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November 2009

No discussion of this important and divisive issue? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.80.157.186 (talk) 20:03, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, this isn't a forum, so open-ended discussion really isn't desired. But if you see ways to improve the article, feel free to bring them up. --Aryaman (talk) 13:13, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Wow, you leave for a year and look what happens....

I just thought I'd pop in to say "well done" on this article. I've been absent from Wikipedia for almost a year and thus not participating in editing here, which used to be one of my more frequent areas of contribution to the project. I'm glad to see it's been taken care of; this article looks amazing compared to what it started off as.

Unfortunately, I have nothing constructive to add beyond that, except that I'll try to pitch in when I can. -- Y|yukichigai (ramble argue check) 06:53, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Moving non-intro parts of "Theories of causation" section to "Race and crime" article

As for now, there are almost nothing, especially something sourced, in the general race and crime article about causation. On the other hand, there is a a very long section here about theories of causation that is, except for the intro, almost always making general claims about race and crime rather than just talking about the US situation. As such I propose moving the non-intro parts of that section to the race and crime article.Miradre (talk) 23:42, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Data tables

The data tables has several problems:

  1. Old data
  2. Percentages ignores population size of each group
  3. Sometimes unclear which table in the original source has been used
  4. Alterations from the source like "Forcible rape" being called rape
  5. Hispanics and whites often clumped together into one group
  6. Innumerable errors in the figures

The most serious problems is errors which are not easy to spot compared to the source since the figures have been converted to percentages. But there are many if checking. Anyway, changing to percentages does not really improve the situation since population size of each group is not accounted for.

In order to fix several of these problems I suggest simply replacing the tables with direct links to the most recent tables. This will fix the data errors, use the most current report, make the source clear, and remove the OR alterations. As well as providing more data since the current article tables are often a very selective selection of what the original tables state. This will not fix the White/Hispanic clumping together problem but that is unfortunately not easily solved.Miradre (talk) 00:02, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

"Holy grail" in Wright quote - correct?

I'm referring to the quote here

If social security is the holy grail of politics, race and crime is the holy grail of criminology. Touch it and you expose yourself to wrath and fury. For this reason, many criminologists are loath to examine the connection between race and crime outside the modern sociological paradigm that holds that race is a mere social construct - that is, something defined by any given society, ... a 'social invention'.

I'm pretty sure "holy grail" is really supposed to be third rail, given that it makes so much more sense and they sound phonetically similar. But I don't have access to the original source, so I can't double check it. Thoughts? --WayneMokane (talk) 15:04, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Remove statement about high IQs of serial killers?

The link (#93), a study by Mike Aamodt of Radford University, actually contradicts the article's statement that serial killers have an average IQ of 123. Serial killers have average IQs. I want to remove the statement but I am not sure about wikipedia protocol. Are we supposed to discuss it first? Oakbranch8 (talk) 19:05, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I left a note on your talk page, but official wikipedia policy is bold, revert, discuss. An edit made in good faith, even one that is controversial, is the best way to keep an article current, factual, and neutral. TreacherousWays (talk) 18:02, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Data with better categories?

I thought the writers of this article had just been lazy, pretending criminals/victims are all black/white. Look in the sources and turns out that's DOJ's fault. Lump "others" together, or say white/black/"Asians and American Indians" here and white/black/"Hispanic" there, and other vagueries. Can anyone find tables with finer classifications? Badanedwa (talk) 18:56, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Should have coverage of fragile families, unintended pregnancies

One aspect/causal factor that doesn't seem to be covered here is effects of family. Fragile families (those where child born out of wedlock) and children resulting from unintended pregnancy (especially unwanted pregnancy) are correlated with (and probably causally linked to) numerous social problems, including juvenile delinquency and criminal behavior. Since they are also correlated with race and poverty seems like should be some coverage here of such connections. There is some coverage of this, though incomplete and a bit dated in racial inequality in the American criminal justice system. Zodon (talk) 07:59, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Please be very careful with statistics.

Especially with areas such as this that are highly contested, it's extremely important to be very careful citing correct statistics. I came here just to see what the page would say about this, and noticed the claim that black crime sentences are 60% longer than white sentences for the same crimes, which doesn't agree with other things I've read. There are (or were) two references, and if you look at them you see (a) this same claim in an article from a site called presstv.com that I've never heard of, linking to a particular study; (b) a link to the actual study itself, whose abstract says 10%, not 60%. As a result, I changed the figure to 10% and deleted the first link. This is not simply a matter of differing numbers -- 60% suggests shocking and obvious racism in the criminal justice system, whereas 10% does not suggest this to anywhere near the same degree, and there could certainly be non-racist explanations. Given the explosive nature of assertions of racism today, we need to be extremely careful in only making verifiable claims and avoiding sources that are biased.

