Anders Breivik Faces Sentence of 3 Months Per Murder

[adoucette]

Of course Quad, since we are talking about murder, not suicide, the reference is obvious, well except to those who just want to be obstinate.

So, unlike your cllaim that ' "black on black crime" meme is nothing more than an ugly racist canard', that's not true.
The facts are that the Black on Black homicide crime rate, per 100,000 people, is much higher than White on White or Black on White.

And given the lag between commission of crime and execution rates, our numbers are not out of line based on any notion of Racism.

If you want to argue that Racism is related to the cultural/social conditions that are the underlying reason these rates are what they are, fine, make that argument, but that is a totally different thing then saying our Justice system is Racist.

 

[Imperfectionist]

Homicide rate per 100,000 citizens:

Norway: .68%
USA: 4.8%

They must be doing something right.

 

[GeoffP]

I appreciate the reminders to reintegration and recidivism but, it must be fairly said, an effective sentence of three months per victim is absurd beyond the requirement for words.

 

[madanthonywayne]

20-ish years is the maximum sentence that anyone can get for anything in quite a number of countries.

If you don't hit the maximum penalty at 77 murders, when does it kick in?

Turns out that indefinite imprisonment is rather controversial in many places, not unlike the death penalty

That is also common knowledge. Once death penalty opponents succeed in eliminating the death penalty, they immediately begin campaigning against life in prison. Thus, the argument that there is no need for the death penalty because life in prison effectively removes these dangerous people from society amounts to a bait & switch.

You're free to hold that such amounts to injustice in this (or whatever) particular case, of course, but it would be nice if you'd do so with some visible cognizance of the history and reasoning that led to the current state of jurisprudence in the country in question

I believe the punishment should fit the crime. 77 murders is verging on super villain territory. Obviously this guy deserves death. Short of that, ever setting him free is both a gross miscarriage of justice and a threat to public safety.

 

[adoucette]

If you have to ask what's racist about the correlation between a state having the death penalty and a state having a long history of major racial problems, then you clearly don't want to know the answer.

You make the claim, then you need to show these correlations, not me.

But every state but 4, West of the Mississippi, has the Death penalty, so I'm curious, what long history of Racial problems do you find in Washington State, Oregon or Nebraska?

Indeed what you would have to show is that not only are black executions higher than whites on a percent of population basis, but on a percent of crimes basis.

Go for it, I await your pithy analysis.

Oh, and PS, I've lived in Boston and Atlanta and I found the racist attitudes in Boston and the degree of segregation FAR greater in Boston than in Atlanta.

Just research "School Desgregation and South Boston" to see just how bad it got when they tried to desegregate the schools up there.

 

[quadraphonics]

Of course Quad, since we are talking about murder, not suicide, the reference is obvious, well except to those who just want to be obstinate.

"Obstinate" would have been if I'd insisted on reading it that way. In fact, I went on to interrogate the various other interpretations that you must have intended, explicitly, after making light of your hilarious mis-wording.

The smart thing for you to do here would have been to chuckle and shrug it off. But since you've chosen to make a stand, I'll point out the uglier implication of your phrasing gaffe, there: your phrasing casts crime as an essentially racial phenomenon. Blacks that kills other blacks are killing "themselves," as are white that kill other whites. Murders, apparently, are not acts that one individual commits on another individual, but elements in some kind of racial contest. This betrays your racist bent, at the outset.

So, unlike your cllaim that ' "black on black crime" meme is nothing more than an ugly racist canard', that's not true.
The facts are that the Black on Black homicide crime rate, per 100,000 people, is much higher than White on White or Black on White.

Your plots there don't show that. They just show that black people are much more likely to be the victims of crimes, and also the perpetrators of crimes, than are white people. Which is exactly what we'd expect to occur in a racist society that has expended so much energy oppressing and segregating black people. You'd have to further break out the data in question into intraracial and intraracial categories to actually establish the assertion you're aiming for.

Which, again, is a transparently racist assertion: you're conflating the fact that black people are poor - and so both subject to and involved in higher rates of crime - with the idea that they're violent and self-desctructive. Meanwhile, I've already given you the actual rates: the percentage of white murder victims killed by white people is very high, and only slightly lower than the percentage of black murder victims killed by black people. The extraneous fact that overall crime rates are higher in black communities is just that (an indication of the the effects of racist oppression, that is).

