Florida Shooting: 17 Students Shot dead in another Mass Shooting in the U.S

Originally Posted by Damien

You would need to adjust for population numbers when making these kinds of comparsions.

No you dont.

That would be assuming that all crime is equally spread across all races, there is no proof of that (unless you have some somewhere).

Originally Posted by Paul M

No you dont.

That would be assuming that all crime is equally spread across all races, there is no proof of that (unless you have some somewhere).

True but that's why you then try to compare it those convicted of murder. Then, if possible, you get more in-depth to try and make sure the crimes at the same. This kind of thing is what Hugh posted to earlier.

It's all more useful than comparing direct numbers without any context or relevance. As I said it's about as useful as saying London is more dangerous than Glasgow as more crimes are committed there, without trying to adjust for the size of the city..

---------- Post added at 19:35 ---------- Previous post was at 19:30 ----------

I just went though the thread to see where it started and Chris already posted a better way to explain it:

Originally Posted by Chris

The distinction is important because the different racial groups aren’t of equal size in the general population. If the %age of executions of males of each racial group are broadly in line with that group’s representation in the population then fine, but if one group is over-represented, that may indicate an imbalance in the system.

According to those stats, just over a third (35%) of males executed last year were black. Yet the Afro-Caribbean population of the USA is 12.5%. That tends to suggest that black men are seriously over-represented on death row. Meanwhile the white population is around 72% but the white population of death row is 56%, which is a significant under-representation.

It might be that black men commit more serious crime. There could be sociological reasons for that, due to long term inequality and deprivation meaning a disproportionately high number of young black men are exposed to the environment that is likely to push them towards criminality. Or it might be that the criminal justice system is biased in some way. Juries may be more likely to convict, courts may be more likely to pass the death sentence. Whatever the reason, there’s clearly a problem.

Originally Posted by Mr K

Dear me Mick, think you're trying to out trump Trump with your twisting of figures

If you were poor and black in the US, you are more likely to be executed for the same crime than if you are rich and white. Their legal system discriminates against the poor, and discrimination is still widespread, encouraged by Trump and his Klu Klux Klan/ evangelical followers. You may love to live in the US (as an aside, why don't you if you love it so much ??) ; Personally I'm delighted I don't live there, and have to worry if my kids are at risk of getting shot each day.

Trump has disavowed the Klu Klux Klan, many many times, so they are not his. So you’re wrong here. You really do need to stop being so ludicrous all the time, posting baseless rubbish in nearly every thread.

And No, the sentencing does not discriminate, as has been proven by the figures of more whites being executed than blacks over the years. I don’t work on ‘more likely chances’, as that is obscuring the facts.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Mick

I don’t work on ‘more likely chances’, as that is obscuring the facts.

Let's try and look at an example this way.
Bus company A runs 50 routes and 40 of its buses regularly run on time. Bus company B runs 39 routes and all 39 of its buses regularly run on time.
If you had a choice of catching a bus from either company at the same time to the same destination, which would you chose? The bus company that had more buses on time (company A) or company B that had 100% of its buses on time?

No sorry, I stand by my post, given the facts of the figures. More blacks are not executed over whites.

[Mr K]

Originally Posted by Mick

No sorry, I stand by my post, given the facts of the figures. More blacks are not executed over whites.

Nobodys said that. Look up 'proportions' in the dictionary. It's probably in the GCSE syllabus too.

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
You can pretty much spin numbers anyway you want to "prove" something.

The only undesputed fact is that more white people are executed in the US than black.

Anything else is just speculation and guesswork - trying to start comparing it as percentages of this or that is just nonsense.

You may as well say it equals the percentage of people who eat marmite, so that must be the cause.

Crime rates are not equally spread across races, nor are they equally spread across the US - many states dont do executions at all.

Originally Posted by Paul M

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
You can pretty much spin numbers anyway you want to "prove" something.

Then what's the point in anything? Cancer survival rates, GDP measurements, crime rates in cities, rates of literacy in countries, effectiveness of medical treatments and so on. This kind of statistical analysis is all over the place. They all have the problem that raw numbers aren't useful, adjustments have to be made and that in the end there will often be ambiguity into what the results then tell us.

This is a massive part of mathematics and statistics. It's not even a contested science, as K said the basics of it are taught at GCSE level.

[Mr K]

Originally Posted by Damien

Then what's the point in anything? Cancer survival rates, GDP measurements, crime rates in cities, rates of literacy in countries, effectiveness of medical treatments and so on. This kind of statistical analysis is all over the place.

