbers were in custody.

This is not the kind of outrage that happened at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where the race of the suspects was concealed, in spite of the fact that they were still at large. In short, members of the UWM community were told to on the lookout for suspects, but not the race of the suspects they were supposed to be looking for! (They probably assumed the suspects were black anyway -- a stereotype that is reinforced when racial information is omitted.)

We happily posted the fact that the five Marquette robbers were black, since that was relevant to our post about the problems that follow from being near the inner city.

But there is another piece of political correctness in the reports.

The sex of the robbers is not reported!

The e-mail put out by Marquette said simply said “five suspects.” The Milaukee Journal-Sentinel described the robbery as follows:

Marquette University Public Safety officers captured five people suspected of robbing a student at gunpoint early Friday.

Milwaukee police said the robbery occurred in the 2000 block of W. Wisconsin Ave. about 12:30 a.m. when the victim, 22, was walking alone.

He was approached by five people. One pointed a gun and demanded property. The victim was not injured, and the five ran away.

Public safety officers saw five people running through the area and were monitoring them when they were alerted by a radio call that a robbery had occurred.

We suppose that, if you are going to conceal the race of suspects, it makes equal sense to conceal the sex of suspects.

But does anybody think that gangs of teen girls and young women are roaming around the Marquette campus, robbing people?

Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in the Wisconsin Justice System: Report Not So Bad

We’ve blogged several times on the Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in the Wisconsin Justice System, often noting some of the wilder and more extreme statements and views of some of its members, including especially Spencer Coggs and Tamara Grigsby.

We have also debated, in an exchange right here, Prof. Pamela Oliver, sociologist who is a member of the Commission.

The Commission’s Report was posted this morning, and it was pretty much what we reported it would be in a post last Thursday.

What is happily missing from the Report? Any blanket condemnation of the Wisconsin justice system as racist. Given that the Commission was appointed by Governor Doyle as a sop to some black legislators, and given that some of those legislators have a propensity to play the race card at any opportunity, we feared that this might happen.

Such a “finding” would be highly damaging, since it would create pressure for an affirmative action program by police and prosecutors to “make the numbers come out right.” It’s clear who would be harmed by this: blacks in the inner cities of Wisconsin who are the most frequent victims of black criminals.

Indeed, the Report admits this possibility:

One on-going form of discrimination in United States history has been the under-protection of minorities in the criminal justice system. The Commission notes that progress in avoiding over-incarceration of minorities should not be made at the expense of victims of crimes. Protection must also remain for those victims who live in challenged neighborhoods.

The one area where the Report comes closest to asserting an actual bias against blacks concerns drug crimes.

The evidence is that in some areas, particularly enforcement of the drug laws, some disparity results from policies and practices that have disparate impacts on people of color – most heavily on African-Americans – and these policies and practices should be carefully reviewed and could be improved by police, prosecutors and defense attorneys, judges, corrections officials, social workers, and others who work in and influence the operation of the juvenile justice and criminal justice systems.

Note, however, that even here, the charge is not flat-out racial discrimination but rather a disparate racial impact of policies that aren’t discriminatory on their face.

We stated as much in our article that came out this past September in The Wisconsin Interest, although we added that the black community has been in the forefront of promoting tough drug enforcement, and that there is a rational basis for tough drug enforcement where drug trafficking can be viewed as a community problem, and not a mere private vice.

Where the Commission looked at new data, they pretty much found no evidence of racial discrimination. For example, a report on the treatment of inmates in an Appendix to the Report (pages 77-83) shows only minor and inconsistent differences between the treatment of blacks and whites.

Recommendations

The recommendations of the Report, which span pages 5-22, are numerous and mostly benign. From example, the last one says:

DOC [Department of Corrections] should work collaboratively with the faith communities to provide services that would assist in the rehabilitation of inmates and prepare them for release from prison. The networks built through this interaction will assist in the maintenance of strong ties and supervision once the inmate returns to his or her community.

OK. Sure. We are all for that.

One large class of recommendations calls for gathering more data. For example, we get this:

Currently, there is a lack of data and/or lack of tracking data by race at all stages of the justice system, from initial law enforcement contact through probation, incarceration, and parole. Local jurisdictions need to have data so they have an understanding of what is happening in their communities and can begin the discussion locally.

This sounds benign enough. But it could actually be damaging if it becomes an unfunded mandate in which agencies are required to devote scarce resources to gathering data and producing reports, as opposed to actually doing their jobs.

It could also be damaging if it leads to a preoccupation with “getting the numbers right” and a sort of affirmative action program where blacks get treated more leniently so that they won’t appear to be “disproportionately” punished. But this latter possibility is mitigated by the lack or rhetoric about racial bias in the system. People having to collect and report such data won’t face a situation where they are presumed to be racist until they prove otherwise.

The Report is particularly concerned about revocations of probation and parole, which have an effect on the disproportionate imprisonment of blacks. Is this evidence of racial bias? The Report doesn’t assert such, but does call for collecting data.

The Report does show a sensible concern with offenders who have been released and need to rehabilitate themselves with a job or education or both. For example:

Active efforts should be made to change prohibitions against financial aid for education and housing for convicted drug offenders.

And there is this:

The State Department of Transportation and Department of Corrections program should be expanded to serve inmates at all Department of Corrections facilities and aid inmate reintegration by ensuring that inmates who request them have a valid identification card before they are released.

Although we are very hard-nosed about the value of incarceration (the one “social program” with a consistent track record of reducing crime), when an offender has “paid his debt to society” we see no need for artificial barriers to rehabilitation.

Even where the Report seems to embrace mushy liberalism, the practical effect of doing what they recommend would probably be small. Making more drug treatment available, for example, doesn’t seem so lenient when one understands that simple users rarely get prison time anyway. Then there is this:

Consistent with the results of the January, 2008 Legislative Audit report, legislation should be introduced to return jurisdiction of 17 year olds alleged to have violated state or federal criminal laws to juvenile courts. Current waiver provisions should be maintained.

So long as particularly dangerous 17 year-old offenders can be waived into adult court, the practical effect of this is likely to be small. Simply being in adult court doesn’t guarantee tough punishment.

Conclusion

No doubt the Report does have a bit of a mushy liberal ambience, with about every feel-good idea you can think of thrown in. But some of the ideas are good ones, and excessive racial rhetoric has been avoided.

We see little harm in it, and maybe at least some good.

Final Report of the Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities Will Be Released Thursday

It’s a story we have been following: Wisconsin’s Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities, which was supposed to release a Final Report today will in fact (they say) be released on Thursday.

There appears to be no large-scale rewriting going on, rather a bit of quibbling about language.

Our prediction last Thursday that the report will be relatively sensible and moderate appears to hold.

Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in Criminal Justice: Report Delayed Again

We have been following with considerable interest the work of the Wisconsin Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in Criminal Justice, including run-ins with a couple of the more extreme members: State Senator Spencer Coggs and Tamara Grigsby, State Representative.

The report, the release of which was delayed once, was supposed to come out today.

But in fact it has been delayed until Monday. As of right now, no commission member (and this includes co-chairs Coggs and Madison Police Chief Noble Wray) has seen the final report -- the version they are supposed to sign off on.

This is symptomatic of a general lack of organization that has marked the Commission’s work.

People who are hoping for a broad gage attack on “racism” in the Wisconsin criminal justice system are going to be disappointed. Although the Commission got a lot of anecdotal testimony about this or that instance of racial unfairness, they had no good evidence of widespread and systematic racism, and a sensible majority refrained for making any overblown claims.

The unwillingness of the Commission to make overbroad claims of systemic racism was a matter of some disappointment among some members. Judge Maxine White and Grigsby (who wanted a strong statement she could carry back “to my community”) fall into this category, as does (to a somewhat lesser degree) co-chair Coggs.

