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Study: Half of black males, 40% of white males arrested by age 23

eurekalert.org

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Re: Study: Half of black males, 40% of white males arrested by age 23

#181

Post by tzs »

silverbax88 wrote: post #56
pavanky wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right to be forgotten lies in a gray zone. Who is going to be the judge of what needs to be forgotten and what can stay public ?

I don't see it as a gray zone at all. There is a public record for a reason, as well as libel/slander laws in the U.S. The search engines and the Internet just think those don't matter. They are wrong, and the courts will continue to tweak the verbiage and hand down rulings until they adhere to them. - If a local paper published the home address of a woman who was a private citizen in their paper, every single day, a…

> If a person is convicted of a crime, does 10 years in prison, and serves their debt to society, that's still public record. An employer can find it even without doing a Google search, although that's what people are claiming is a 'grey area'

The big difference between now and the pre-Google days was that there were some checks and balances on the public record. Yes, I could find out that someone had been arrested, convicted, served their time, and was released...but it took some effort. I had to actually go down to where the records were kept, and actually go through filing cabinets or microfiche to find the relevant record.

For some kinds of public records, I could write to a government office, and they would send back copies of the relevant records, so I at least did not have to actually go to the record office, but this was slower and would often have fees.

This also presumes I know who has the relevant record. I could potentially have to go on a record fishing expedition in every state the person might have spent time in. There were firms that would do these searches for me, but they did not do it for free.

In this environment, we had balance. The public record was public, but an employer or a nosy neighbor was not going to go to the trouble of finding your records unless they had a really good reason. For most jobs, it was not worth it for the employer to bother.

Furthermore, records could be sealed or expunged, and that actually worked. Now, there are widespread copies of everything, so once something is out there, it stays out there.

Re: Study: Half of black males, 40% of white males arrested by age 23

#182

Post by chc »

opendais wrote: post #153
chc wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't actually limit what you said to that topic. You said there should be a "right to be forgotten," and when someone wondered what it should apply to, answered " Anything that might make someone unemployable that didn't result in a conviction or other defeat in court" (emphasis mine). The fact that someone never showers falls under that heading. At no point have you said anything to suggest you were only talki…

> Ya, stuff like that is why we need a right to be forgotten in the US. People tend to see an arrest and leap to conclusions. I say this as a person who has never been arrested. :/ > Anything that might make someone unemployable that didn't result in a conviction or other defeat in court. > The topic is arrests. The fact you never shower is not going to get you arrested. I guess to me the pattern was obvious but I ac…

OK, just so I'm clear, which is it: Is the topic limited to arrests and court cases or is it just related to arrests and court cases? You seem to object to my comment on the former grounds ("the topic is arrests"), but you have not been restricting your statements to those topics. I find this a bit frustrating, because you keep making broad statements, but object to commentary that is equally broad.

Re: Study: Half of black males, 40% of white males arrested by age 23

#183

Post by jfoutz »

watwut wrote: post #169
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vagueness of the laws are a different problem. If the laws were just vague then you could have judges interpreting them in favor of defendants as often as prosecutors. If you had to point to one thing as the cause of all this, it is likely to be the privatization of criminal justice. As soon as you have a private prison or a defense contractor selling military-grade equipment to civilian police forces, you create…

Only 6% of american prisons are private.

It would be interesting to see corruption prosecution rates of judges sending people to private vs public prisons. All i can really think of are the 2 kids for cash judges, i'm sure there are plenty of unpaid corrupt judges as well.

Re: Study: Half of black males, 40% of white males arrested by age 23

#184

Post by gametheoretic »

tzs wrote: post #163
ddlatham wrote: post #83

Most striking are the race differences revealed in the study, Brame says. In particular, the research points to a higher prevalence of arrest among black males and little race variation in arrest rates among females. ... By age 23, 49 percent of black males, 44 percent of Hispanic males and 38 percent of white males have been arrested. ... By age 23, arrest rates were 20 percent for white females and 18 percent and 1…

Black males are disproportionately represented among those in poverty or with low income compared to white males. If the police completely ignored race, we would expect black males to be arrested at a higher rate than white males. The most troubling possibility that the black male vs white male rate suggests to me is that police might not be taking black victims as seriously as white victims. Blacks die by homicide a…

Black females don't have the time in the day to get arrested. White women live in a consequence-free environment until they don't. A dozen other things. It depends how frank we all want to be.

