ByronBlog

Byron Matthews, a sociologist retired from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and a partner in an educational software company, lives near Santa Fe, NM.

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Location: New Mexico, United States

Monday, May 05, 2008

Exploding the myths

In the overwhelming majority of cases, whatever the race of the convicted, prison remains what it has always been: a lifetime achievement award for persistence in criminal offending.

An excellent article by the always-reliable Heather MacDonald. It has long been known that reports of victims show that racial variations in arrests are not a product of discrimination by law enforcement, and that variations in sentencing, regardless of race, are almost entirely explained by two factors, seriousness of the offense and prior record. Black rates of arrest and incarceration are high, because black rates of serious offending are high, not because are blacks being systematically discriminated against by the criminal justice system. Almost everything you hear from the popular media and from politicians on this subject is wrong.

Byron

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