That Grigsby seems to define the “community” as people with a grudge against the cops, as opposed to people in her district who are afraid to go outside for fear of being robbed or assaulted is a matter of considerable interest.

If some of the black members acted like race hustlers, several others did not, including co-chair Wray, lawyer Stan Davis and WHEDA Executive Director Antonio Riley.

Add to this people like Brian Blanchard, Dane County District Attorney and John Chisholm, Milwaukee County District Attorney, and you get a moderate and relatively sensible majority.

As for recommendations, look for some very mildly liberal and sensible ones. For example, expect considerable concern for helping recently released offenders get back into the workforce. One impediment to this is their difficulty in getting a driver’s license, a situation that deserves to be addressed.

We also wouldn’t be surprised to find a recommendation to beef up public defender’s offices, and to likewise improve the system of probation and parole.

Further, expect a call for better monitoring and data collection, along the lines of what the Vera Institute has been doing in the office of the Milwaukee District Attorney. Vera found no racial bias in decisions to prosecute, but continued monitoring, and extending monitoring to other jurisdictions, is clearly a good idea.

We have long said that the worst case scenario would be for the Commission to claim sweeping racial bias in the system, which might produce strong pressures (formal and informal) for a kind of quota system to “get the numbers right.” That would hurt people in Wauwatosa and Glendale a bit, and hurt people in Mequon and Waukesha hardly at all. But it would devastate Milwaukee’s inner city.

That “worst case” appears not to have happened.

Interfaith Conference: Playing the Race Card at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

We’ve blogged about the leftist agenda of the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee, and we have another example.

The Common Ground Conference, sponsored by The Interfaith Conference, as well as the UWM Department of Educational Policy and Community Studies (read, taxpayers money), plays the race card big time.

It’s billed as “a one-day conference to explore perspectives on racism and privilege in the greater Milwaukee region,” and further “examining racism and white privilege can provide a unifying element helpful in moving toward justice in greater Milwaukee.”

How you can “unify” people by telling whites that they are evil exploiters and blacks that they should feel aggrieved is something the organizers don’t seem to have thought about.

The presenters are a roster of the usual suspects where local leftist activists are concerned. There couldn’t possibly be two sides to issues, nor any complexity that would benefit from hearing alternative views.

Claims of “white privilege” are a noxious way to approach any policy issue. Are you a white living in a nice house? You benefit from “white privilege” and ought to feel guilty. It couldn’t possibly be that you worked and earned it fair and square.

Do you live in a safe neighborhood? You enjoy “white privilege” and need to feel guilty. It’s your fault that black people live disproportionately in unsafe neighborhoods. It doesn’t matter that you don’t commit crimes against black people. It doesn’t matter that 97% of all violent crimes against black people in Milwaukee are committed by other blacks. It’s still your fault.

And if you are upset by high crime in black neighborhoods, and want to get tough, that certainly makes you a racist!

Are you children doing well in school, while a lot of black children do poorly? It’s your fault. The fact that so many black children live in single parent households isn’t relevant.

Or if it’s relevant, it’s your fault anyway.

You have the money to send your kids to private schools, or move to a suburb with nice schools. Maybe you want to extend school choice so that poor black kids can have choices too. That just proves you are a reactionary Republican!

So the “unifying” message is: it’s your fault whitey. So feel guilty and support all our pet programs.

Milwaukee’s Top Cop: Chief Ed Flynn at Marquette

It was the latest in a series of talks given at the Marquette Law School: Milwaukee Chief of Police Edward Flynn. After a light lunch, provided by the Law School, we settled in and looked up our computer and the room filled up.

[Live Blog Begins]

12:15 -- Mike Gousha introduces Flynn.

Gousha: “give us your impressions of our city”

Chief: There is a “communal will” to make things better.

Gousha: Why Milwaukee? A lot of people would want to flee.

Chief: I “want to be somewhere that all you abilities will be throughly challenged.” Quotes English scholar who says that how the laws are written is less important than how the laws are enforced.

Milwaukee a city with “significant challenges” and “significant opportunities.”

Gousha: Is this a “daunting task?”

Chief: You should have the opportunity of having daunting tasks. Challenges of this community are not unique, the are part of the “urban fabric of America.”

Big challenge is winning the confidence of communities that need them the most. There are issues to overcome in those communities.

Gousha: Do you feel pressure?

Chief: my job is to be an “enabler.” Responsibility both to motivate and to restrain. We have a culture with very many positive attributes.

There is an imbalance in perceptions. People who have good experiences with the cops tell six people. People who have bad experiences tell 17 or 18 people.

Gousha: Define “success” for me.

Chief: numbers are important, but they only tell about the end state. Somewhere in the accounting we have lost track of the real purpose: an “orderly civic environment.” Wants “orderly public places.” A decrease in arrests can mean you are succeeding. You may have reduced crime (“suppression”) which has reduced arrests.

Citizens attitudes are important. Neighborhood cohesion is good. In some of the worst neighborhoods, nobody is out on the street with a baby carriage because it isn’t safe.

Gousha: What was your reaction to FBI statistics released yesterday? [These showed violent crime nationwide to be down, but Milwaukee crime to be up.]

Chief: Points to lag in FBI statistics. Numbers just released show the picture the first half of 2007. They may not compare Milwaukee to comparable cities. In Springfield, there was a dip in violent crime, and he [Flynn] was a hero. Then there was an upward spike. Bad news.

Gousha: A big problem here, petty disputes that escalate.

Chief: Some things that “only stable families and stable communities” can achieve. It takes a village to raise a child, but the police can help produce the “village.” Local organizations can function well if the community is safe.

Mentions out of wedlock birth rate. Poverty rate.

But these are not an excuse for misconduct.

Cops need to “take on the generation of young men who are creating the problems.”

Maybe the next generation can be helped.

Gousha: You said “you want to get beyond the stale debate of police versus community.”

Chief: Society has changed dramatically since I was in grade school and high school. Things have gotten better. Cops are better trained and more diverse than ever before.

He objects to scapegoating cops based on one or a few examples of misconduct.

There is a lot of community demand for tougher policing. Neighborhoods say “give us more cops,” but then cops do something people object to and “all of a sudden it’s 1965 and I’m Bull Connor.”

For example: cops are taught to keep themselves safe, but this can be scary if you see it.

Gousha: are communities going to interact more with cops on the beat.

Chief: Demands for service make this hard. “Wholesale” vs. “Retail” policing. The former involves keeping public spaces safe. The latter involved calls for service from individuals.

Community needs to understand that there is a tradeoff. People may have to understand that they may get less in personal service if they want gangs on corner, graffiti, etc. taken care of.

Gousha: What should you do about illegal immigration.

Chief: “Stick our fingers in our ears and do our job.” Caring about border security is certainly legitimate, but on the other hand immigration has been good for America.

If I find somebody bleeding that speaks Spanish in the street, is my first question “what is your immigration status?”

[Flynn seems less the politically correct liberal than a bureaucrat who wants to get his job done, and resents external demands that interfer with his core task.]

Flynn adds that were actual criminal activity by illegals is at issue, he’s happy to cooperate with whoever can get the person off the street. [Implicitly including Federal immigration officials.]

Gousha: Is this a “springboard job?”

Chief: I’m committed to stay here for four years. Why did I consider leaving Springfield? “It’s your fault!” Milwaukee people came to me.

Gousha: What about your experience going to Catholic schools.

Chief: It made you very disposed to feel very guilty, and inclined to accept people in police uniforms telling you what to do. [laughter]

Important to have an ideal. Important to have a noble purpose. “When I looked a policing I see a noble enterprise.”

