Wisconsin Policy Research Institute: Milwaukee Can Tolerate More Black Murders Part II

The Shark and Shepard, Rick Esenberg is unhappy with Wisconsin Policy Research Institute: Milwaukee Can Tolerate More Black Murders, my take on a report by John McAdams, entitled: Does Wisconsin Lock Up Too Many Blacks? Do not forget the title.

McAdams answer is "No."

Rick pushes me: Let's not confuse ourselves with facts:

Rick:  Professor McAdams does not say that the number of homicides in Milwaukee is what we would expect or that it is acceptable. In fact, strictly speaking (always a good thing), the study says nothing about the homicide rate.

Paul: True.

Rick: What he was looking at is disparities in what happens to blacks and whites after a crime has been committed.

Paul: True, but Rick, you miss the point. McAdams posed a question, "Does Wisconsin Lock up Too Many Blacks?" in challenging the premise of Governor Jim Doyle's Commission that is looking into the question of racial disparity in Wisconsin's prisons. I did not pose the problem; McAdams posed the question in order to fleece some research money.

McAdams tells us that if blacks commit crimes at a higher rate than whites and then they should be locked up at a higher rate.

It might seem, on first glance, that “racial disparity”—and here the issue is that blacks are jailed and imprisoned at a much higher rate than whites—is a bad thing.

But what if the disparity is the result of the fact that blacks commit more crimes than whites? Looking back at the Governor’s charge to the Commission, if it’s not established that the disparities are the result of discrimination, how do we know we want to eliminate them? And what if incarceration in fact serves highly desirable goals of deterring crime and incapacitating the criminals?

McAdams asks, "So is the Wisconsin Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in the Wisconsin Justice System on a fool’s errand?" McAdams is on the fool's errand.

The report never examines the question which, hopefully the Governor's Commission will examine:

If we know that poor blacks in the inner city commit more crimes than other groups (say rural blacks, rich blacks, rich whites, radio commentators) then tell us something we need to know: Why and what can be done to change that?

McAdams uses his preconditioned prejudices and right-wing social theories to dictate the outcome. Any person with a brain in their body would look at the data and conclude that Wisconsin does lock up too many blacks and try to figure out how to solve that problem.

Homicides?

Yes, Rick, I was being tongue-in-cheek. If we approached the question of Milwaukee's high homicide rate with the same approach that McAdams used, we could come to the same conclusion: Given the level of poverty, the number of blacks and Milwaukee's urban setting, we should take comfort that the rate is so 'low.'  McAdams' methodology suggests we should not be concerned until the numbers double.

The only conclusion I get from McAdams report is that it is necessary to reduce the number of poor blacks if we want to lower either the homicide rates or the incarceration rates.

I vote for eliminating the poverty.

Comments

[Rick Esenberg]

For reasons expressed at Shark and Shepherd (you don't allow html here), I think that you are still not there.

[Anitra Freeman]

"If we know that poor blacks in the inner city commit more crimes..."

If the proportion of offenses is all that dictates the proportion of arrests, then, since we know that whites use and deal methamphetamine more than blacks, most meth arrests would be of whites. Would Professor McAdams -- or Mr. Esenburg -- care to test that prediction against actual arrest rates?

[kr]

McAdams might be coming at this from two directions, none of which are good. Either he is so fearful of crime that he feels he is getting protection by taking criminals off the streets. We do know, however, that this is not a deterrent, because if that was the case then the proportion of black men being involved with the criminal justice system at 50% would not be so high.

Or it comes down to good old political pandering, the notion that the GOP succcessfully runs on fear of crime and their predilection to solve it by locking up everyone who is apprehended -- guilty or not.

The question here is what does the lock 'em up policy get us? Certainly by putting a prison sentence on someone's resume, someone with few skills to begin with, we can assure their job prospects are rather poor. So what does that person turn to? Crime. Social costs are in there somewhere.

So you say if they do the crime they do the time? Not necessarily. Minnesota has similar demographics to Wisconsin, in fact or violent crime rate is slightly lower. Yet we lock up at a rate two times higher than our neighbor. Looks like our Republicans are better panderers than their politicians.

And ginning up the fear of crime in order to run successful campaigns is a great way to attrract businesses to Wisconsin.

[I weep for Marquette Univeristy]

What a sad comment on laziness in academia when a professor refers to the thrice-elected mayor of of the second largest city in the state as a "leftist moonbat blogger." McAdams is screaming not to be taken seriously, and makes Marquette University look like a joke for hiring somebody with so little self-control and a seething inability to comprehend anything outside the strictures of his rote ideology. What tired and stricture-bound doctrinaire Marxists were to the 20th Century, knee-jerk and unimaginitive social Darwinists like McAdams will be to the 21st, for both bad and worse.

Pathetic.