>Black males are disproportionately represented among those in poverty or with low income compared to white males.

Who on earth is the intended audience here--

Re: Study: Half of black males, 40% of white males arrested by age 23

#185

Post by megaman22 »

pertinhower wrote: post #19

I find this frankly implausible. What percentage of people you know have been arrested? I'm guessing very small (even assuming that many hide it and so you're knowledge is substantially skewed). So maybe that's because of your high/squeaky-clean socio-economic class? No: imagine yourself in any class you care to. Unless that class is much, much larger than your "real" class, then it would have to have an astronomical…

Anecdotally, at my Ivy League college that has recently gotten some lovely press in Rolling Stone, I would estimate that at least 40% of male students have been arrested at one point or another for underage drinking. There are a couple of law firms in that town that do a thriving business in defending underage possession and disorderly conduct cases.

Re: Study: Half of black males, 40% of white males arrested by age 23

#186

Post by kareemm »

I'm Canadian, and went to university in Montreal with a bunch of Americans. It always amazed me how pretty much every one of them had some sort of run-in with the police (up to and including being arrested). Usually it was related to underage drinking.

At that time I didn't personally know any Canadians who'd been arrested, and a run-in with the police was unheard of (and this isn't because I ran with a goodie two-shoes crowd).

I'm 37 now, and can't name a single Canadian I know personally who's been arrested (that doesn't mean I don't know people who've never been arrested; just that I don't know if they have).

So I had a feeling the percentage was high, but 40% of young men is... just appalling.

Re: Study: Half of black males, 40% of white males arrested by age 23

#187

Post by barrkel »

giberson wrote: post #105

Laws in the US are far too strict. I am one of the people that are covered by this statistic, I was arrested around age 16. For curfew. Curfew, the law that says you can't be outside after an arbitrarily dictated time. Absolutely ridiculous. For what it is worth--my record has been "expunged" and this arrest has not affected my adult life at all.

Curfews? That sounds like something out of a police state.

I did not know the US had curfew laws.

Re: Study: Half of black males, 40% of white males arrested by age 23

#188

Post by dang »

anigbrowl wrote: post #85
haakon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current title says "Over 40% of all young men have been arrested in the USA". This can easily be interpreted as 40% of all young men in the whole world have been arrested in the USA. Instead, it should say "Over 40% of all young men in the USA have been arrested".

The actual article title: Study: Half of black males, 40 percent of white males arrested by age 23 seems perfectly adequate ehre. I think HN readers can see the big underlying issue rather than being sidetracked by the racial disparity (which is also important, but not the main story).

I agree. Title was editorialized, and we'll revert it.

Re: Study: Half of black males, 40% of white males arrested by age 23

#190

Post by nostrademons »

tzs wrote: post #163
ddlatham wrote: post #83

Most striking are the race differences revealed in the study, Brame says. In particular, the research points to a higher prevalence of arrest among black males and little race variation in arrest rates among females. ... By age 23, 49 percent of black males, 44 percent of Hispanic males and 38 percent of white males have been arrested. ... By age 23, arrest rates were 20 percent for white females and 18 percent and 1…

Black males are disproportionately represented among those in poverty or with low income compared to white males. If the police completely ignored race, we would expect black males to be arrested at a higher rate than white males. The most troubling possibility that the black male vs white male rate suggests to me is that police might not be taking black victims as seriously as white victims. Blacks die by homicide a…

Just a guess: more white females than black females go to college, where they have plenty of opportunities for underage drinking, marijuana use, trespassing, vandalism, or other minor crimes. More black women at that age are mothers, where they have to provide for their kid and don't have time to get into mischief.

The arrest rates at age 18 were nearly identical for white vs. black females, the discrepancy only arose in ages 18-23. It would be interesting to see the data broken out by crime and by educational achievement.

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