And given the lag between commission of crime and execution rates, our numbers are not out of line based on any notion of Racism.

Maybe to someone so pathetically obstinate as to refuse to aknowledge the obvious causal correlation between the higher crimes rate in black communities, and the long history of racist oppression designed to segregate and ghettoize blacks, in the first place.

And that's without getting into any of the various clearly observable biases exhibited by our criminal justice system, even once the baseline crime rates have been equalized for. The studies have been done, and they're conclusive:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/opinion/09dow.html

Several years after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, a University of Iowa law professor, David C. Baldus (who died last month), along with two colleagues, published a study examining more than 2,000 homicides that took place in Georgia beginning in 1972. They found that black defendants were 1.7 times more likely to receive the death penalty than white defendants and that murderers of white victims were 4.3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who killed blacks.​

If you want to argue that Racism is related to the cultural/social conditions that are the underlying reason these rates are what they are, fine, make that argument,

Done and done.

Although, that's not "an argument." It's just a basic observation of clear reality. Are you unaware that the "counter-argument" to that position is nothing more or less than an overt assertion of open racism. You sure you want to go down this road?

but that is a totally different thing then saying our Justice system is Racist.

It's not, really - the disenfranchisement of blacks has implications on their ability to keep the justice system fair just as it does their ability to keep other parts of the larger system of state and society fair - but, regardless, you've now been provided with explicit scientific studies establishing exactly the racism in question. I look forward to watching you wage a losing battle against those facts.

 

[quadraphonics]

If you don't hit the maximum penalty at 77 murders, when does it kick in?

So, yeah, here we have a mod in full-blown troll mode. Real classy.

That is also common knowledge. Once death penalty opponents succeed in eliminating the death penalty, they immediately begin campaigning against life in prison. Thus, the argument that there is no need for the death penalty because life in prison effectively removes these dangerous people from society amounts to a bait & switch.

Yeah, that straw man is such a mean liar!

I believe the punishment should fit the crime. 77 murders is verging on super villain territory. Obviously this guy deserves death. Short of that, ever setting him free is both a gross miscarriage of justice and a threat to public safety.

Yeah, you established that in your OP.

You may recall that the substance of my post that you're responding to here was that you ought to actually engage with the history and reasoning that has led the countries that you criticize to adopt sentencing regimes that top out in the 20-year range. That way, your criticism might add up to something more than repetitive, hollow bluster.

Who the fuck cares how outrageous you find Denmark's sentencing practices if you don't understand where they came from, and refuse to learn? You're just here beating your chest and trolling. Do Sci a favor and resign your post: you're an embarassment.

 

[quadraphonics]

You make the claim, then you need to show these correlations, not me.

The correlations are not in dispute.

And the correlation between number of executions (as opposed to the mere statutory existence of the death penalty) is even more correlated with the erstwhile Slave Power.

But let me just go ahead and remind you that we are not epistemic peers, and I have no interest in attempting to "prove" anything to you. That is a sucker's game which empowers your underhanded tactic of challenging basic facts so that you can pretend they're up for debate. You have long since squandered any standing to demand support for anyone else's statements, due to your long, consistent record of dishonorable behavior.

But every state but 4, West of the Mississippi, has the Death penalty, so I'm curious, what long history of Racial problems do you find in Washington State, Oregon or Nebraska?

Same long history of racial problems as every state in the western US, more or less. What else would it be?

Indeed what you would have to show is that not only are black executions higher than whites on a percent of population basis, but on a percent of crimes basis.

Go for it, I await your pithy analysis.

I've already provided you links to the scientific studies that establish all of that in my previous response. It's kind of embarassing that you didn't already know about them, actually. They're rather famous, and certainly qualify as baseline knowledge for anyone who'd pretend to comment publicly on such issues.

More than that: anyone who speaks from ignorance of them can be safely presumed to be a racist pushing right-wing talking points.

Oh, and PS, I've lived in Boston and Atlanta and I found the racist attitudes in Boston and the degree of segregation FAR greater in Boston than in Atlanta.

Just research "School Desgregation and South Boston" to see just how bad it got when they tried to desegregate the schools up there.