In fact, presstv.com is run by the Iranian government, so it hardly surprising that they are an utterly unreliable source. Benwing (talk) 04:21, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

OR Household income

So far the only citations in the Household Income Correlation are to two primary sources of data. The sources do not draw any of the correlations discussed in the section. The section gives the appearance of being original research. It needs to have some reliable secondary sources to support the observations/conclusions made there, or, failing that, the whole section should be deleted (or moved to talk page for improvement until sources can be found and integrated). Zodon (talk) 06:29, 17 April 2012 (UTC)


There seems to be an error in the second graphic of this section: the pink area and red line captions seem to be inverted. As it is, it shows a positive correlation between income and crime (up -> up ; down -> down). It contradicts the point, and is inconsistent with the first graphic. I haven't checked the rest, but would recommend the author to review (I didn't post on the graphic itself, as the WP instructions are that you're not supposed to ask for a correction to a graphic on the graphic's page itself - which is weird, but there you go). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.198.174.127 (talk) 00:13, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


Many data sources are flawed regarding white/Hispanic. Until just recently my county sheriff dept listed most Hispanics as whites. I can only guess how many sources of data have the same error. This greatly distorts the overall total picture of crime and ethnicity in the US. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.205.246.133 (talk) 12:54, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

This should be in article

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/17/us/violent-crime/index.html Victimization rates among whites and hispanics(but NOT blacks) has increased, espicially for serious crimes. Since most crimes are intraracial, this also means they are most likely being victimized by their own race. Should be mentioned Plutocrackz (talk) 20:26, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

There are many studies that correlate lead exposure to rates of violence and they match up even better than other measures do so this should be included in the causes. I grew up in the 60s and all the kids had pretty high lead exposure, mine was mainly the leaded gasoline as I lived by a parking garage. Adults can get rid of 99% of lead in about 2 weeks where children can only get rid of about 30% of it so it ends up in their bones and is released when they need calcium. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/06/01/new-evidence-that-lead-exposure-increases-crime/

IQ Theory subsection of Theories of causation

The 2nd paragraph of IQ theory subsection seems like a bit of a non-sequitar. Saying critics point out that the IQ gap has narrowed over the years due to environmental factors is irrelevant to whether IQ differences explain racial differences in crime rate. The criticism seems to be directed at the hereditarian model of racial IQ differences, but the first paragraph doesn't have anything to do with hereditarianism at all.--XO^10 (talk) 22:31, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

As one of the people who helped write the current version of the article, I agree with you that these criticisms don’t make a lot of sense. So does Varoon Arya, who wrote more of the article than any other editor, although he’s not active here at the moment. But the fact is that these criticisms appear in the source material, so NPOV policy demands that we include them, regardless of whether they’re actually reasonable and relevant to this topic or not.
Varoon Arya and I discussed an issue similar to this a few months ago here. I’ll quote his own comment about it:
I am in full agreement here. But sadly, these (rather tired and fully insufficient) arguments are the ones left-leaning sociologists and criminologists specialized in the field of Race and Crime Studies are still (as recently as 2009) using to offer at least the show of criticism of the "hard science" claims. To get into any serious criticism of IQ Theory or r/K Theory, we'd have to leave the field of Race and Crime Studies, and I'm not sure if that's crossing the line into WP:SYNTH. I had to work surprisingly hard to make the critique in many areas not look ridiculous, frankly. Take Mann, for example, whose work is considered by certain parties in Race and Crime Studies to be "seminal". (And I can quote two who use that very word.) If you run through her list of arguments with even a minimum of critical evaluation, the logical fallacies and patently false claims (not to mention the clear bias) are shocking. Sadly, Gabbidon evidences many of the same weaknesses, though he puts much more effort in trying to at least appear objective, and I trust him more to give a balanced presentation. However, Gabbidon & Greene's 2-page treatment of "Intelligence, Race, and Crime" is loaded with enough bias to make it impossible to use in the article without heavy filtering. Take the following passage, for example:

By this time [1900's], however, the notion of intelligence and crime had become accepted. While the notion of intelligence and crime had existed prior to the aforementioned studies, the development of the IQ test gave proponents of the idea a tool to test their beliefs. Fortunately, though, the idea lost its appeal. Curran and Renzetti (2001) noted, however, that the damage had already been done.

It doesn't get any better than that, and often gets worse. Their critique boils down to exactly what I have in the section. It's a case of preaching to the choir, really. The leftists have long since rejected the notion of race on moral grounds, and with it their ability to counter hard science claims with anything other than shock and disbelief that anyone could be "racist" enough to investigate the issue with some objectivity. (Wright's 2009 piece on this subject is a gem, by the way.) But what can we do? I tried to present the critique as it is presented in the current literature. Can I help it if it's not convincing?
If you have any suggestions about ways this section could be improved without violating WP:NPOV or WP:SYNTH, you’re welcome to suggest them here. But with these policies in mind, the current wording is the best that we’ve been able to come up with. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:08, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
well, usually if there is a "critique" as daft as you make this out to be, there is a critique of the critique we can cite. After all, Wikipedians, even smart Wikipedians, cannot be the only ones noticing what is going wrong here. And if a "critique" has really no merit whatsoever, we are free to simply not mention it (WP:DUE: everything we put in must be sourced, but nobody asks that everything that can be sourced must be put in). --dab (𒁳) 19:58, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
The subject of crime and intelligence is often mentioned in writings on that subject from intelligence researchers. Make a section for intelligence and race, and quote some of them. I have university access and can supply access to whatever articles need to be quoted from. I also have extensive knowledge of the area. Perhaps, one could start with Gordon, Robert A. "Everyday life as an intelligence test: Effects of intelligence and intelligence context." Intelligence 24.1 (1997): 203-320. http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/gordon-1997-everyday-life-as-an-intelligence-test-effects-of-intelligence-and-intelligence-context.pdf Deleet (talk) 03:12, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Proper, truthful information please

I have learned to double check things for myself. I had, in the past, referenced information directly from sites. I have found Wikipedia to be useful since it’s inception. But I have always been aware that ANYONE can publish or EDIT the information. When I came to this page to reference the percentage of races arrested for murder, looking at the numbers in the chart, I noticed a discrepancy. The percentages added up to 110%. So I referenced the information on the FBI site. I would assume that the percentages of whites arrested for murder was purposely entered or changed to 42.8% which is actually 32.8%. I say purposely due to the fact that the original author had referenced the proper information for all other figures. An error? Again I would assume this was purposely done due to the inclusion of the following statement.


