Race and crime in the United States

Certain crime statistics suggest a correlative relationship between race (ethnicity) and crime. The cause of this correlation has been an issue of debate. Historically, research that argues from genetic determinism has been represented by the works of the Francis Galton, Cesare Lombroso and Samuel George Morton. Instead of a racial basis for crime, some modern research claims that crime is a product of social conditions, citing judicial and institutional racism as the reason for the correlative link between race and crime. Some others dispute the 100% social explanation as Political Correctness bias.

In the 1990s, genetic determinism made a popular resurregence with works like The Bell Curve by Richard J. Hernstein and Charles Murray, and Race, Evolution, and Behavior by J. Philippe Rushton. Criticisms of genetic determinism can be found in the work Stephen Jay Gould, Axel Kahn, Jay Joseph, and the American Psychological Association.

History

Race and crime were studied by criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso, who belonged to the Italian school of criminology of the end of the 19th century. Lombroso divided Northern Italian and Southern Italians in two different "races." Henceforth, he thought that "Southern Italians were more crime-prone and lazy because they were unlucky enough to have less Aryan blood than their northern countrymen ." Enrico Ferri, a student of Lombroso, considered Black people to be of an "inferior race" and more prone to crime than others .

Pseudoscience

In 1851, Samuel A. Cartwright, a physician, explained the tendency of slaves to run away (and thus disobey the law) because of a pseudoscientific "disease" which he called "drapetomania." Carwright also described another pseudoscientific disease, Dysaethesia Aethiopica, "called by overseers 'rascality'" which "is much more prevalent among free negroes living in clusters by themselves, than among slaves on our plantations, and attacks only such slaves as live like free negroes in regard to diet, drinks, exercise, etc." Indeed, according to Cartwright, "nearly all [free negroes] are more or less afflicted with this mental disorder, that have not got some white person to direct and to take care of them." Such claims have been since denounced as forms of scientific racism.

Nature v. nurture

Further information: Nature versus nurture and Scientific racism

These theories were discredited by later works of criminology, in particular by the Chicago school and environmental criminology, which insisted on social, economic and cultural factors explaining criminality."The slim economic opportunities and turbulent living conditions of young disadvantaged and black men may lead them to crime.In addition, elevated rates of offending in poor and minority neighborhoods compound the stigma of social marginality and provoke the scrutiny of criminal justice authorities." They were also discredited by cultural anthropology and neo-Darwinian synthesis, which demonstrated that the category of "race" was not scientifically legitimate, least of all the attempt to conflate skin color, or the amount of melanin in the body, with any specific population. The works of Lombroso et al. were thereafter classified as forms of scientific racism. In a 1950 statement, titled "The Race Question", the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization proposed to substitute the term of "ethnic group", which included cultural factors, for the fuzzy concept of "race," which was particularly discredited following the racial policies of the Third Reich.

However, some recent works of sociobiology, which aims at explaining behaviour by biological factors, have provided for renewed interest in some circles about the relations between an ethnic group and criminality rate. Thus, some have attempted to find genetic roots of violence, reviving the old debate of Nature versus nurture. Along with the attempt to justify the notion of "race" by genetics, this has been criticized by a variety of scholars, for example clinical psychologist Jay Joseph in The Gene Illusion (2002) or the geneticist Axel Kahn .

Statistics

Crime statistics should be considered with caution and may not always adequately reflect reality. Correlation between two factors does not imply causation; see Correlation does not imply causation.

United States

A February 1997 report on rape and sexual-based crime published by the United States Department of Justice stated that of the crimes surveyed, 56% of arrestees were "White", 42% were "Black", and 2% were of other races. The report additionally noted that "[v]ictims of rape were about evenly divided between whites and blacks; in about 88% of forcible rapes, the victim and offender were of the same race."

A subsequent United States Department of Justice report which surveyed homicide statistics between 1974 and 2004 stated that of the crimes surveyed, 52.1% of the offenders were Black, 45.9% were White, and 2% were Other Races. Of the victims in those same crimes, 51% were White, 46.9% were Black, and 2.1% were Other Races. The report further noted that, "most murders are intraracial", with 86% of White murders committed by Whites, and 94% of Black murders committed by Blacks. It should be noted that the document does not provide any details concerning what races or ethnicities are included in the designations "White", "Black", or "Other Races".

70% of prisoners in the United States are non-Whites.

A 2005 United States Department of Justice report on violent crimes stated that of the "perceived race" of the offenders in single-offender violent crimes, 43.3% were White, 21.0% were Black, and 9.6% were "Other", with the remaining 26.0% of offenders of unknown race.

Canada

First Nations make up about 2% of Canada's population, but account for 18% of the federal prison population as of 2000.

Britain

A report by Britain's Home Office for the years 2003, 2004, and 2005 stated that of the "ethnic appearance" of persons arrested for "notifiable offenses", 84.3% were White, 8.8% were Black, 4.9% were Asian (South Asian), and 1.4% were Other, with the remaining percentage classified as "Unknown". Additionally, the report stated that when cases of crime went to court, those of either Black or White ethnic appearance were convicted 51% of the time, and those of Asian appearance were convicted 24% of the time. It further stated that, "Black and Asian people experience a higher likelihood of being stopped and searched. Moreover, Black defendants are more prominent in the Crown Court caseload, although this is partly due to a tendency to elect for jury trial more often than other ethnic groups, including White. Furthermore, Black people are also overrepresented in the prison population reflecting, at least in part, the longest average sentence imposed upon them."

In London in 2006, 75% of the victims of gun crime and 79% of the suspects were "from the African/Caribbean community."

Sweden

Immigrants are overrepresented in Sweden's crime statistics. During the period 1997-2001, 25% of the almost 1,520,000 offences were committed by people born overseas, while almost 20% were committed by Swedish-born people with a foreign background. Those from North Africa and the Middle East were overrepresented.

Australia

According to the Australian government's June 2006 publication of prison statistics, indigenous peoples make up 24% of the overall prison population in Australia. ("Indigenous" meaning those identifying themselves as being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin)

New Zealand

In 2004, Maori made up just 15% of the total population but 49.5% of prisoners. Maori were entering prison at 8 times the rate of non-Maori.

See also

• Loïc Wacquant
• Nature versus nurture
• Genetics and violence
• Marvin D. Free Jr.
• Race and intelligence
• Racial profiling
• Steven Levitt
• William Bennett
• Sex and crime