Did I say somewhere that the Northeast, or wherever, doesn't have it's own history of racial problems?

But, slavery and Jim Crow and the Klan are Slave State phenomena, associated with a particular way of dealing with the Black Problem. The "tough on crime" politics there have always had a decidedly racial bent, and this has everything to do with political support for the death penalty there, as well as a range of other laws (Stand Your Ground, etc.).

This stuff isn't controversial in the real world - the "debate" is a fake one manufactured as a right-wing canard. Which is exactly why our local mouthpiece (that's you) is here taking lines out of the Atwater playbook. What you should understand is that your whole strategy is long in the tooth: it depends on your audience not recognizing what you're doing. But people here were wise to it before you ever showed up at Sci, and have long-since demonstrated that they're onto you in particular. You ought to either change tack, or go find some more congenial audience to troll with your nasty talking points.

 

[adoucette]

"Obstinate" would have been if I'd insisted on reading it that way. In fact, I went on to interrogate the various other interpretations that you must have intended, explicitly, after making light of your hilarious mis-wording.

The smart thing for you to do here would have been to chuckle and shrug it off. But since you've chosen to make a stand, I'll point out the uglier implication of your phrasing gaffe, there: your phrasing casts crime as an essentially racial phenomenon. Blacks that kills other blacks are killing "themselves," as are white that kill other whites. Murders, apparently, are not acts that one individual commits on another individual, but elements in some kind of racial contest. This betrays your racist bent, at the outset.

Total BS Quad.
The term and phrasing I used was not racist in the least so there was no gaffe, just you trying to make something out of nothing. Typical of you to attack the phrasing (assume suicide) as opposed to the argument. Just an indication that you have none.

Your plots there don't show that. They just show that black people are much more likely to be the victims of crimes, and also the perpetrators of crimes, than are white people.

And THAT was my original claim.

Blacks kill themselves at a FAR greater rate than do whites

As the charts show, Blacks on a PER 100,000 person basis are FAR more likely to kill another Black than a White is likely to kill another White person.

That's what a FAR greater rate means.

You've been proven wrong, just admit it and move on.

Which is exactly what we'd expect to occur in a racist society that has expended so much energy oppressing and segregating black people.

Again, if you are saying the REASON they kill each other is because our society is Racist that's an interesting argument, but it doesn't make what I said wrong or make the Death Penalty racist.

Which, again, is a transparently racist assertion: you're conflating the fact that black people are poor - and so both subject to and involved in higher rates of crime - with the idea that they're violent and self-desctructive.

A lot of people are poor, doesn't make them violent.
That has much more to do with culture.
And young Black males in much of the country have a pretty violent culture.

Meanwhile, I've already given you the actual rates: the percentage of white murder victims killed by white people is very high, and only slightly lower than the percentage of black murder victims killed by black people.

NO Quad, you posted a link that spoke to PERCENT.

Percent is not RATE.

The extraneous fact that overall crime rates are higher in black communities is just that (an indication of the the effects of racist oppression, that is).

No Quad, you have not shown that is an "extraneous fact".

And that's without getting into any of the various clearly observable biases exhibited by our criminal justice system, even once the baseline crime rates have been equalized for. The studies have been done, and they're conclusive:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/opinion/09dow.html

Several years after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, a University of Iowa law professor, David C. Baldus (who died last month), along with two colleagues, published a study examining more than 2,000 homicides that took place in Georgia beginning in 1972. They found that black defendants were 1.7 times more likely to receive the death penalty than white defendants and that murderers of white victims were 4.3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who killed blacks.​

I'll track down the research and see if it supports your claim that our justice system is racist.

 

[Tiassa]

What's that? They can't hear you in the back

The REAL purpose of prison is not to give them a vacation with free food, clothing, medical care, etc. it's to remove them from society for the protection of society!!!

Add a few more exclamation points. I hear the more you tack onto a sentence, the more valid the assertion.

Meanwhile, you know ... whatever. Wail hogwash all you want.

Yours is a pretty simple system. Once we send someone to your idea of prison, there really isn't any point in letting them back out. And, you know, I get it. I just happen to think your approach to the prison industry is beyond stupid.