A liberal arts background is a great preparation for dealing with people.

Not a fan of Criminal Justice undergraduate majors.

Enjoyed graduate school. Danger of cop work, you can become “a burnt out cynic.”

Faced a lot of hatred as a cop in the early 70s. Came to understand that cops bond because of common danger.

[Audience Questioning Begins]

Question: Common Grounds initiative

Chief: An experiment in one district right now. We as an agency haven’t embraced it as much as we might. Involves “negotiating” with trouble makers in neighborhoods, but this doesn’t involve making concessions to them. [It sounds more like laying out consequences.]

Question: What about training for community policing?

Chief: Police need problem solving training. Need to get behind the incidents. If a given bar is a source of continued trouble, maybe the owner needs to do some things differently. Cops need to understand neighborhood norms. “Law enforcement” is just part of the job. More of the job is “policing.”

[He seems to mean that the latter involves the totality of keeping neighborhoods safe.]

Question: poverty is high in Milwaukee.

Chief: It’s more likely for crime to cause poverty than for poverty to cause crime. [!!!]

Kids are afraid to go to school (dangerous), afraid to appear “smart” in class. People do not take jobs after dark because it’s unsafe to get to work. We can have an impact on that.

Can we have an effect on the “macro situation” – people having babies, guys abandoning their families, etc. ?

Question: How much doing your own thing, and how much following the lead of other agencies.

Chief: “one of the great things about crime in Milwaukee is that there is enough for everybody.” [laughter]. What we are doing is both.

“We are going to be pushing authority down to the district.”

Question [public defender]: many times young Hispanics and blacks are stopped by police, sometimes without good reason. Perception: “police are an occupying force.” Admits a police interest in maintaining public order is legitimate.

Chief: You have outlined the trade-off here. One of the tools we have is approaching people and asking “who are you and what are you doing here.” We get calls all the time from people saying “I’m afraid to walk down the street because of those guys hanging around.” We have to be professional, but protect public order.

Intervening in minor misbehavior has an effect on street crime. Writing a lot of traffic tickets reduces crime.

Encourages cops to say “hello” to people who are known to be offenders. Encouraged that in Springfield. Wants more interaction with people who make cause problems – but in a respectful way.

Question: what about young people. I’m a mentor of a young kid in the inner city. What do I do encourage him to go into law enforcement.

Chief: I can only say what his mom says: “stay in school, get a diploma.” Maybe technical school is good, wakes up the brain and good things happen.

Policing is the “constant exercise of decision under stress.” We need a maturity of judgment beyond the years of young cops.

Neighborhoods need to reach out to cops just as cops need to reach out to neighborhoods..

Education is essential, it’s a judgment job.

Question: what kind manager do you intend to be? Do you delegate, or do you expect to be out on the street?

Chief: somewhere in the middle. I want to delegate. But I want to see people working too. Wants authority to be delegated down to the level where judgment is made.

Question: Packers or Patriots?

Chief: “You’re asking me whether I’m going to be rooting for the world champion . . . ”

Gousha: “The honeymoon here [in Milwaukee] could be short!” [laughter]

[End Live Blog]

Evaluation

Flynn is basically conservative, and highly sophisticated. He doesn’t seem to care for race hustlers (remember the “all of a sudden it’s 1965 and I’m Bull Connor” comment), but is intensely concerned with the quality of life in “the communities that need [the cops] the most.” He sees getting the respect and cooperation of high crime communities as a “challenge,” but has no illusions about who the good guys and the bad guys are. The cops are the good guys. Law abiding citizens are the good guys.

He passed up several opportunities to agree with simplistic platitudes. He insisted that crime can cause poverty, contrary to the politically correct doctrine that anti-poverty programs rather than cops are what we need more of. He insisted that people who want cops on the beat and highly visible in public spaces may have to accept a lower level of personal service. Maybe people shouldn’t call 911 for every little problem. He could have blandly promised that citizens can have it both ways.

He seemed to understand the role of family structure in producing crime, and even the role of what political scientists call “social capital” -- a network of robust community institutions.

Overarching all of this was a concern for police professionalism.

Can he make things better? Who knows. He’s a guy at the top of a large bureaucracy in a city with large swaths of territory dominated by a culture that creates crime. But if anybody has a shot at it, it’s Flynn.

[Update]

Here, courtesy of the Law School, is the podcast of the talk.

Still the Bizarro World: The Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in the Wisconsin Justice System

Our previous run-in with Governor Doyle’s Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in the Wisconsin Justice System quickly turned into something that Franz Kafka might write about.

This past week, we had three different encounters with commission members, all in public settings, and Kafka, were he still around, would probably have picked up some good material.

1. Wisconsin Public Radio

The first was Tuesday morning on Joy Cardin’s show on Wisconsin Public Radio. We were there, of course, to discuss our recent article on racial disparity in incarceration in Wisconsin, and Cardin led off the show with an audio clip from Spencer Coggs, Chair of the Commission.

According to Coggs:

There is no social scientist other than McAdams, that I know of that thinks that incarcerating large numbers of anybody of any particular race is a good thing. It almost seems that it’s code talk for some inherent quality of whites being more law abiding than blacks.

Gil Halsted, who did the interview with Coggs, added that Coggs said that the Commission will focus on the “underlying causes” of inner city crime and the high rate of black incarceration.

Of course, the theory of “code” is a way of calling somebody a racist, notwithstanding that they have said nothing racist. Indeed, even if they have said something that’s absolutely true, that doesn’t help. It’s racist because it runs contrary to the interests of the race hustlers who use the term.

2. Marquette Law School Reception for Wayne S. McKenzie

Late Tuesday afternoon, Marquette’s Law School hosted a reception for Wayne S. McKenzie, a program director at the Vera Institute. McKenzie was in town to share the findings of a study of race and prosecutorial discretion in the office of the Milwaukee County District Attorney. Milwaukee DA John Chisholm, a member of the Commission, was also present.

But here, he was the victim rather than the perpetrator of race card insanity.

McKenzie was running late, and Chisholm engaged in a conversation with several “community activists” who were present, explaining the study.

The activists didn’t seem to feel that any study was necessary. So far as they were concerned, the system is racist, and no study is needed to show that. Chisholm asked “don’t we want some evidence?” That resulted in looks from the activists ranging from discomfort through incredulity to hostility.

He then asked them whether they had looked at what neighborhoods were most afflicted by crime – the obvious import being that black neighborhoods are the most crime-ridden. The activists weren’t placated.

3. Vera Results Presented

Then on Wednesday morning, we were present when McKenzie presented his findings.

Before the main event, State Representative Tamara Grigsby was introduced and spoke. She started by saying “let’s put this in perspective. I represent about 60,000 people, mostly poor and black,” and added “I see a system that is not working for people like me.”

And further: “We incarcerate more juveniles of color than any other state in the nation.”

She explained that she approached the Governor two years ago, after a report came out that showed that Wisconsin is the worse state in the nation in terms of living conditions for blacks.

Then, in the most bizarre moment of the morning, she announced she was “calling out Professor McAdams!”

(We were thinking “do we have to go out and fight her? If so, we’ll be at a huge disadvantage since momma taught us never to hit a girl.”)

She went on the deny that black people commit more crime than white people.

But then she added that even if it is true that blacks commit more crime, it’s still a problem. It’s “crippling” to the community if one in three fathers is in prison.

Massive Denial Among Black Activists

It’s absolutely stunning to hear black politicians and activists deny that blacks commit more crimes than whites. Not only is the truth obvious in crime statistics, nobody knows it better than the constituents of Coggs and Grigsby!

The fact that black politicians would deny reality is the result of their having been coddled, patronized and pandered to by whites. A lot of moderate and conservative whites are scared of being called racist if they tell the truth about racial matters, and a lot of white liberals who know better can’t bring themselves to give up the ideological advantage that playing the race card brings.