“White Americans were arrested more than any other race for murder in 2008, making up nearly 43% of all arrests.”


That was incorrect. You could not make that statement referencing the FBI data. But with the real numbers I cannot make any statement that any one race was arrested more than any other due to the fact of the “unknown race” being 29%. It would be my assumption that the 29% unknown race number would be attributed to missing information as to the race as opposed to an arresting officer not being able to ascertain the offenders race.

I did enter the proper figure and omitted the incorrect statement.

Proper, truthful information please.

Iwilldoublecheck (talk) 18:18, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Truthful or not, it is misleading, if one does not account for the relative size of the population. What matters is how much a given race/group is over or underrepresented in the various crime rates. Deleet (talk) 03:14, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Hmmmm.....general OT comment on single citations....

Yes, OT for this, but applicable here as a meta-opinion: Over the years I've formed the conclusion that Wikipedia must disallow entries without 2 or 3 distinct cited sources. At least for "certain" pages flagged as such by moderators. People in many controversial articles are finding a single agenda driven source and pretending that that is somehow validating. And it's not easy to verify sources currently. Yes, it would decrease volume for such pages flagged for "3 citations only" (etc.), but what's the point in having non-credible information?Tgm1024 (talk) 12:36, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Testosterone Theory

Regarding violent crimes (robberies, rape, murder) men top the crime charts compared to women. An explanation would be testosterone. Do black and white males enjoy equal levels of testosterone? The answer is that black males have higher levels of testosterone than white males http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0039128X92900325 {{cite journal|last=Ellis|first=Lee|coauthors=Helmuth Nyborg|title=Racial/ethnic variations in male testosterone levels: A probable contributor to group differences in health|journal=Steroids|year=1992|month=Februari|volume=57|issue=2|pages=72-75|url=http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0039128X92900325%7Caccessdate=17 July 2013}Racial testosterone differences may explain differences in violent behavior and/or number of violent crimes committed. 80.56.78.118 (talk) 12:30, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Primary sources

Most of the Crime Rate Statistics section is referenced to primary sources, and there has been selective removal of information based on WP:NOR. The policy states:

Policy: Unless restricted by another policy, primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia; but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the source but without further, specialized knowledge.

As per this, they are plain facts not viewpoints, and I am reverting the removals. Karpouzi (talk) 09:34, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

The content you restored do not constitute plain facts. They are statistics which cover a very narrow band of time with no historical context. Their relevance only decreases ad time passes. If you have some secondary sources which indicate broader trends, and the current state of affairs, and puts them into the broader social context, those would be suitable for an article such as this. Primary source data collected by wikipedia editors is not encyclopedic. aprock (talk) 00:22, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

article merger?

This article is a politically correct joke. It is the type of article that comes up when someone is looking for statistics on crime broken down by race, but it has devolved into some politically correct that buries the lede almost completely, and lists a bunch of theories as to why the crime rates are different while almost ignoring the fact that they are. A sad effort. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.188.90.70 (talk) 22:26, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't see how the two topics are more than vaguely related. One is primarily about the backgrounds of the offenders and victims. The other is about racial discrimination between law enforcement and people of certain ethnicities, guilty or not. They look good now and address their respective topics in a specific encyclopedic manner. Merging them would likely result in a magazine-type variety article where some people want it to focus on crime demographics and some people want to make it a generic lecture on US discrimination. Obviously opening it up to vandalism, or to one politically motivated side shifting the focus of the article to either discrimination OR interracial crime rather than both depending on their motive. In conclusion, I'm against the merger. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.246.205.139 (talk) 01:49, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree on no merger. No one has explained why they should be merged or expressed support. Nothing has happened for months so I am going to remove the template.Miradre (talk) 06:28, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

This article is god-awful. The beginning introduction acts as if we are going to get facts... and then this article just talks about the methodologies of studies, rather than the statistics. This is absolute garbage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.209.127 (talk) 20:03, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

This article should be titled something like "Reasons for the Racial Disparities in Crime Rates in the United States" because as written it doesn't even provide the date about its erstwhile topic. It seeks to come up with a bunch of reasons why blacks are so much more violent than whites without initially acknowledging the easily referenced data that establishes that they are... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.158.189.28 (talk) 12:44, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Black, black; White, white

When talking about people or paint, the words white and black are small case letters, unless they begin a sentence. An attempt to give pride to people by capitilizing the word Black is possibly the most pathetic attempt to help people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.251.32.254 (talk) 14:21, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

tot &nd am ende sind sie alle gestoorben — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.28.118.89 (talk) 12:19, 28 December 2012 (UTC)


This is probably one of the only studies I've ever seen where they lump Whites and Hispanics in the same category, which completely skews the White number to make it look comparable to the Black ones. That was clearly an attempt to reinforce white guilt, because if you look at the statistics for murder in NYC, Hispanics are 34.8% and Whites are 8.7%. The need to twist the numbers to fit a political agenda here is completely obvious. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.154.187.34 (talk) 17:41, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

This is not the correct section to discuss that in, but there are studies that lump Hispancis with Whites. Most studies control for Latino ethnicity by using an ethnicity dummy variable, but it still keeps the race part. EvergreenFir (talk) 04:25, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

What is missing

If I search on WP for "Race and crime in the US" the first thing I want to see is this:

From all crimes in the US, Blacks make up xy %, Whites xy %, Hispanics xy %, Asians xy %, etc.

That HAS to be in the artical - clear and well-arranged. I dont want to hear any explanations or complicated theories, befor I haven't heard WHAT exactly needs to be explaned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:57:EC0E:7801:A9CE:7298:E20B:F544 (talk) 16:16, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Reality isn't that simple, sadly. You can get different numbers depending on what you ask, how you measure it, etc. Do you use UCR or NCVS? We discussing all crime? Or just violent crime? There is no easy answer in the lead because there is no easy answer. EvergreenFir (talk) 04:28, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Evidence that SES not causative of criminal behavior

http://m.bjp.rcpsych.org/content/early/2014/08/14/bjp.bp.113.136200.abstract This above study is something we can definitely cite when it comes to the SES-causation school of thought, as it directly contradicts it. Can it be cited?Wajajad (talk) 14:55, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

this is still "race and crime in the United States". Instead of citing Swedish studies to debunk flawed "causation theories" on the US situation, it would make more sense to just remove the flawed stuff, otherwise the page will just derail completely. The entire "SES" debate can easily get its own page, which then would mean that this page shall link to it instead of burying the data pertinent to the article topic beneath random hand-waving and ad-hoc "causation" theories. --dab (𒁳) 06:11, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Statistics section

This section relies heavily on primary sources and editor synthesis. While there is good reason to have the section above, which details the major sources, the statistics section is an ad hoc collection of statistics that were researched and presented by wikipedia editors. aprock (talk) 17:44, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

At this point does anyone have some high quality secondary sources which can be used to properly contextualize the statistics section? If not, I suggest removing it in due course. aprock (talk) 15:57, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

this article is all about "contextualization", isn't it? And by "contextualization" we mean, of course, bury all data, no matter how blatant, behind a wall of text if it happens to be inconvenient. That's not the way this should work. If a case is as painfully clear statistically as this one, you can present the statistics just on its own merit. The wall of text about "theories of causation" and what not can then easily be delegated to a WP:SS sub-article on trends in sociology. --dab (𒁳) 06:08, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

If you think there's something you can do to improve the article, by all means go for it. aprock (talk) 06:12, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Sex and status as central to aggression rather than food?

A lot of people in the world have sex or status as central to their aggression. People who are criminals would continue to be aggressive toward other people even if they had plenty of food and shelter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.45.19.98 (talk) 19:13, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

@50.45.19.98: What does this mean? I noticed that someone added this to the article, but they didn't add any additional information. Jarble (talk) 03:28, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I removed it from the article as it is (1) vague, (2) irrelevant (it's a "cause" of crime without a stated relation to race), and (3) not otherwise in the article, only in the lead. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:08, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Genetics and Crime

There should be a section that addresses this directly, one way or the other, whether there is evidence to support the connection or not.Jonny Quick (talk) 23:49, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Why? This is "Race and crime in the United States", it should focus on reporting statistics, and the policy debate on how to deal with (unwelcome aspects of) statistics. There is Race and crime, where such a section would be at home. There used to be an article there, once, but it keeps getting blanked[1] apparently by people who are somehow offended by the existence of the topic (and for some reason Wikipedia hasn't got around to tell them that this is irrelevant as patiently as it usually does with religiously motivated content-blankers). Here is the blanked section on the topic you are interested in. It looks perfectly fine and encyclopedic to me, so perhaps somebody feels up to restoring it. --dab (𒁳) 18:50, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Come to think of it, we have Correlates_of_crime#Biological. It doesn't have to be about "race", it's enough to examine possible genetic correlations with increased delinquency, regardless of race. To such extent as a biological basis for increased delinquency can be established, it will stand to reason to extend the discussion to the topic of race from there. If the topic has any takers, I imagine what you should look for is time preference, i.e. decreased ability to think of the consequences of one's actions. --dab (𒁳) 18:54, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

I think the best way to handle this will be as follows: I have created Genetic correlates of criminal behavior as a redirect to the relevant section Correlates of crime. This can easily become a standalone article if somebody is willing to expand it. You will notice that this is not about race, but simply about research into correlates between genetic factors and delinquency. The race and crime page should also be developed further, especially considering the content that was blanked summarily, and it can among other things build on the data collected in Genetic correlates of criminal behavior.

Say we look at Monoamine oxidase A, and the growing body of literature tying this gene to a tendency of violent crime. This has nothing to do with race per se. But say another study compares the rate of the relevant variants of Monoamine oxidase A between races within some given society and finds a significant difference, and then tries to estimate to what extent observed crime rates between these groups can be tied to variation in this gene: such a study would be material for the race and crime page, but it would be able to build on the "genetic correlates of criminal behavior" where evidence on mere gene variants is discussed without reference to any kind of racial grouping (e.g. the Finnish study comparing Finns (with one variant of the gene) with other Finns (with another variant)).

This will be beneficient because we are clearly exposed to people who see it as their mission to prevent any discussion of the relevant research literature on Wikipedia, presumably because they do not like the question even being investigated. Needless to say, this isn't permissible, but nevertheless such dedicated "anti-Wikpedians" can cause significant disruption if showing up in sufficient numbers. So it will be helpful to have an article where the genetics research that is detached from the category "race" can be discussed in peace (as far as I can see, any racial topic is a troll magnet, but simple research into genetics not so much). --dab (𒁳) 11:15, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Comment by Objectiveverify

you need to be careful using sources

reference 72 cited in this article indicates that white females are more likely to identify their assailant in rape cases when the assailant is black, that reference is nothing more than a pamphlet with no data to support their position, ie it is not worth the paper it is written on.