 

[quadraphonics]

Total BS Quad.
The term and phrasing I used was not racist in the least so there was no gaffe, just you trying to make something out of nothing. Typical of you to attack the phrasing (assume suicide) as opposed to the argument. Just an indication that you have none.

That observation was not based on your suicide mis-phrasing. It was based on your characterization of murder in racial terms: black-on-black violence is an instance of a race attacking "itself," apparently. Shows that you view crime in racial terms at the outset. And yet you never demand an explanation for white-on-white violence, even though almost all violent crime suffered by whites is perpetrated by other whites.

And the hyperdefensive, hollow response you dashed off there only reinforces this observation.

And THAT was my original claim.

You realize that I proferred this interpretation as one of the three possibilities (one of the two serious ones) in my initial response to you, right? And responded that such a statistic is misleading exactly because it compares across groups with very different crime rates? And that I've repeated this response already?

The point being that your attempt to throw a hissy-fit over being misconstrued is unimpressive, given how obtuse, sloppy and muddled you've been. You are being treated more than charitably, considering your record here. Grow up and just respond substantively like an adult. You aren't scoring any points here by constantly spending >80% of your energy trying to build up a victim posture - rather the opposite.

Blacks kill themselves at a FAR greater rate than do whites

As the charts show, Blacks on a PER 100,000 person basis are FAR more likely to kill another Black than a White is likely to kill another White person.

Those charts don't show that. For all you can tell from those charts, 100% of the murders in question occur accross racial lines. You'd have to break down the data according to combinations of offender and victim races to support your contention. All your charts show is that blacks are more likely to be victims of crimes and, separately, that blacks are more likely to perpetrate crimes. They show us nothing about any correlations between the races of the perpetratos and victims, which is what you are addressing.

Meanwhile, I've already cited the actual intraracial statistics: 86% of white murder victims are killed by other whites, and 94% of black murder victims are killed by other blacks. The gap is not that impressive.

You've been proven wrong, just admit it and move on.

I'm curious what assertion of mine you think you've disproven, exactly.

Again, if you are saying the REASON they kill each other is because our society is Racist

What I said is that the reason crimes rates in general are higher in the black population (both as victims and as perpetrators) is due to racism.

Let's pose this the other way around: why is it that 86% of white murder victims are killed by other whites? What makes whites kill "themselves" at such a rate?

that's an interesting argument,

It's an observation of uncontroversial fact.

And not an "argument" subject to questions of proof and evaluation by the likes of racist ideologues like yourself. Our society has expended a great deal of effort, over a very long time, to ensure that blacks are poor, marginalized and segregated. If you have any problem with including that basic, salient, obvious fact as a major, necessary basis for any serious discussion of the issue, then you are a prima-facie racist and the main priority in having a serious discussion about the topic is necessarily to marginalize your input, preferably to the point where you do not have any voice whatsoever.

Anyone who regards the premise that racist oppression has had a hell of a lot to do with the current socioeconomic (and political) status of minority groups in the USA, and particularly blacks, as an "interesting argument" is clearly here to push a racist line.

but it doesn't make what I said wrong

It has several implications for your position. Since the statistics that you're trumpetting are exactly the difference in total crimes rates across groups (you're trying to obscure that by repackaging it in terms of intraracial crime rates, but I've already repeatedly pointed out that the percentages there don't show much gap), and that difference is a product of racism, you are left defending a process wherein blacks are systematically oppressed and then punished for such as non-problematic and non-racist(!).

But the point wasn't so much that you are making a strictly inaccurate statement (your sloppiness aside), but rather that your scrutiny is stilted and selective: racist.

or make the Death Penalty racist.

Actually, it does.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves: you need to first go and aknowledge all of the compelling research objectively demonstrating the racism evident in the death penalty system in our country. At that point we can discuss exactly what combination of factors conspire to make it racist.

A lot of people are poor, doesn't make them violent.
That has much more to do with culture.
And young Black males in much of the country have a pretty violent culture.

So you're asserting that black people exhibit rates of violent crime that are statistically significantly larger than those exhibited by people of other races with comparable socioeconomic status? By all means, then, provide us with the data backing up this assertion. It should be easy enough if it's accurate, no?

