67% of Prison Population Is Nonwhite: Time for a Real Debate on Race and Crime

10/5/10

A newly released U.S. Census Bureau Report which has revealed that in 2006, some 67 percent of America’s 2 million prison population was nonwhite, has highlighted the need for an urgent, realistic debate on the relationship between race and crime.

The report, issued last Thursday, revealed that blacks made up 41 percent of the nation’s jail inmates in 2006, non-Hispanic whites made up 37 percent and Hispanics made up 19 percent.

Even this figure is likely to be distorted due to the authorities’ policy of allowing self-defining racial categories and the inclusion of all Middle Easterners and North Africans into the “non-Hispanic white” category.

Once those groups are removed from the “white non-Hispanic” category, it is likely that the real number of incarcerated white Americans is substantially below the “official” figures.

Other interesting facts to emerge from the U.S. Census Bureau report included:

- More than three times as many black people live in prison cells as in college dorms;

- The ratio is only slightly better for Hispanics, at 2.7 inmates for every Latino in college housing.

- Most prison inmates are 25 or older while 96 percent of people in college housing are age 18 to 24.

-Nearly 40 percent of inmates lack a high school diploma or the equivalent.

- Men made up about 90 percent of prison and jail inmates.

- About 9 percent of prison inmates were immigrants last year, up from about 4 percent in 1980.

There were 14,180 victims and 16,277 perpetrators of murder and non-negligent homicide reported by law enforcement agencies to the FBI in 2008.

Blacks were arrested more than any other race for murder in 2008, making up 36 percent of all arrests. As they are approximately 12 percent of the general population, they are significantly overrepresented in the total arrests.

Blacks are also significantly overrepresented in victimization, representing 47 percent of all murder victims.

White Americans and individuals of “other race” are significantly “underrepresented” in cases of murder and non-negligible homicide. Murders are also largely intra-racial, with 83 percent of all white victims and 90 percent of all black victims having been murdered by individuals of the same race.

An interesting trend emerges when the figures for non-lethal violent crimes are analyzed. According to 2008 FBI data, white Americans made up 58 percent of all arrests for these crimes, significantly below their proportion of the population.

Blacks were significantly overrepresented for non-lethal violent crimes in 2008, making up 39% of all arrests.

When whites commit violence, they do it to blacks 2.4 percent of the time. Blacks, on the other hand, choose white victims more than half the time.

In those cases in which the race of the killer is known, blacks kill twice as many whites as whites kill blacks. Black-on-white robberies and gang assaults are 21 times more common than white on black.

In the case of gang robbery, blacks victimize whites 52 times more often than whites do blacks.

The contrasts are even more stark in the case of interracial rape. Studies from the late 1950s showed that the vast majority of rapes were same-race offenses.

Research in Philadelphia carried out in 1958 and 1960 indicated that of all rapes, only 3.2 percent were black-on-white assaults and 3.6 percent were white-on-black.

Since that time, the proportion of black-on-white rapes has soared. In a 1974 study in Denver, 40 percent of all rapes were of whites by blacks, and not one case of white-on-black rape was found.

In general, through the 1970s, black-on-white rape was at least ten times more common than white-on-black rape.

Because interracial rape is now overwhelmingly black on white, it has become difficult to do research on it or to find relevant statistics. The FBI keeps very detailed national records on crime, but the way it presents rape data obscures the racial element rather than clarifies it.

Dr. William Wilbanks, a criminologist at Florida International University, had to sift carefully through the data to find that in 1988 there were 9,406 cases of black-on-white rape and fewer than ten cases of white-on-black rape.

Other research conducted in 1989 found that blacks were three or four times more likely to commit rape than whites, and that black men raped white women thirty times as often as white men raped black women.

All of these figures are in the public domain and are established facts, yet anyone daring to mention them is attacked as a “bigot.”

Comment:

It is clear that the situation is getting worse and is unsustainable over the medium to long term. Another solution is going to have to be found to the nonwhite criminal problem, and that does not include blaming white people, “racism,” “oppression,” or “slavery” but rather an honest assessment of the causes and solutions to this behavior.