I recommend to at least to appear objective, that this source be removed as well as any information used from that source.

otherwise the article is nothing more than a politically motivated fraud.

Objectiveverify (talk) 18:48, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Consideration for new citation

Please take a look at this reliable source here. We can use it for a citation in this article since it has the latest in research. 74.14.72.134 (talk) 12:59, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

That appears to be an opinion piece. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 18:02, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

The Color of Crime

The report, from the New Century Foundation, as a source have been removed from the article. Please explain why. Reports from advocacy groups are not prohibited. It certainly passes a relevancy and notability criteria since it is widely cited in this area. The statistics of the report are from official statistics and reports in the scientific literature. If there is disagreement with a figure, then an opposing view should be stated with a source. Just attacking the author and not the content is a not valid ad hominem attack. As such, I propose the report should be added back.Miradre (talk) 22:06, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it's a reliable source. If you think it is, take it to the Reliable Sources noticeboard.

CordeliaNaismith (talk) 22:20, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Also, I see that a user has just removed the citations to The Color of Crime without removing the information from the source. I've removed the now-unsourced material from the article. CordeliaNaismith (talk) 22:25, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
I may, but I would be interesting to hear your reason for why it is not a reliable source. Let me rephrase. We should not state that the report contains the WP:Truth on this matter but that as a notable view on this topic it should be included as per WP:NPOV.Miradre (talk) 22:27, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
It is not a reliable4 source because it is a report by a political advocacy group which does not live up to the standards of WP:RS or indeed to any academic standard. It was quite rightly removed.·Maunus·ƛ· 00:00, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
The views of political advocacy groups are of course not prohibited in WP. As a notable view in this area it should be included.Miradre (talk) 00:05, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
You did not use it to source "views" but to support "facts" that is obviously not a correct use for such a source.·Maunus·ƛ· 00:11, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Reports from various advocacy groups often include research which is allowed in Wikipedia. We should make attribution clearer and state when a view regarding public policy is stated (although this was already done but maybe it could be clearer) and when it is reporting official statistics and scientific studies in this area.Miradre (talk) 00:17, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't think so.·Maunus·ƛ· 00:18, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Why not?Miradre (talk) 00:21, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Because we need to establish mainstream views in the article before we include fringe ones.·Maunus·ƛ· 00:25, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
How is for example a figure regarding the risk of being in prison, based on official statistics, a fringe view? Miradre (talk) 00:34, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
It is not but advocacy groups are not trustworthy sources for statistical data. If you want to include the data get it from the original source or from a mainstream summary of it. We also don't use David irving's figures as the main source for numbers of holocaust victims.·Maunus·ƛ· 02:31, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Godwin's law. There is nothing prohibiting research from think-thanks and so on in Wikipedia. Yes, the attribution should be clearer, stating that this is NCF calculations based on official data, but otherwise I see no reason for excluding it.Miradre (talk) 02:38, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't honestly care what kinds of reasons you see. Get a consensus without me and you can include it.·Maunus·ƛ· 02:41, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Wait, you are objecting regardless of reasons? It is a case of Wikipedia:I just don't like it? Miradre (talk) 02:51, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
No it is a case of you not seeing any kind of reason in general, for which reason I don't need to take your "lack of seeing a reason" seriously. I am providing reasons - you don't see them. And then you say that its a case of IDON*TLIKEIT - more like a case of IDIDNTHEARIT from your side.·Maunus·ƛ· 11:29, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
You did provide some reasons but they did not follow policy. Research from think-thanks, interest groups, and so on are not prohibited in Wikipedia. Maybe you should take a look at what you argue against. Have a look: [2] Miradre (talk) 11:35, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
I am not trying to "censor" your precious "white nationalist" viewpoint, but I am arguing that it is not a reliable source for statistics. And I am not the only one. Get a better source for the statistics. Write up a proposal for how you want to include the "view" of New Century Foundation then we can discuss that.·Maunus·ƛ· 11:45, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Again, there is no difference between them presenting a research figure or simply presenting a policy view. Obviously there should be attribution but there is no prohibition against "numbers" from such groups. If you agree on that I can certainly propose a text.Miradre (talk) 11:48, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Again you IDIDN*THEARTHAT. Take it to the RS noticeboard. ·Maunus·ƛ· 11:50, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Maybe I will. But lets try to resolve it here. Do you have a Wikipedia policy page that prohibits research numbers from think-thinks, special interest groups, and so on? Miradre (talk) 11:55, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Anyway, I am not going to argue for this anymore. There are other sources for the data and arguments. They should be less susceptible to being rejected simply because of the authors so I will use them instead. Some already added.Miradre (talk) 16:43, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

When the report comes from a racist group with neo-Nazi ties, of course racism and neo-Nazism are relevant. 96.255.9.115 (talk) 21:07, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

I lend my support to Miradre above. While it is problematic for NPOV reasons to use data from political advocacy groups, it is not problematic to cite academic research and official statistics as presented by advocacy groups. If it is a a particularly well-known group or work (I don't know), then it surely warrants representation here. Deleet (talk) 03:19, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't it come from American Renaissance, a racist group with neo-Nazi ties? 96.255.9.115 (talk) 21:07, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Can sources be "too old"

