COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MAY BULMAN IN THE
INDEPENDENT
"'appallingly
disproportionate' number of black and minority ethnic children being
arrested"
Please, this is a classic non-argument.
Disproportionate to what?
The author claims, as a hundred others have,
disproportionate to share of population.
But that simplistic idea can never be our guiding principle.
Arrests and punishment must be proportionate to overall real
criminal activity.
And, I'm sorry, but the stats - and not just the stats for
Britain - just couldn't be clearer.
Young black males commit a hugely disproportionate share of
crimes, especially violent crimes.
This is true in every country for which I've seen stats. You
may check them from countries as diverse as America, Jamaica, and South Africa.
But take the United States as an example since its black
population is roughly equal to half of Britain's entire population.
The millions of stats over many decades just could not be
clearer: young black males commit violent crimes at about 8 times the rate of
the rest of the population.
It has been suggested, and I think not without merit, that
it is this very same propensity which has long driven young black males into such
extremely physical sports as boxing or American football, sports in which they
absolutely dominate, "out of all proportion."
Readers may be interested in stats for just one large city.
You find the same thing, in proportion to percentage of population in every
American city, Baltimore at present being perhaps the most violent. But
illustrated and well- maintained official stats, so far as I know, are only
found for Chicago:
