The claim is that blacks are disproportionately exposed to the justice system, that blacks and whites are treated differently and that systemic racism is the only explanation. Prison statistics are often used to support this argument, with the percentage of black male prison inmates being higher than might be guessed by looking at their distribution in the general population. But a good demonstration of why this may not be the best example is that the prison population is about 94% male and 6% female even though women are close to 50% of the general population. No one is suggesting that sexism is the cause of this, and so there may be other factors involved.
The evidence of alleged police bias runs all the way from jay walking arrests through police involved shootings. The focus here will be on the more minor transgressions that we are all guilty of.
Ordinarily at this point, I’d ask someone to get me a piece of paper and pencil so I could produce a really good sketch explaining the example, but since my computer graphic arts talents are limited I’ll have to try prose instead.
Imagine that you’re the Police Chief of Anytown USA. Anytown is of fair size. It’s in the shape of a square, and five miles on a side. That’s twenty five square miles. The streets are all laid out as a square grid with major streets at each mile. You budget has enough money to allow you to have twenty five officers on duty at any given time. When you first planned out your assignments you put one patrol officer in each grid figuring that they could support each other as necessary.
But Anytown is just like every other town, and it has a high income side, with the country club and fine gated homes, and it has the industrial side where lower income people live. In between there is a spectrum of neighborhoods roughly laid out by income, from low to high, or from high to low depending on which way you’re driving.
Now as Police Chief you’ve noticed that there seems to be more property crime in the lower income neighborhoods. This shouldn’t be too surprising. You rarely hear of fights breaking out at the country club bar, but it’s a regular occurrence on the other side of town. So, in order to more effectively protect all of your citizens from the criminal element you shift some of your officers away from the high income part of town and toward the lower income part of town. It makes perfect sense.
Now, what do police officers do all day? They answer radio calls regarding people who need help, and they hang out at donut shops. They give presentations and provide security in schools. And when they’re not doing those things they’re sort of hanging out waiting, patrolling. And of course while they’re waiting they’re writing tickets. And because there are more police in the low income part of town where people are more likely to be walking, they’re going to see more people jay walking. More jay walking tickets. And since they’re in the lower income part of town there will be more older cars with signal lamps burned out, and owners who don’t have the money to just run down to the auto shop and have them fixed. More minor equipment tickets. They will see and stop more speeders. Simply because there are more police on the low income side of town, they will see there more of every offense that there is.
This example pretty clearly illustrates how lower income residents of Anytown will have more contact with police, and be issued more citations and it doesn’t involve race in any way. Imagine if you will that all of the residents of Anytown are black, or Asian, or Hispanic. The logic is the same and holds in any case.
But that’s just what an average guy thinks.
No comments:
Post a Comment