Title: Black Crime Rates: What Happens When Numbers Aren't Neutral | HuffPost
Headings: Black Crime Rates: What Happens When Numbers Aren’t Neutral
Black Crime Rates: What Happens When Numbers Aren’t Neutral
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Content: the important factor here is the comparative proportion.) 19 white people and 24 black people might be sentenced to prison. Using the example felony incarceration rates cited above, we might expect to see 38% of the 50 convicted white defendants (19) and 51% of the 48 convicted black defendants (24) incarcerated for their crimes. In this scenario, 12% of black people who commit a crime and less than 2% of white people who commit the same crime might eventually go to prison. This example demonstrates that there are systemic differences in how blacks and whites are treated by the law. These differences, which are compounded in each successive phase of the criminal justice process, increase the percentage of black people incarcerated for committing a particular crime. This example is NOT meant to be a conclusive analysis explaining the incarceration gap. The statistics presented above and applied to the illustrative example come from different contexts and refer to different crimes. Racial disparities in the application of criminal justice are not the only source of differential incarceration rates. Poverty, geography, and lacking educational and career opportunities all likely play a role.