I’ve read articles more or less exactly like this one, from Insight News, a local Afro-American community paper, since I was probably ten years old (although few of those pieces have buried the lede as far as this one, down in paragraph nine or ten. For your convenience, I’ll try to exhume the lede for you):
According to the State Council on Black Minnesotans, as of the year 2000 census, Blacks make up approximately 18.03% of Minneapolis and 11.71% of St. Paul. However, the number of Blacks in Minneapolis accounted for 40.12% of the Black population statewide, while the St. Paul population accounted for 19.565% statewide.
Minnesota blacks are concentrated in the metro - got it.
Now come the all-important Minnesota incarceration rates, and according to Tom Johnson, former Hennepin County Attorney and current president of the Council on Crime and Justice, “We know for example that in 1999 in Hennepin County you had [a number equal to] over half of all African-American males between eighteen and thirty arrested in that one year.”
It’s the “Blacks are overincarcerated” meme.
And it’s true. The number,and per capita rates, are astounding, and a national scandal - one that should shame…
…well, lots and lots of people. Almost forty years worth of leaders, in both the black and white communities.
But we’ll get back to that.
(And what’s this “[a number equal to] over half of all African-American males between eighteen and thirty arrested” number supposed to mean? Could the writer even pretend to give this statistic some meaning? Does it mean “half of all black males in Henco were arrested?”, or does it mean “Five percent were arrested ten times each?”, or…)
The reaction by some is that the police are patrolling in minority neighborhoods whether they are Hmong, Native American, Hispanic, Somali or African-American, because that is where the majority of the crimes are occurring.
But according to Johnson, the numbers do not support this: “To use who is arrested as a gauge to make a decision about who is committing crime isn’t accurate or fair.”
Er…why?
I mean, could we be bothered with some evidence of this claim? Because it’s a big one and, given that North Minneapolis and Frogtown and Phillips and Dayton’s Bluff seem to be where most of the crime in the cities themselves happens, I’d be interested in knowing - both as a city resident and someone who is concerned about equality in our society, exactly how that’s “inaccurate and unfair”.
Because from where I sit, it sounds like lawyer weasel-words.
Others look to racial profiling - where police stop Black people just because of the color of their skin - as a potential cause for increased incarceration rates for African Americans.
In a study conducted over a six-month period in 2000, Minneapolis police stopped Black drivers at a rate of more than twice the numbers in their population, and an examination of St. Paul police records showed a similar trend.
Question for those “others” that look to racial profiling; are these “stops” (as opposed to arrests for specific incidents of crime) converted into convictions? Is there any evidence that these convictions are based on wholesale fraud?
Because if there is evidence of masses of Afro-American citizens being framed and railroaded, we do have a scandal here.
Consequently, when studies show further that once they are in the Hennepin County or Ramsey County criminal justice system, Blacks are more likely to be charged with certain crimes like drug offenses, and Blacks are more likely to serve time in jail.
And again - and I ask this knowing I’m skirting on the edge of the usual, tiresome charges of “racism” by the usual bleating classes - is there any evidence that this likelihood of being charged is disconnected with a likelihood of having actually offended?
The resulting statistics equate to Blacks in Minnesota having the highest incarceration rates in the country as compared to whites. In addition, seven out of every ten inmates who leave prison come back, so the question then becomes: what, if anything, can be done about this alarming trend?
The article - incoherent as it often is - focuses on recidivism programs. Which is, I suppose, more manageable than, say, trying to reverse the damage caused by forty years of debilitating nannystatism, which began about the time 400 years of slavery and discrimination ended.
Cross-posted at Shot in the Dark. Comments welcome.