But massive denial is not a recipe for making anything better. How much better if a lot of people were willing to say to people like Coggs and Grigsby “get your head out of your ass and let’s talk seriously about the problem.”

The Race Card Fallback Position

In spite of this stubborn refusal to talk honestly, one senses that the race hustlers are having to concede a bit and accept the fact (even if they won’t forthrightly admit it) that the vast majority of racial disparity in incarceration is the result of black people committing more crimes.

Coggs admission to Halsted that the Commission would be looking into the “underlying causes” of black crime, and Grigsby’s claim that there is still a problem even if incarceration is the result of racial differences in committing crimes both show this.

So does the following statement by Pamela Oliver, a sociologist who is a consultant to the Commission.

Roughly half of the presentations the Commission has heard and roughly half of the Commissioners have an orientation that is primarily focused on reducing crimes committed by Black people. That is, they have raised concerns about funding for education, about programs to strengthen families and reintegrate fathers into communities, about jobs programs and job discrimination, about bringing people to God, etc. In short, a lot of the people on the Commission think this is a terrible crisis that should be addressed by dealing with underlying problems of crime.

This is far better than pretending that the whole problem is the result of racist cops, prosecutors and judges.

But the problem is that it’s still phrased, to a large extent, in the language of racial aggrievement. At least some members of the Commission, when they look for the “underlying causes,” are going to say it’s not just a racist criminal justice system, it’s the whole racist American society.

It would be hasty, however, to assume that the race hustlers will write the Commission’s final report. The most closely analogous case is the Wisconsin Sentencing Commission, which quite prudently refused to overstate the case for racial discrimination.

This in spite of pressure from people like State Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee), Sentencing Commission member, who, complained to the Journal-Sentinel that the “the report’s message was too muted.” And further:

“These disparities exist,” Taylor told a reporter. “I think the commission should have come out and said that more as a matter of fact, more forcefully.

“They exist. Now, what are we going to do about it?”

The Sentencing Commission, however, prudently refused to draw strong conclusions from data that had massive limitations.

So the Racial Disparity Commission may come up with a fairly sensible report. But if that happens, it will be because the moderate and prudent people on the commission have prevailed over the race hustlers.

[Addition]

Via Badger Blogger, the fact that Alderman Joe Davis, Sr. has issued a press release demanding a Summit to Address Violence in the African American Community. The money quote:

“It is no longer acceptable that statistically, homicides in the City of Milwaukee are overwhelmingly committed by and perpetrated on African American members of our community.”

He calls for black leaders to “sit down and address this issue and develop workable solutions for the short and long term.” That’s easier said than done. But then it’s impossible if you won’t admit what the problem is.

No Racial Bias in Decisions of Milwaukee County District Attorney

This morning Wayne McKenzie of the VERA Institute presented the results of a large-scale study of decision-making in the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office at the Marquette Law School. A small crowd including several Marquette Law School students, a few “community activists,” a couple of Marquette faculty and District Attorney John Chisholm was present.

The study included 52,784 felony and misdemeanor accusations brought to the District Attorney’s office in calendar year 2006.

There are many points in the criminal justice process at which racial discrimination might show itself, including the decision to prosecute (the DA’s office simply declines to prosecute some cases), the decision as to what charges are appropriate, the decision as to what plea bargain to offer (over 90% of cases are plea bargained), and what sentence to recommend for a guilty offender.

The VERA institute studied one of these: “declination,” the decision not to prosecute a particular person accused by the cops of a crime.

The results were virtually identical by race. 40% of the misdemeanor charges against whites were not prosecuted, and 40% of such charges against non-whites were likewise declined. Where felonies were concerned, the declination rate was 32% for whites, and 33% for non-whites. That’s about as equal as you can get.

Of course, equality in the aggregate can mask fairly serious disparities in specific cases, so the VERA Institute “drilled down” to see whether specific categories of crime showed a pattern of racial inequality.

There was one, although it was a fairly minor one.

VERA found that in cases of possession of drug paraphernalia (a misdemeanor) 41% of the time whites were not prosecuted for the crime, but in only 27% of the cases was prosecution of cases against non-whites declined.

Does this suggest racism at work? It would be odd if prosecutors who are fair in dealing with the vast majority of offenses put on their white sheets and turn into Klansmen for this one kind of offense.

District Attorney Chisholm investigated, and found that the very junior and inexperienced prosecutors in the misdemeanor unit were looking at cases where black drug offenders had large numbers of prior offenses, and deciding to go ahead with prosecution.

It wasn’t racism, it was a racially neutral process operating to the detriment of (mostly) black offenders.

So that means there isn’t a problem, right?

Even a racially fair process has to pass a cost-benefit test, and Chisholm argued convincingly that prosecution of this particular offense doesn’t meet it (except in unusual cases, such as when the person charged is a known gang leader). Not only is this charge difficult to prove in court, the typical sentence is only a month in jail, if it involves incarceration at all.

These offenders, for the most part, are addicts (drug dealing is a felony), and aren’t going to be helped by the sentence.

Chisholm has responded to this situation by merging the felony and misdemeanor units, such that more experienced prosecutors get to look at these cases.

As the debate over the supposed “disproportionate” incarceration of blacks in Wisconsin continues, we can point to this case as an example of doing things right. Former District Attorney E. Michael McCann initiated a study that was clearly a bit politically risky. The study mostly vindicated his office (since occupied by Chisholm), but when one area of questionable practice was found, the DA moved decisively to fix it.

Things are supposed to work like that, although they rarely seem to.

Black Incarceration in Wisconsin: More

Our article on the supposed “disproportionate incarceration of blacks” in Wisconsin seems to be getting some attention.

Some leftist moonbat bloggers have taken a swing at it, and mostly proved they have no idea about the issues involved.

But some of the response has been more serious.

Wisconsin Public Radio is preparing a segment on the issue, and asked Prof. Pamela Oliver, at the UW-Madison, to reply to our essay. She did so, and gave us permission to publish what she wrote in a private e-mail to a WPR producer. So we are publishing her entire critique of our article here, along with a “preface” she sent us in a later e-mail. We are publishing the “preface” below the main e-mail, since we think it makes more sense that way, but in fairness to Oliver, do read it.

. . . this is a long complicated essay that makes many different points and responding to it point by point would take a week. Here are some responses.

(1) Racial disparity refers to the statistical pattern that Blacks (and to a lesser extent Latinos and American Indians) are arrested and incarcerated at higher rates than Whites. This is indisputably true.

The Commission is charged with trying to reduce these disparities.

But does one want to reduce these disparities? If they result from disparities in committing crimes, we don’t think so.

Note that some of the statements below suggest that the Commission is thinking of ways to reduce crime in the black community. If black crime rates decline (relative to white crime rates) we certainly would want disparity in incarceration to decline.

(2) At this juncture, 40% of the Black male population nationally is under the supervision of the correctional system and about a third of young Black men are expected to spend some time in prison. McAdams seems to think this is an acceptable state of affairs if he can show that it is “as predicted” by control variables. Other people think this is a terrible problem with enormous consequences for whole Black communities.

But is the problem that the system discriminates against blacks, or that blacks commit too many crimes? It makes a huge difference. One is on a fool’s errand trying to fix the criminal justice system if the problem is not with the criminal justice system.