This is a massive part of mathematics and statistics. It's not even a contested science, as Ken said the basics of it are taught at GCSE level.

Who are you calling Ken?

Originally Posted by Paul M

Anything else is just speculation and guesswork - trying to start comparing it as percentages of this or that is just nonsense.

Percentages are the only way you can identify statistical trends across different-sized samples. There’s no nonsense or trickery involved

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Paul M

So the majority of victims were white.



There is nothing like facts to make things look bad one way or another

Yes nothing quite like facts and you've pointed out another exceptional way of telling how biased the system is, were the perpetrators sentenced the same for similar crimes if their victim was white or black

Originally Posted by Chris

Percentages are the only way you can identify statistical trends across different-sized samples. There’s no nonsense or trickery involved

This is not different sized samples, or even multiple samples, just a single set of actual counts, with nothing sensible to compare them against.

Originally Posted by TheDaddy

...were the perpetrators sentenced the same for similar crimes if their victim was white or black

There is no way (from the figures) to know this, as again, its just a single set of counts, nothing more known about them.

---------- Post added at 13:40 ---------- Previous post was at 13:20 ----------

Still, if you like comparisons, here are a few for you, from the CPRC ;

https://crimeresearch.org/2014/05/is...rticular-race/


Also, some more on the subject of mass killings in the US v Europe ;

https://crimeresearch.org/2015/06/co...us-and-europe/

A few things about the crimeresearch.org link...

John Lott, their chairman, is a guns rights advocate. One of the Board of Directors is (ex-)Sheriff David Clarke, who featured in a bunch of radio ads saying people couldn't depend on the police and should arm themselves, made an ad for the NRA, and who went to Moscow on a NRA-funded trip. Brad Thor, another director, speaks at Tea Party rallies and used to drive Andrew Breitbart to Tea Party rallies; Ted Nugent is on the Board of Directors of the NRA.

Their views may not be particularly unbiased.

Only glanced at it but their comparisons of gun sprees uses 'England' for some reason and was compiled by 'searching news reports' (but they are rightly adjusting for population size )

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Paul M

This is not different sized samples, or even multiple samples, just a single set of actual counts, with nothing sensible to compare them against.


There is no way (from the figures) to know this, as again, its just a single set of counts, nothing more known about them.

---------- Post added at 13:40 ---------- Previous post was at 13:20 ----------

Still, if you like comparisons, here are a few for you, from the CPRC ;

https://crimeresearch.org/2014/05/is...rticular-race/


Also, some more on the subject of mass killings in the US v Europe ;

https://crimeresearch.org/2015/06/co...us-and-europe/

From the site you were originally quoting from

Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ In the late 1980s, Congress asked the General Accounting Office (GAO) to review the empirical studies on race and the death penalty which had been conducted up to that time. The agency reviewed 28 studies regarding both race of defendant and race of victim discrimination. Their review included studies utilizing various methodologies and degrees of statistical sophistication and examined such diverse states as California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Texas. Their conclusion in 1990, based on the vast amount of data collected, was unequivocal:

In 82% of the studies, race of victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving a death sentence, i.e., those who murdered whites were found to be more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks. This finding was remarkably consistent across data sets, states, data collection methods, and analytic techniques. The finding held for high, medium, and low quality studies.16

And

In a recent report prepared for the American Bar Association, Professors Baldus and Woodworth have expanded on the GAO's review of studies on race discrimination in capital cases.21 They found that there are some relevant data in three-quarters of the states with prisoners on death row. In 93% of those states, there is evidence of race-of-victim disparities, i.e., the white race of the person murdered correlated with whether a death sentence will be given in a particular case. In nearly half of those states, the race of the defendant also served as a predictor of who received a death sentence. The disparities in nine states (CA, CO, GA, KY, MS, NJ, NC, PA and SC) are particularly notable because of their reliance on well-controlled studies.

These disparities reveal a disturbing and consistent trend indicating race-of-victim discrimination. For example, in Florida, a defendant's odds of receiving a death sentence are 4.8 times higher if the victim was white than if the victim is black in similarly aggravated cases. In Illinois, the multiplier is 4, in Oklahoma it is 4.3, in North Carolina 4.4, and in Mississippi it is 5.5.22 The table below shows how frequently race-of-victim discrimination has been detected, as well as the states where race-of-defendant disparities have been shown