Do you need only the most recent books/studies, because I have an old book by Ferdinand Lundberg ("The Rich and the Super-Rich") written in 1968 that has tons of data on crime & many things in addition to why US prisons have mostly been filled with poor minorities, but I don't know if that is too old, & can or cannot be considered a reliable source? Pepper9798 (talk) 22:18, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

if it is being used for history @Pepper9798: then no it is not too old, but I would be wary of the books underlying assumptions and I don't think you can use it to prove anything social or scientific; the world has changed a lot since then. Elinruby (talk) 00:57, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Undiscussed "unreliable source" tag on source 83

I don't see any recent discussion of this tag, and the RAND corporation, which funded and published the article, is well known to be scientifically reliable, e.g. due to its links with Nobel prizewinners of various stripes. I'm going to remove the tag, pending further discussion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.226.214.249 (talk) 15:48, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi 134.226.214.249, Thanks for asking for and beginning a discussion. I think I added the credibilityflag in January 2015. The source Paul Heaton and Charles Loeffler. 2008. Do Police Discriminate? Evidence from Multiple-Offender Crimes works.bepress.com is self published. I think we need a different source, if you want to support the statements made in this paragraph. I would not remove it, as you advised "consider removing the source", but would like to see another source for this--Wuerzele (talk) 02:08, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
I've removed the tags here, they're clearly not justified. Both the who tags are answered in p. 1 of the paper itself, and the rather long list of peer reviewed authors referenced hardly bears insertion into this relatively brief paragraph. Furthermore, the unreliable source tag is also clearly erroneous, as the paper itself is nothing more than a metastudy of various other peer-reviewed and published papers. The author has a wide selection of papers published in other journals and went on to do later work that was published in the Journal of Law and Economics on the subject. 12.208.4.65 (talk) 19:48, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

bad diagram

2017, in the section ethnicity a total of percents, only ten percent is shown. according to jbs page 22 we can see by age group each ethnic sector. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/pim09st.pdf When a prisoner reported a "bi-racial" identity that ruined the statistics. see page 22 for yourself. 147.236.34.24 (talk) 14:43, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Massive difference in interracial rapes NOT MENTIONED

Blacks rape whites a 100 times more than the converse...why isn't this mentioned? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.244.178.171 (talk) 15:45, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

it is true, also whites call more often the police after the rape, but that isn't the cause...
maybe it's not mentioned because 1) it's not the topic of the article (which is about statistics of offenders, not about cross referencing offender-victim statistics) and 2) it's complicated: in a perfectly "random" allocation of offenders to victims we would see that the victims of minority offenders will be from larger racial groups. For example, if only 1% of the american population is of Swedish heritage, then a Swedish offender assaulting 100 people would be expected to assault only one other person of Swedish origin and 99 people from non-Swedish origin - which is almost 100 times more. In real life, more black women (at 12% of population) will be assaulted by swedes than swedes assaulted by blacks. Swedes would be assaulting blacks 12x more than blacks assaulting swedes. Not because they're targeting blacks - but because of the population statistics. The same is true for blacks (at 12%) and whites (at 72%)Patrick Aberdeen (talk) 09:03, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

More facts in the lead

...Maybe this has been discussed before, but I can see no evidence on this page in the past 2-3 years, so I'll bring it up. It seems we should have some stats in the lede; maybe something to mention that blacks commit 30% of overall crime and 50% of violent crime. I suspect any discussion on race and crime needs this summary stats. Luckily, these things are facts and are easily found on the FBI website. We can talk and hypothesize all we want about the reasons for those numbers in the article, but the lede really, really needs them. As it stands, this lede just makes it sound as though discrimination in the system is responsible for the numbers. This is false. Cheers,

Λuα (Operibus anteire) 18:41, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

@Aua: Got a source for As it stands, this lede just makes it sound as though discrimination in the system is responsible for the numbers. This is false.? The overrepresentation of people of color in official crime statistics is thought to be in part due to systemic bias according to sources in the article. Moreover, most theories and theorists in criminology view race not as a causal factor but as a spurious one (social disorganizaiton theory, strain theory, self-control theory, structured action theory... to name a few). Simply stating a statistic like you propose without context or explanation runs a great risk of (1) misleading readers and (2) reinforcing racist ideologies. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 19:16, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
@EvergreenFir:: I'll admit I have much less knowledge of sociology than you do (and specifically in relation to criminology). I'll also say that you're absolutely right in that citing statistics without context will lead to the two consequences you listed. For those reasons, I suggest a compromise to the effect of "official FBI stats show XXXX, however, several theories have been proposed to explain this trend, including systemic bias, XXXX, etc." I think the overrepresentation of certain minorities is absolutely essential to mention in the lede of this article, but attaching any such declaration to disclaimers about systemic biases in the system. Don't you think that's important here?
Cheers,Λuα (Operibus anteire) 21:33, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
I completely agree with Aua here. The current structure of the lede doesn't really address the main issue of race and crime (i.e. the correlation between race and incidence of crime). Instead it tries to explain the causes for a phenomenon without really explaining what the phenomenon is and backing it up with objective statistics. Your proposed compromise seems very fair to me. Plokmijnuhbygvtfcdxeszwaq (talk) 09:35, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
This has creeped back into the lede in 2017, oversimplifying and attempting to lead the reader into "research suggests" there is a singular cause that is unfair to minorities, without positing WHAT it addresses. There is one particular source, and in no topical searches, could I find and relevant statistical data or studies. Current structure doesn't even allude to it being a theory, an allegation or even a "may" quantifier. The overwhelming majority only pose this as an "excuse" if you will, with no scientific method or theory on how they extrapolate this opinion. Because of the complexity of data, the lede should be simply reduced to describing the article, not summations of "why", when no "why" is asked in the lede. In addition, the book refereced as a resource is by authors who reject biracial statistical data, and I think anyone could agree that narrowly defining race, and intentionally omitting significant chunks of data is not an acceptable resource. Ledes are factual. I am not adding anything and if anyone would like to re-add the assertion, factual data should only be included in the lede, otherwise, removing it reverts to prior consensus. Seola (talk) 13:13, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
The text reflects the contents of the main body. Your failure to bother reading the main body of the article, your unfamiliarity with the research on this topic and your hostility towards science are insufficient reasons for removing reliably sourced text from the lede. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 13:27, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Poor whites have slightly higher violent crime rates than poor blacks