(3) Any reasonable person who has dug into the data recognizes that there are two components of the statistical disparities. Some of the difference is coming from differences in the rate at which Whites and Blacks commit crimes, and some of the difference is coming from differences in the way people are treated in the system given that they have done something wrong. Roughly half of the presentations the Commission has heard and roughly half of the Commissioners have an orientation that is primarily focused on reducing crimes committed by Black people. That is, they have raised concerns about funding for education, about programs to strengthen families and reintegrate fathers into communities, about jobs programs and job discrimination, about bringing people to God, etc. In short, a lot of the people on the Commission think this is a terrible crisis that should be addressed by dealing with underlying problems of crime. Where they differ from McAdams is that they think there is more to reducing crime than incarcerating an ever-growing share of the Black population.

Some of those proposed ideas for reducing black crime sound good to us (strengthen families and reintegrate fathers into communities, bringing people to God), and some sound like more of the same things that have failed (more spending on education, jobs programs). But even the things we like aren’t easily manipulated by public policy.

Are the commissioners saying that locking up black criminals is not part of the solution? We hope not.

Anybody with even a casual interest in crime in the Milwaukee area is aware of the reality shown on a map provided annually in the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission Public Safety Report.

So far as we are concerned, anybody is welcome to go find ways of reducing crime with this or that warm fuzzy-sounding liberal program. But until they can fix the crime problem that way (and we aren’t holding our breath), cops need to catch criminals, and prosecutors and courts need to punish them.

That is one social program that actually works, in contrast to all the programs that the liberals are always touting.

We’ve probably all heard the story about the man sitting in a bar over his drink, lamenting the fact that he drinks too much. A fellow patron asks “why do you drink so much?” The man replies “to forget my problems.” The fellow patron asks “what problems.” The man replies “I drink too much.”

Thus we find liberals blaming crime on the problems of the inner city. Fair enough. But what is the chief problem of the inner city? Crime.

(4) What McAdams leaves out of his statement -- because that would contradict his arguments -- is that the time trends for crime and incarceration don’t support his arguments that this is just tracking crime. Crime generally went down while incarceration skyrocketed. So it just is not true that incarceration is simply tracking crime.

Liberals often see it as a problem that, in the last couple of decades, as the incarceration rate has gone up, crime has gone down. Actually, the way they always say it is that “as the crime rate has gone down, the incarceration rate has gone up.”

Somehow it never occurs to them that crime went down because of increased incarceration!

Oliver’s statement, by the way, doesn’t really address the point that we made, which is that higher incarceration rates of blacks reflect higher rates of offending by blacks.

A more complicated problem to dig into is the possibility of an incapacitation effect, and I’m now persuaded that there is some incapacitation effect in the data, for property crime but not for violent crime. Most criminologists now think that drug incarcerations have absolutely zero impact on reducing illegal drug use or sales, and some argue that they actually increase it through indirect effects. But really digging into these issues is to complex for a short response.

If somebody wants to dig into the issue, they might check the works we cite on incapacitation in our article. There seems to be good evidence for an effect both for violent crimes and property crimes.

(5) The Sentencing Commission report clearly found a substantial racial difference in the probability of being sentenced to prison rather than probation for drug offenses and for lower-level violent and property offenses. This analysis controlled for prior record and controlled for multiple offenses at the trial, as well as for other factors available in the record.

That is indeed pretty much what the Sentencing Commission found, but they admitted to real problems with their data. Quoting their report:

. . . many legitimate bases for distinguishing among defendants, such as prior criminal record, fewer educational opportunities, and erratic work history, are likely correlated with being Black, which also systematically disadvantages Black offenders (p. 4).

And this:

Ideally, a report of this scope would rely upon data tracking offenders by race from the initial police call through investigation, arrest, the prosecutor’s charging decision, plea negotiations, trial, conviction, and finally, sentencing. Data would include, not only the race of the offender, but the race of other actors, including the responding officers, victim, prosecutor, judge, and jurors, as well as whether the offender was assigned a public defender or retained private counsel. Beyond race, numerous socioeconomic factors may also contribute to differential involvement in crime and differential treatment by the criminal justice system. All of these data points, collected in a consistent and integrated system, would contribute to a fuller understanding of the role of race in sentencing decisions and throughout the criminal justice system.

Currently, Wisconsin does not collect this data in a coordinated way conducive to analysis by race.

[. . .]

For instance, the Commission collects data regarding the factors that influence a judge’s sentencing decision for sentencing guideline offenses when judges submit sentencing worksheets. These worksheets, when submitted and fully and properly completed, contain information about factors, such as employment history and family support, that might influence a judge’s sentencing decision. These factors are likely correlated to race and thus, might help explain the role race may or may not play in sentencing decisions. However, the Commission recently found that judges only submitted worksheets for 23% of the guideline offenses for which worksheets should have been submitted. Furthermore, worksheets were not submitted proportionately from all parts of the state, resulting in overrepresentation of Milwaukee County cases in the available data. Finally, even when judges do submit worksheets, the worksheets often are not filled out completely or correctly. As a result, the data collected by the Commission is less reliable, and our ability to use the available sentencing data to explain the role race may or may not play in sentencing decisions decreases significantly (pp. 5-6).

In fact, we think that, by the usual social science standards, the Sentencing Commission data is pretty good. But it frankly omits some factors that might legitimately affect sentencing, and it only deals with one point in the whole process. It can’t touch the issue of whether black offenders are more or less likely to be arrested, more or less likely to be charged, more or less likely to have their cases dropped by the district attorney, and so on.

It found no difference in sentence lengths. The findings of the Sentencing Commission for Wisconsin are exactly parallel to what has been found in other states. No difference in sentence length, a big difference in the in/out decision for lesser offenses and drug sentences but not for the most serious offenses. McAdams stresses the sentence length part of the analysis but ignores the in/out part of the analysis. While many of the actors on the sentencing commission wanted and got language that stressed that maybe something else would explain away the in/out result, anyone familiar with the logic of statistical analysis would recognize that the effects are large enough and that enough other factors have been controlled that they are probably “real.”

We are not at all sure of this. We have seen quite large estimated effects in a statistical model entirely go away when the proper controls were put in place.

Oliver goes on:

This seems especially plausible as the pattern -- no difference in sentence length, big difference in the in/out decision for lessor offenses -- is exactly what is found over and over in by other studies in other jurisdictions. (It is interesting that McAdams is sure the sentence length part of the analysis is definitive, while he dismisses the in/out part of the analysis as inconclusive.)

The differences shown by the Sentencing Commission may very well be real, although we have to note that they only claim racial disparity in sentencing for lessor crimes -- which get shorter sentences and contribute less to overall racial disparity ratios.

But again, see above for the limitations of their study.

(6) I did a detailed analysis comparing aggregate counts of arrests and prison admissions broken down by race and UCR crime categories for Wisconsin counties the late 1990s -- I have not yet been able to get the data to replicate for more recent years. Basically what I found parallels again what is found in other studies. First, the biggest disparities are at the point of arrest and these disparities are very high for serious crimes -- this is consistent with seeing differential crime as a big component of the problem (although there are issues with arrests, see below).

OK, we think she is saying that there are disparities in arrests, which probably parallel disparities in committing crimes. Which they should.

Second, for the most serious crimes, there is very little or no racial difference in the ratio of prison to arrest. Third, for the less serious crimes, there is a significant racial difference in the ratio of prison sentences to arrests, with this ratio being in the ballpark of 1.5 to 2 times as high for Blacks as for Whites. (And in these data, Hispanics are counted as White, because of the way arrests are recorded.)

This is all interesting, but to show discrimination it is necessary that the black arrestees are in fact comparable to the white arrestees.

Doing that, unfortunately, would require data that nobody has.

It does seem, however, that Oliver has pretty much conceded that there is no racial discrimination where the most serious crimes (those most likely to draw prison sentences and indeed long prison sentences) are involved.

Fourth, for low level drug possession offenses, the ratio of prison sentences to arrests was 9 times as high for Blacks as for Whites. In short, there is substantial prima facie evidence of something happening post arrest; it cannot all be just a matter of differential crime.