Of course, I - like most reasonable, informed, non-racist people - happen to already know that you can't. These studies have been done, and they show that once you correct for socio-economic status there is no significant gap in the crimes rates along racial lines.

You are arguing from a false, racist presumption, and then going looking for an explanation. And, to that, you should understand that going for "culture" instead of "genes" or whatever doesn't even give you any real deniability as a racist, even if the audience fails to double-check the racist presumption you start from.

NO Quad, you posted a link that spoke to PERCENT.

Percent is not RATE.

Yes it is. It's exactly a rate. It's the number of instances per one hundred base cases. Hence, "per cent."

The whole difficulty stems from your laziness: you failed to specify what the comparison basis for the "rate" was. Is it per-murder-victim, per-capita, or what?

How about you just aknowledge it when someone notes your sloppiness and vagueness and straighten out what you want to say, rather than throwing a whiny tantrum about some inane thing like the semantic differences between "percent" and "rate." That shit doesn't impress anyone.

No Quad, you have not shown that is an "extraneous fact".

If you think I've been trying to mount some "proof" of that to your satisfaction, well, think again. I'm pointing out obvious features here: that you're conflating the higher ambient crime rate in black populations (which is statistically identical to that of any population of comparable socioeconomic status, regardless of race) with a higher propensity for intraracial murder. When in fact white murder victims are almost as likely to have been killed by whites, as black murder victims are to have been killed by blacks.

I'll track down the research and see if it supports your claim that our justice system is racist.

WTF of course it supports my claim. I just cited you a summary of its findings, quoted from the paper of record. Do you think that the NYT is lying about what the research's findings are?

What you meant to say was: "I'll see if I can find a reason to discard the findings that contradict my preferred worldview."

 

[adoucette]

Yes it is. It's exactly a rate. It's the number of instances per one hundred base cases. Hence, "per cent."

NOPE

That represents just the relative frequency that one's killer will be of the same race, it has nothing to do with the RATE of killing, which is expressed in murders per given number of people.

And yes, it was mainly Blacks killing Blacks at a high rate.

Blacks represent 13% of the population

BUT


Blacks accounted for 49% of all homicide victims in 2005,

Black males accounted for about 52% of the nearly 13,000 male homicide victims in 2005.

About 93% of black homicide victims and 85% of white victims in single victim and single offender homicides were murdered by someone of their race.

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/bvvc.pdf

 

[Syzygys]

So we are passing judgments on the criminal penelties of other countries now?

Why not? Does Norway have immunity from the interwebs???

Anyhow, he should get a very light sentence like 3 years so the relatives could murder him with still fresh memories...

 

[Bells]

What determines if a sentence will be per victim or just grouped together? He wouldn't ever get out if he was tried for each death.

The maximum he can get for his crime is 21 years. The alternative is that the prosecutor applies to have him incarcerated indefinitely if he will pose a threat to society when it is time to release him. In other words, after 21 years of rehabilitation and therapy, if he is still found to be dangerous and as, well, insane, as he is now, he will remain in prison until he is either deemed safe enough to release after more therapy or be made to remain there until his natural death.

The interesting thing about Breivik is that he is mad. Very much so. However, he demands to be tried as someone sane and the psychiatrists who have assessed him have given two different reports. The first stated he was insane. The second that he was sane and not psychotic.

However, if you look at his appearance in court yesterday, where he gave the close fisted salute that one sees amongst the ultra right wing hate groups like the Neo Nazis and then declared that he had acted in self defence and told the judge that he did not recognise her or the Norwegian Courts because they stem from a system that supports and allows multiculturism. His self-defense claim stems from what he saw as a war and an ethnic cleansing by migrants in Norway. The man is not sane, but he views himself as sane and two psychiatrists agree that he is not psychotic in the second assessment that was made. The court could very well deny him his wish of not being deemed insane and actually view him as being insane, whereupon he will probably be institutionalised in a mental institution for the rest of his life.

 

[quadraphonics]

NOPE

That represents just the relative frequency that one's killer will be of the same race, it has nothing to do with the RATE of killing, which is expressed in murders per given number of people.

I should have expected that you'd punt on the substance, and instead pursue this inane diversion.