https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5137

Poor Hispanics (25.3 per 1,000) had lower rates of violence compared to poor whites (46.4 per 1,000) and poor blacks (43.4 per 1,000).

Poor persons living in urban areas (43.9 per 1,000) had violent victimization rates similar to poor persons living in rural areas (38.8 per 1,000).

Poor urban blacks (51.3 per 1,000) had rates of violence similar to poor urban whites (56.4 per 1,000).

Homicide rates are misleading measures of violence. They don't account for access to emergency trauma care for instance. If the gangs in a town prefer knives over guns it also drops the homicide rate without dropping rates of violent crime. Nonfatal violence needs to be discussed more. 107.77.164.66 (talk) 09:20, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

You need secondary sources that discuss it. TFD (talk) 04:42, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
Pew social trends discusses 2011's violent crime rates. It claims the rate of victimization is similar across races.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/chapter-4-all-non-fatal-violent-crimes/

There were no statistically significant differences by racial and ethnic group in 2011 rates of non-fatal violent crime.

Non-fatal violent crime rates declined at a similar pace from 1993 to 2010 among those ages 12 and older in the nation’s three largest racial and ethnic groups—77% for whites, 79% for Hispanics and 71% for blacks.

From 2010 to 2011, the non-fatal violent crime rate for Hispanics went up 42%; the rate for whites rose 18%; and the rate for blacks was essentially stable (up 2%).

107.77.164.31 (talk) 00:36, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

The discussion Talk:Race and crime#Requested move 6 September 2017 could also affect the title/scope of the present article.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:37, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

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Intelligence & Crime

"Research shows that the overrepresentation of some minorities in the criminal justice system can be explained by socioeconomic factors, disproportionate crime rates, as well as racial discrimination by law enforcement and the judicial system."

The first thing I noticed about this Article's lede is that it fails to even mention intelligence. Whether it's "accepted science" or not, the assertion that IQ and Crime are related does exist within the public discussion, and inclusion of this assertion is warranted in the lede. How it's included and characterized is the question. This Article's solution to the issue seems to be to ignore it completely, and for political reasons, which is a form of censorship.2605:6000:6947:AB00:9931:7105:C547:F980 (talk) 19:03, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Can you show us your reliable sources?  — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  16:42, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Anti-Science will not Be Tolerated

I saw it blatantly being stated, as though by consensus, that the reason for AA (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) higher rates in incarceration was due to socioeconomic and racist factors. That is a simple joke. Maybe one of you geniuses would like to explain why Africa looks the way it does today? Maybe you would like to explain why it looked the way it did all throughout history even before Colonialism which ended centuries of brutal tribal warfare and savagery, and brought civilisation to the continent, while the Mediterrenean (Roman and Greek) and German peoples were inventing the foundations of modern western civilization? Anyhow, evolution clearly dictates that AA and to a lesser extent Hispanic peoples must have higher testosterone and lower intelligence than whites and asians due to the climate which US hispanics (mixed with native population to a much more siginificant extent much more than US whites) and Africans inhabited, as people had much more 1, prey to eat removing the need to create agriculture (and accompanying growht in intelligence and ability to prepare and design agricultural systems), 2, natural predators to eat them (from rich parasitic forms of life which requires a strong immunosystem rather than a big brain, to things like lions rhinos and tigers in Africa, and probably South America, making it imperative to spend your caloric intake on muscle growht and necessary testosterone to run, rather than brain growth), and 3, no winters to kill off those with lacking brain growth to prepare for the long winter ahead.

Point is, evolution is the clear scientific choice as per its replicability and transparency rather than the non-falsifiable (read: UNSCIENTIFIC) idea of nebulous "socio-economic" and "systemic" factors "out there!". This isn't serious, this is a biased joke on science. I expect this is the last time I have to see something so transparently ludicrous here. Whoever let this past them should be bloody well ashamed of yourselves. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.19.216.154 (talk) 05:02, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Please read WP:NPOV. Do not remove sourced things just because you disagree with it. EvergreenFir (talk) 05:06, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

I will remove all things that amount to transparent falsehoods and propoganda, and will, if needed, take additional steps to prevent this fantasy from encroaching further. You do not make the rules here, science does. Science and Occam's Razor says that your position is non-science, it is a non-falsifiable position, and ignores a clear scientific explanation of evolution. Explain yourself or back down. Now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.19.216.154 (talk) 05:10, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

This is now a battlefield. Tone down. WP:BRD for one. EvergreenFir (talk) 05:17, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Oh boy, a science lesson by a blatant racist. No agriculture in Africa? Per the History of Africa article, agriculture was developed in the Ethiopian Highlands between 13,000 and 11,000 BC. Cultivation of wheat and barley was developed in Northeast Africa between 10,000 and 8,000 BC. Domestication of Ensete was developed between 6500 and 5500 BC. Domestication of Eragrostis tef and Eleusine coracana was developed between 5,500 and 3,500 BC.