We are not sure precisely what data she is talking about, but would point out that the Sentencing Commission, in the report she cites, doesn’t even bother to analyze drug possession, looking only at drug trafficking.

We conceded in the article that drug enforcement is particularly tough on the black community. We would just make two additional points:

1.) There is a rational basis for tough drug enforcement in the inner city, since that is where drug dealing and the visible effects of drug use are most severe.

2.) Tough drug enforcement in the black community is not something that racist whites imposed. It has had the strong support of both black leaders (the Congressional Black Caucus) and rank and file black citizens.

Neither point proves that current policy is good. But let’s be clear on why we have it.

(7) Arrests as a proxy for crime is a tough nut. Most criminologists believe that arrests track crime pretty well for the most serious offenses. That is, yes, there is a serious problem with serious crime among African Americans, and no reasonable person thinks there isn’t.

But the problem is, there are a lot of unserious people around!

You might talk to some faculty members at Marquette. No, not the criminologists, who are sensible on the issue. But some other professors (especially in the humanities) who haven’t realized this.

I have certainly never talked to an African American person who did not think there was a problem with crime in poor Black communities, and a lot of the talk on the Commission, especially by the Black members, has been about problems with crime and violence. As I said, about half of the Commission’s time has been spent with people talking about programs to reduce disparities in criminal justice by reducing the rates at which people commit crimes.

This is good.

It’s at the lower end of the crime scale and the drug crimes where there is evidence of a difference in treatment in the system. Some people are much more likely to get caught and prosecuted for what they do than others.

However, our analysis of data from the Incident Based Reporting System showed that, in the city of Milwaukee, blacks commit violent crimes at a rate eight times that of whites.

Now, since the data on property crimes are pretty much useless where race of offender is concerned, it might be that the disparity in offending is much less where that is concerned. But we have trouble seeing why this would be so. Are vandals more likely to be caught in a black neighborhood?

The virtue of the incident data is that it doesn’t matter if the offender is arrested or not. So differential rates of arrest (or prosecution or conviction) don’t matter.

(8) Public health data tell us that young White people use all illegal drugs -- including cocaine and crack cocaine -- at higher rates than Blacks do, but White kids have a very low chance of getting caught and prosecuted for their drug use, while policing patterns pick up huge numbers of young Black kids on drug charges. Studies of “driving while Black” drug interdictions find that Whites who are stopped are just as likely (in some studies more likely) to be found carrying illegal drugs than Blacks who are stopped, but because Blacks are so much more likely to be stopped, they account for the overwhelming majority of drug arrests. McAdams tries to get around this by minimizing White kids’ drug use (they are just puffing marijuana while the Black kids are doing the really bad stuff) but this just isn’t what the data show. When I talk to White kids, they don’t dispute that White kids do a lot of illegal drugs, they just think Blacks kids do drugs as much as they do. It is true that the vast majority of drug prison sentences are for “possession with intent to deliver” but most of those are cases involving less than 5 grams of crack cocaine, many involving less than 1 gram that were still prosecuted as delivery charges. A very odd thing about cocaine arrests and incarcerations is that it is a market that -- according to arrest data -- has many more dealers than users.

Which might suggest that a lot of cocaine users escape detection and don’t get arrested.

Also note that “dealer weight” is a legally defined concept. It means you are found with a greater quantity of the drug than an individual might have in a personal “stash,” and are presumed to be selling it. Unless one wants to posit that cops are planting drugs on a lot of black people, the argument seems very odd.

This makes no economic sense. Prosecutions of people as presumptive dealers in the possession of very small amounts of the drug are highly indicative of patterns of over-charging, and the absence of a pool of customers in the arrests are highly indicative of policing patterns focusing on some people and not others. Marijuana arrests, for example, do not have this pattern -- there you see what you would expect in a market, a lot more customers (users) than dealers.

See our discussion of drug crimes (above).

We do note that Oliver is here relying heavily on anecdotal data. Note that she has also ignored our key arguments about drug crimes. It’s not that white kids don’t use drugs. It’s that their use is seen as a personal vice and not a threat to the community.

We lean toward the view that drugs should be legalized. But few in the black community (nor among whites) agree with us.

(9) In a small exploratory study of juvenile court cases in Madison, I found that Whites first appearance in court records was for a felony, while Blacks first appearance in court records was for a low-level misdemeanor. Are we to draw the conclusion that White kids who commit felonies have never done anything bad before? Or that White kids who commit low-level misdemeanors are less likely to end up in the court records? Most of us in the system think it is the latter -- White kids either don’t get caught, or get handled informally, or are sent to suburban municipal courts, not to county court. The net effect is that a White kid presenting a felony has a shorter record than a Black kid presenting the same felony, so everyone thinks it is fair for the Black kid to get a worse sentence because he has a longer record. But that longer record is, itself, a product of differential enforcement or responses to low level crime. The Commission has been struggling with ways to get a handle on the policing of White kids in the suburban jurisdictions. Again, not denying differences in serious crime, but the policing of low level crime is part of what is feeding into the disparities, as it produces differences in criminal records.

This may well be true, although we would hope that black juveniles would “get the point” and learn something that would carry into adult life. It’s also the case that juvenile records don’t get carried into adult sentencing decisions.

(10) Another thing that people express concern about that is harder to get a handle on is charging by police and DAs. We certainly hear stories that sound like massive over-reaction and over-charging for a given offense. Complaints like two kids get in a fight, one White one Black, the White kid gets sent home with a warning, the Black kid is arrested on a assault charge. Or a Black woman being picked up and held in a suburban jail without bail on a 10-year-old shoplifting warrant from when she was 17. It’s very hard to get systematic data on this kind of thing, but there are lots of stories people tell.

Unfortunately, this is admittedly anecdotal data.

If social psychology has taught us one thing, it is that people are more attentive to accounts (stories, tales) that fit into their existing cognitive framework.

(11) Aggregate studies of states. I have done a lot of these and we could do dueling studies for weeks. A couple of comments. I have done the % urban studies. It turns out that %Black is the strong predictor -- states with higher % Black have lower incarceration rates. %Black and % of Blacks who are urban are highly negatively correlated and cannot be taken apart, but I have compared them, and %Black is the stronger more consistent predictor, not % of Blacks who are urban. I.e. McAdams’ dismissive “well they are just rural” analysis does not hold up to deep scrutiny. I have also compared Black and White imprisonment rates to Black and White poverty rates, and to crime rates. Basically, White imprisonment rates are correlated with White poverty rates, but Black imprisonment rates are not. Racial disparities are driven mostly by having a low White imprisonment rate, which in turn is highly correlated with the White population not being very poor. So the patterns are really complicated if you do the analysis in depth. In addition, incarceration rose steeply while poverty and unemployment were declining in the 1980s, and in the 1980s, Black incarceration rates were highest where Black poverty was lowest. In the 1980s, incarceration for everyone (Black and White) was higher in states where crime was higher, but in the 1990s, Black incarceration rates are uncorrelated with crime rates, while White incarceration rates are positively related to crime rates. The strongest predictor of White incarceration is the White homicide victimization rate, but the Black homicide victimization rate is uncorrelated with other measures of crime and with the White homicide rate, and is uncorrelated with Black incarceration. Etc. etc.

Frankly, we haven’t following all the twists and turns of Oliver’s attempts to model racial diaparity rates, since they seem arcane and convoluted. We started with the plausible notion that blacks in the central cities of Metropolitan Statistical areas are more likely to commit crimes than blacks in suburban, small town or rural settings. This idea best explains the low diaparity ratio of Southern states. They still have substantial rural black populations. Thus in states where a large proportion of blacks live in such central cities, the black crime rate (and thus the disparity rate) will be higher. Contrary to what Oliver asserts, the relationship was quite strong.