Let's take a break from your shouting to note that both of the statistics express some phenomenon per given number of people. We can note that number of black people killed by other blacks, per 100 black murder victims. We can count the number of black people killed by blacks, per 100,000 black people living in the USA. Or whatever other base cases we wish to dream up. These are all rates, and the fact remains that you failed to specify your base population in the first place, and that I asked which of the various possible interpretations you meant.

And now that you've been confronted with clear counter-argumentation for each of those possible cases - which illustrate how clearly racist you are - you're looking for some distraction to invent some grievance over. So now you're on to your usual childish bullshit tactic of exaggerating some minor semantic diversion. Sour grapes for sore losers, as it were.

 

[adoucette]

Nope, your's isn't a rate at all.

And so it's you who are pursuing an irrelevent statistic about ratio of same race offenders vs different race when the real issue is RATE of those murders:

And the fact is:

Blacks accounted for 49% of all homicide victims in 2005 and Black males accounted for about 52% of the nearly 13,000 male homicide victims in 2005.

So that is 3 times the expected rate based on demographics

The fact that 93% of black homicide victims and 85% of white victims in single victim and single offender homicides were murdered by someone of their own race is NOT the issue when one is discussing the high rate of Black on Black crime.

To cloud the real issue you want to focus on the fact that our mainly segregated societies yield mainly same race murders as if that is in some way more meaningful than the fact that HALF the murders are committed by Blacks, and 9 out of 10 times it's on another Black man.

Which was the basis of my ORIGINAL claim.

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/bvvc.pdf

 

[Pandaemoni]

And to YOU I also say, HOGWASH!!! The REAL purpose of prison is not to give them a vacation with free food, clothing, medical care, etc. it's to remove them from society for the protection of society!!!

Which suggests all criminals should get life (unless they cease to be a danger to society). That, in turn, suggests that we might want to rehabilitate them in some way, so they cease to be a danger.

Prisons as "punishment" is a relatively new concept. Originally jails and prisons were used to house those who were awaiting trial or punishment, and the punishment itself would be something different (branding, public whipping, flaying the skin, cutting off a hand, putting you on public display in stocks, execution, etc.). In the late 1810s to 1820s Auburn (New York) and Philadelphia got it into their collective heads that solitude and compassion could rehabilitate criminals, and the trend swept through the western world. After that, prisons became more about long-term housing. The problem is that for an annoyingly large percentage of criminals rehabilitation doesn't work, and 180 years later, we're still using a prison model that was based around that concept.

I am not against the concept, mind you, if someone could find a way to actually rehab more of the criminals.

Prisons weren't designed to keep society safe by separating criminals from the rest of us, they were designed to be places where the separation encouraged prisoners to do some soul-searching and become penitent...hence "penitentiary".

As for Brevik, Norway's law isn't that crazy to me. Start with the assumption that possibly anyone can reform given multiple decades. That is not a crazy thought, as everyone changes over time. Then add on top of that that some people don't change, and the humility to admit that you can't tell which will change and which won't. Finally you give yourself the authority to deny release for those who you think have not in fact changed, and you give yourself the right to make that determination after the multiple decades have passed.

If he is a danger to society in 21 years *and* they release him anyway, that will be a travesty. That they are waiting the 21 years before making reassessing the situation doesn't bother me. In effect, I suppose the outrage is that they are leaving open the possibility that he might be rehabilitated some day, in which case it will be a waste of money to keep him incarcerated, but it seems obvious to me that anyone "might" eventually be rehabilitated.

 

[quadraphonics]

Nope, your's isn't a rate at all.

You say that, and yet you do not substantiate it with any complaint about the definition of "rate" I gave.

So obviously you're just throwing your usual hissy fit, apparently in an attempt to bury all the observations of your clear racism. Typical.

And so it's you who are pursuing an irrelevent statistic about ratio of same race offenders

You assert that it is "irrelevant" that a murdered black person is roughly as likely to have been killed by a black person, as a murdered white person is to have been killed by a white person? To the issue of whether blacks are prone to killing "themselves?"

Well, substantiate that assertion then. Because it looks pretty danged relevant, on its face, and you've offered nothing in the way of support for its supposed irrelevance. You're making an extraordinary assertion, and backing it with nothing more than cry-babying.