In Northern West Africa, the locals collected and domesticated Oryza glaberrima, Sorghum, Gourd, Watermelon, Ricinus, and Cotton. In other areas of West Africa, they domesticated Elaeis guineensis, the Raffia palm, the Black-eyed pea, Vigna subterranea, Okra, and the Kola nut. Dimadick (talk) 18:41, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

arguably, ethiopia is neither genetically or culturally in sub saharan africa and so should not count. neither is northern west africa. both of those groups belong to the afro-asiatic cultural group and hav e strong genetic affinity as compared to bantus and pygmies. t. james 58.106.80.56 (talk) 01:19, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Psychopath theory

Why is there not a psychopath theory of crime. People who can feel real emotions do not commit crime. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.45.41.103 (talk) 13:52, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Important, flawed and outdated

I think this topic is important and a Wikipedia article should tie together the data, the trends, and, perhaps interpretive theories (although the interpretation is controversial, and an argument could be made for eliminating it). However, in trying to use the "Homicide" section, I found the content to be flawed and outdated.

Flaws:

- no excuse for using 2013 crime data with 2016 population data

- using 2013 data leaves the entire section obsolete

- it would be useful to use data from multiple years to plot trends

- inconsistencies between number of murder arrests in upper and lower table, and with the FBI/UCR 2013 table 3 [53] data source:

-- upper table, total murders = 8,531

-- lower table, total murders = 9,479

-- FBI/UCR, total murders = 14,132

Other comments:

- inadequate data to break categories down beyond Black, White (non-Hispanic), Hispanic, and Other

- check other sections; it's likely that these flaws exist elsewhere in the article


Wcmead3 (talk) 18:55, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Remove race-specific text from lede

There has been a lot of back-and-forth anonymous edits to the lede, a section that is clearly vulnerable to biased presentation of info. I have removed all race-specific text in the lede, as all of the pertinent info can be found under topic-specific subheadings. - Seazzy (talk) 22:28, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Wording change

Changed the wording from "inflating actual white criminal statistics" to "inflating the amount of crimes attributed to whites". The wording "actual white" implies that white hispanic people are not really white and that crime done by white hispanic people is not really done by whites. I changed it to a more neutral wording that merely noted the disinction between hispanic and non-hispanic people, rather than passing judgement on whether hispanic people can be white or not. Revoran (talk) 11:34, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Crime and lower African American IQ

What happened to the part of the article that used to mention the theory that intelligence differences between the races (which no one denies exist) are in part responsible for disproportionate criminal activity for African Americans? Even the Wikipedia article on IQ mentions that it correlates with crime. If IQ correlates with crime, controlled for race and other variables, and African Americans have lower IQs, I'm surprised the obvious conclusion that they are related is not even mentioned in this article. Aelius28 (talk) 05:03, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

It's my understanding that African Americans are even more criminal than would be predicted by their low IQ. The source is Rushton; I can't think of it off the top of my head. Sombe19 (talk) 21:35, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
Please go peddle this crap somewhere else. Any subsequent comments of this nature will be removed per WP:NOTAFORUM. Volunteer Marek  22:38, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

There is however a Wikipedia page 'Race and Intelligence' which makes some interesting observations about such theories. Cassandra — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cassandrathesceptic (talk • contribs) 12:51, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Excuse me "volunteer Marek".

It's the transitive property in math; and it's an absolute syllogism. Blacks have the lowest IQ in the United States -- certainly relative to their population size within the country.

IQ and crime are clearly correlated. IQ and poverty are clearly correlated. Poverty and crime are clearly correlated.

How is exactly were his remarks 'racist'? What subjective and unsubstantiated claim did he make? Did he fail to tow the political obscurantism well enough?

I know your ilk of special interest groups fixated on assertions of why we can't and musn't know anything for 6000 words ... to apologize for the information we DO know. Information that's repeatable, and emerges the GLOBE over, and over and over, on tests like Raven's Progressive Matrices (I figured it'd prove your point -- being a progressive) ... yet, the pattern persists. Even on countries which never engaged in slavery.

I understand you resent it. Maybe we could include a paragraph within wiki: RACE AND INTELLIGENCE ... discussing how it makes you/leftists feel ..?

For now however, it still has that pesky attribute of being 'data':

In the United States, individuals identifying themselves as East Asian tend to have higher average IQ scores than do Caucasians, who, in turn, have higher average IQs than African Americans. Nevertheless, greater variation in IQ scores exists within each ethnic group than between them.[46]

I'm sure you could add another 200 paragraphs about everything EXCEPT the actual scores, over time, of the largest groups. Torturing people with irrelevant crap... and maybe even delete the index and disable the CMD+F function. Until then, that permutation of the order by which groups score just COINCIDENTALLY matches the rate of incarceration. However more groups you'd like to add within that IQ list will continue to mirror it. BUT, for you?? We can pretend it's aa coinkidink. k?

Oddly -- the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_supremacy ... doesn't agonize to offer as many excuses as possible. any wonder why..? You sure bias has nothing to do with it?

Anyway: Back to "racist facts."

Is there any other data we're deny exists out of our general disliking of it's implications ..? Maybe we could make a wikipedia for people who want to live in your twilight zone and then the truthful one that we know most people can't possibly handle -- lest it hurt their little feel-bads. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TrumanLA (talk • contribs) 02:12, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

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