We then added the poverty rate among blacks (which we believed would tend to drive up black crime), and the poverty rate among whites (which we believed would increase crime among whites and drive down the disparity ratio). Voilà! The model was a very good predictor of disparity ratios.

This is the way graduate students are taught to model things. At least in political science.

In short, if you treat the data honestly, you see lots of different patterns that cut lots of different ways. The Commission is staffed by people who agree that mass incarceration of Black people is a very serious problem but who understand that there are many different sources of the problem that will require many different solutions.

Oliver then added the following in an e-mail to us:

I wrote the response quickly with only a quick skim of what you wrote because I did not have time for a long response.

This was fair enough. When dealing with the media, one simply has to respond quickly.

There are points where, on a second read, I can see that you acknowledge some of the complexity that I don’t give you credit for. Each of the specific points is a complex issue that has a lot of nuance to really get it right in the statistics. We both agree that differential crime rates are part of the picture. Where I think we disagree is that I think there is substantial evidence that differential treatment within the criminal justice system also plays a role. And we seem to disagree about whether extraordinarily high rates of incarceration are a good thing or a bad thing as a way to deal with the problems of poverty, racial discrimination in job markets, weak schools, and the other factors that play into crime rates.

We certainly do seem to disagree about this. We think the evidence is highly robust: incarceration deters crime, and incarceration incapacitates criminals, keeping them in prison when they would be out doing nasty things otherwise.

And since black criminals overwhelmingly prey on black people, to fail to incarcerate black criminals is to fail to protect black people.

We frankly think that a “law and order” policy is a precondition for doing anything else that might help the black community.

I assume we also disagree about whether the drug war is being fairly prosecuted and about whether there ought to be a supply side drug war.

We in fact, probably don’t disagree. See above.

Summarizing

So what can we conclude.

First, Oliver has essentially conceded that, for the most serious crimes (generally, Uniform Crime Reports “violent” crimes) there is virtually no evidence of racial disparity. Given that these are the kinds of crimes that are most likely to result in incarceration, and likely to produce long prison sentences, that’s quite a lot to concede.

Second, we’ll happily concede that the enforcement of drug laws is particularly tough on the black community. (Indeed, we said this in our article.) This isn’t any sort of evidence of white racism toward blacks. But neither is it a benign situation.

Finally, an open question conserns “mid-level” offenses: felonies which are not the most serious felonies. The Sentencing Commission has produced some good, but hardly decisive evidence of racial discrimination. However even the liberal Journal-Sentinel, in discussing the Sentencing Commission study, said that:

Poor data collection and sentencing factors make it unclear, however, what role race and ethnicity play, the commission concludes. . . .

. . . [A]nswering the question on the role of race and ethnicity - without leaving any room for doubt - is what it will take for the right people to take ownership of the right changes necessary. In other words, using true, straight-up, apple-to-apple comparisons. . . .

Our own data show that among persons imprisoned for Uniform Crime Report “property” offenses blacks serve shorter sentences.

What is going on with all this is a puzzle, but we have a considerable problem seeing how a criminal justice system that is pretty clearly not discriminating against blacks where the most serious offenses are concerned would be doing so with lesser offenses.

Perhaps some good will come out of the Racial Disparity Commission. Oliver’s statements are, in fact, hopeful.

But let’s be clear on what the danger is. A lot of loose rhetoric about racial bias could lead to a sort of affirmative action program in which, to make the numbers “look better,” black offenders who ought to be charged, convicted and sent to prison aren’t. No change in the law would be necessary for this perverse result. Pressure on cops, prosecutors and judges could cause it to happen.

And we know who will be the victims.

John Edwards: Racist or Politically Correct (Or Are They Both Really the Same)?

Black Racism and “The Jena Six”

From Front Page Magazine:

Because they generally consider it bad manners to draw attention to obvious examples of black racism, the media -- in concert with contemporary America’s self-anointed champions of “civil rights” and “civil liberties” -- have recently put on a spectacular exhibition in the art of depicting black racism not as what it is, but rather as the unfortunate by-product of an allegedly underlying white racism. At issue is the case of the so-called “Jena Six” -- the half-dozen black Louisiana youths who brutally beat an apparently loudmouthed white youth named Justin Barker last December. In the wake of that incident, the American Civil Liberties Union complained -- as did the political Left at large -- that the local district attorney was unjustified in having initially charged the defendants with attempted murder in this case of “questionable circumstances.”

Those circumstances were as follows: Last December 4 at Louisiana’s Jena High School, football player Mychal Bell led a gang of eight to ten fellow black students in pummeling Barker into unconsciousness in what the Jena Times called “one of the most violent attacks in Jena High School’s history.” Witnesses would later report that Barker’s attackers had “stomped him badly,” “stepped on his face” while he was “knocked out cold on the ground,” and “slammed his head on the concrete beam.” The media focused heavily on the notion that three white Jena students had provoked the attack by having hung nooses -- evoking images of lynchings -- from a tree (on campus) in whose vicinity blacks allegedly were unwelcome. Quite apart from the question of whether a dumb (non-violent) prank by a bunch of teenage idiots is grounds for a violent assault, the fact is that Barker was not even involved in the prank.

The author of the piece, John Perazzo, doesn’t flinch in saying that the real problem here is black racism.

Black racism also accounts for the fact that the vast majority of interracial violent crimes are of the black-on-white variety, and that statistically the “average” black is many times more likely to attack a white, than vice versa. While not all interracial crimes are motivated by racial animosities, many of them -- like this recently videotaped gang assault in Virginia -- certainly are.

But why should black racism be prevalent in America at this comparatively late stage in our nation’s evolution -- long after the rise of equal-opportunity mandates, affirmative action policies, civil rights advances, and the stigmatization of racism to the point where “racist” is by far the epithet most feared by whites, be they political figures, business leaders, clergy, academics, or social commentators?

It’s actually quite simple. Black racism remains a dynamic phenomenon because African Americans have been told, ad nauseam, by “civil rights leaders” and by leftist whites in influential organizations like the ACLU, to look outside of themselves for the roots of every ill that plagues their community; to reflexively blame white society for their problems rather than to take responsibility for their own lives; and to view themselves as the oppressed and powerless victims of a white “power structure,” a status they are led to believe renders them somehow incapable of being genuine racists themselves -- no matter how much they may detest the white people they perceive to be their tormentors. Moreover, they have been taught to angrily reject astute observations like those of Bill Cosby, who has publicly lamented how illegitimacy, parental neglect, lack of educational effort, and bad behavior have decimated black life.

Only the victim mentality fostered by the “civil rights” champions of our day could have prompted tens of thousands of people to think that rallying on behalf of the Jena Six was a worthwhile use of their time. Having listened for so long to the “civil rights” establishment’s incessant depictions of the United States as a land of racial inequity, many black Americans have become angry, embittered racists themselves. They are among the legions who, in the words of black columnist Michael Meyers, zealously “transform themselves into the apostles of their own delusions.”

Clearly this analysis doesn’t apply to all blacks, and probably not even to a majority (although a majority may buy into substantial parts of this dysfunctional mythology). But it does apply to enough to cause social havoc.

Who around Marquette is part of the problem?

The Diversity Commission of Marquette University Student Government’s Program Board.

According to the Tribune, MUSG Commissioner of Diversity John Lee, in explaining a “solidarity event” for the thugs in Jena, said it was “an educational opportunity for all Marquette students.”

“Racism still exists today,” he said. “If we learn about it and discuss it, we are better equipped to prevent it.”

But leftist campus activists are not really going to “learn about it.”