What do you expect to prove with all this empty bluster and table-pounding? Other than that you're exactly the type of combative dissembler that I accuse you of being, that is.

when the issue is RATE of those murders:

The fact that you'd prefer to focus such in order to conflate the higher ambient crime rate in black populations with a higher "cultural" predisposition to violence is indeed an issue. It's an issue with you - as per usual - working your darnedest to inject malicious, misleading right-wing talking points into the discourse. In the service of racism, lately.

You want to focus on the fact that our mainly segregated societies yield mainly same race murders as if that is in some way more meaningful than the fact that HALF the murders are committed by Blacks, and 9 out of 10 times it's on another Black man.

In your empty bluster you seem to have missed the fact that the "mainly same race murders" statistic there is exactly the same as the "9 out of 10 times" statistic at the end. So your rage there is a complete hash. Try taking a deep breath and thinking your posts through before hitting "submit reply."

And the fact that I've already given extensive argumentation about why the fact that the ambient crime rates in black populations are higher is indeed more meaningful than the non-issue of a high intraracial crime incidence. Why don't you respond to that, and counter with your own argumentation, if I'm so clearly in the wrong? Why, instead, so you persist in repeating yourself and shouting non-sequiturs? Looks like you don't have a defensible point, and are just up to your usual playground tactics.

Meanwhile let's note, again, that you never bother citing the other parts of those same statistics: HALF the murders are committed by Whites, and 9 out of 10 times it's on another White man. So, by your logic, we need to explain the cultural disposition towards violence exhibited by the White man, no? Why does this implication only work in one direction? Why do you avoid even stating the corresponding stats for white people?

All of which points out, again, that the only disparity to speak of here is in the ambient overall crime rate. And you've already been told that this is attributable entirely to socioeconomic factors - and so, the history of racist oppression. You're going to have to make a choice: you can be a racist, or you can be a rational person supported by the facts. What you can't do, is browbeat me into pretending the former is the latter.

 

[quadraphonics]

Which suggests all criminals should get life .

Actually, it suggests that all criminals should get death.

In effect, I suppose the outrage is that they are leaving open the possibility that he might be rehabilitated some day,

The "public safety" angle seems to be a secondary one - the primary cause of the outrage appears to be over the question of justice. The contention is that the guy deserves life in prison, if not outright death, for what he's done, totally irrespective of whatever rehabilitation he might undergo in the future.

 

[adoucette]

You assert that it is "irrelevant" that a murdered black person is roughly as likely to have been killed by a black person, as a murdered white person is to have been killed by a white person? To the issue of whether blacks are prone to killing "themselves?"

Yes.

FACT: Half the murders are commited by Blacks, but they only make up 12% of the population.

FACT: 9 out of 10 of those murders will be on other Blacks.

So let's see how this plays out, and we'll use Black Males for this excercise:

Black males accounted for about 52% (or 6,800) of the nearly 13,000 male homicide victims in 2005.

And we know that ~93% were by Blacks, so Blacks killed ~6,300 other Black males.

Now the White males make up the other 87% of the population, and there were only 6,200 murders.

So just that number shows that Blacks males are killing other black Males at a rate that is over SEVEN times greater than Whites are being killed (and while the numbers of interracial murders is low, still twice as many whites are killed by Blacks as Blacks are killed by Whites).

So yes, the figures clearly show that Blacks are the predominate killer of other Blacks and they are doing it to their own race at a rate that is FAR higher than whites are being killed by anybody.

The fact that you'd prefer to focus such in order to conflate the higher ambient crime rate in black populations with a higher "cultural" predisposition to violence is indeed an issue. It's an issue with you - as per usual - working your darnedest to inject malicious, misleading right-wing talking points into the discourse. In the service of racism, lately.

No Quad, Racism would be to claim that the higher crime rates are inately due to being Black.

But I don't think it's inate.

I think it's a cultural thing, that was particularly related to the "gangster" culture that was very prevalent for a while and is now dying out.

Note the trends downward are VERY significant, and indeed the raw numbers were 40% higher in the 90s, but with a smaller population of Blacks, so things are much better today than they were just a decade ago, and if it was INATE, you wouldn't see such a downward trend.

But Culture can indeed change that fast and Black Culture can and has changed for the better. (clearly the Black Socio-economic situation hasn't made nearly such an improvement, so it's not just about income)