COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DAVID LAMMY IN THE GUARDIAN
The racial bias in our
justice system is creating a social time bomb
The article makes assumptions which are not necessarily
warranted.
It is the commonest thing in poor journalism to say about
some phenomenon: "Well, there is x times as much of this or that for a
certain group, so clearly there is huge bias in the system giving us these
results.'
And, of course, anyone who has studied some statistics knows
that is simply inaccurate. An overwhelming preponderance of some outcome may
just as well be signaling a problem, a problem having nothing to do with the
justice system.
We have problems in crime and violence we have never
honestly discussed.
Here are the official stats for just one American city,
Chicago, and they are updated regularly and presented with graphs. These are
straightforward stats on the occurrence of killing and wounded.
Bias has nothing to do with these stats which tell us
clearly that the overwhelming number of violent crimes are black individuals
killing and wounding black individuals.