They are going to engage in politically correct blather.

Does Wisconsin Lock Up Too Many Blacks?

Our article is finally out.

In it, we challenge the notion that widespread racial discrimination is the reason for the fact that blacks are disproportionately imprisoned in Wisconsin.

Why are blacks disproportionately imprisoned? Because they commit more crimes.

Of course, we can’t rule out the possibility that, somewhere in the system, there is some racism. Of course, there may also be some racial affirmative action, with black offenders getting more lenient treatment. But on the whole, the prison population in Wisconsin looks about like the population of people who commit crimes.

Exhibit One: The Racial Disparity Index

Blacks, compared to whites, are much more likely to be locked up in Wisconsin. In fact, Wisconsin has one of the highest disparity ratios in the nation. But in reality, Wisconsin is about where it should be in relation to other states.

If one looks at disparity ratios, one finds that:

(1.) They are high were a large portion of the black population lives in the central cities of Metropolitan Statistical Areas. As blogger James Harris is fond of saying, “it’s the culture, stupid.” This is why the South has low disparity ratios.

(2.) They are higher where a large portion of the black population lives in poverty, and. . .

(3.) They are lower when a large portion of the white population lives in poverty (where more whites commit crimes, they drive down the disparity ratio).

When one creates a statistical model taking these factors into account, Wisconsin actually has a somewhat lower racial disparity index than one would expect.

Exhibit Two: Time Served in Prison

We looked at people released from prison in Wisconsin during the years 1998-2002. Are blacks kept in prison longer for the same offenses? We found that, controlling for gender, Hispanic ethnicity and having served a previous sentence, blacks served essentially the same sentence for a violent crime, but about five months less for a property crime. For a drug crime, black offenders served about 1.5 months less than a white would.

Exhibit Three: Prison Admissions

Using data from 1998-2002, we produced a statistical model of prison admission by county in Wisconsin as a function of the number of reported crimes. There was, of course, an absurdly strong relationship: more reported crimes meant more people thrown into prison.

We then added to the model the number of blacks in the population of each county. If blacks are disproportionately imprisoned, counties with a large number of blacks should show more prison admissions, even holding the number of crimes constant.

For property crimes, this indeed was the case, suggesting a bias against blacks where property crimes are concerned. But remember (see above) this is counterbalanced by the fact that blacks serve shorter sentences for property crimes.

Where violent crimes were concerned, more blacks in a county produced fewer prison admissions, even after controlling for the number of reported crimes. This suggests that black offenders get off a bit easier than whites.

Exhibit Four: Do “Less Qualified” Blacks Get Imprisoned?

Here, we looked at the number of prior felony convictions of people admitted to the Wisconsin prison system during 2001-2006. Prior felony convictions have a huge effect on whether an offender will get prison (as opposed to probation), and on the length of the sentence imposed.

If blacks are victims of discrimination, we would expect that more of the blacks admitted to prison would have no prior convictions. That is to say, if you are black you can get thrown into prison even though you are less “qualified” for prison than a white. Consider it a bizarre affirmative action program.

But in reality, 48.2% of the whites admitted to prison in Wisconsin have no prior felony convictions, while only 37.5% of blacks have no prior felony convictions. It is, apparently, easier for a white to get thrown into the slammer than a black.

Exhibit Five: Who Commits More Crimes?

If blacks are “over represented” in the prison population in Wisconsin, is this the result of discrimination? It’s not if blacks are equally over represented among those who commit crimes.

Most crime statistics do not provide the race of the offender, but a new system of reporting -- the Incident Based Reporting System used by the Milwaukee Police Department -- does. When we analyze that data, we find that blacks in the city of Milwaukee commit violent crimes at eight times the rate of whites.

(The race of the offender is missing most of the time where property crimes are concerned, so we can’t do any meaningful analysis of those.)

It is difficult to know whether blacks are over incarcerated in Milwaukee County, since the incident reporting data applies only to the city of Milwaukee, and prison admissions data are available only from Milwaukee County. If we knew the proportion of all offenses in the suburbs committed by blacks, we could figure this out. But we don’t, so we can’t.

Still, eight to one is a pretty lopsided ratio. It makes it obvious that most (and perhaps all) of the “over incarceration” of blacks is the result of blacks doing more crimes.

Conclusion

We make some additional points in the article, especially about the fact that the vast majority of the victims of black crime are themselves black. Wanting to keep black criminals out of prison is, in effect, to want more blacks victimized.

But a large part of the black political establishment, like the white liberal establishment, seems to want that. Maybe they haven’t thought of the issue in this way. But if they haven’t, why haven’t they?

Community Must Face Black On Black Crime

From Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe.

Debating capital punishment at an Ivy League university a few years ago, I was confronted with the claim that since death sentences are more often meted out in cases where the victim is white, the death penalty must be racially biased. It’s a spurious argument, I replied. Whites commit fewer than half of all murders in the United States, yet more whites than blacks are sentenced to death and more whites than blacks are executed each year. (56 percent of death row inmates are white, and of the 53 murderers executed last year, 32 were white.) If there is racial bias in the system, it clearly doesn’t operate in favor of whites.

But if you do choose to focus on the race of victims, I added, remember that nearly all black homicide is intraracial -- more than nine out of 10 black murder victims in the United States are killed by black murderers. So applying the death penalty in more cases where the victim is black would mean sending more black men to death row.

After the debate, a young black woman accosted me indignantly. Ninety-plus percent of black blood is shed by black hands? What about all the victims of white supremacists? Hadn’t I heard of lynching? Hadn’t I heard of James Byrd, who died so horribly in Jasper, Texas? When I assured her that Byrd’s murder by whites was utterly untypical of most black homicide, she was dubious.

. . . [M]any Americans, like the woman at my debate, still seem to view racial questions through an antediluvian lens. To them, it is always the 1960s: White bigotry remains a clear and present danger, and the reason so many black Americans die before their time.

But the data aren’t in dispute. Though outrage over “racism” is ever fashionable, African-Americans have long had far less to fear from the violence of racist whites than from the mayhem of the black underclass.

“Do you realize that the leading killer of young black males is young black males?” asked Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan 16 years ago. “As a black man and a father of three, this really shakes me to the core of my being.”

From Georgia Congressman John Lewis, a veteran of the civil rights movement, came a similar cry of anguish. “Nothing in the long history of blacks in America,” he lamented in 1994, “suggests the terrible destruction blacks are visiting upon each other today.”

Happily, crime rates have declined from their 1990s peak. But it remains the case that the worst destruction in black America is self-inflicted.

In a new study, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics confirms once again that almost half the people murdered in the United States each year are black, and 93 percent of black homicide victims are killed by someone of their own race. (For white homicide victims, the figure is 85 percent.) In other words, of the estimated 8,000 African-Americans murdered in 2005, more than 7,400 were cut down by other African-Americans. Though blacks account for just one-eighth of the US population, the BJS reports, they are six times more likely than whites to be victimized by homicide -- and seven times more likely to commit homicide.

Such huge disproportions don’t just happen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously warned 40 years ago that the collapse of black family life would mean rising chaos and crime in the black community. Today, as many as 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock or raised in fatherless households. And as reams of research confirm, children raised without married parents and intact, stable families are more likely to engage in antisocial behavior.

High rates of black violent crime are a national tragedy, but it is the law-abiding black majority that suffers from them most. “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life,” Jesse Jackson said in 1993, “than to walk down the street and hear footsteps . . . then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

It isn’t an insoluble problem. Americans overcame white racism; they can overcome black crime, too. But the first step, as always, is to face the facts.

Having had a bizarre experience with some race hustling politicians on the Governor’s Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in the Wisconsin Justice System, we know how deep the denial and demagoguery can go.