A thoughtful piece here. It cites a study of police shootings. Turns out the issue of police killing citizens is more complicated than first imagined.
Below are quoted the most interesting take-aways.
Police kill more whites than blacks.
Of the 700 killings it has recorded, the Guardian reports that 340 were white, 179 black and 101 Hispanic. The Post reports that African-American men were 40 percent of the unarmed deaths, but whites and Hispanics made up the majority. The system has a class bias as well as a race bias. An investigation by Alternet’s Zaid Jilani revealed that in the first five months of this year, 95 percent of police killings occurred in neighborhoods with median family incomes under $100,000.
There were no killings in neighborhoods with median family incomes of $200,000 or above.
For the 441 police killings I researched, the average neighborhood family income where a killing occurred was $57,764. The median family income was $52,907.
Just over five percent of the killings were in neighborhoods with over $100,000 median family income. The richest neighborhood that saw a killing was the 700 block on 14th street in northwest Washington, D.C.
This skews against what the actual income variation in America is.
A household income of $100,000 or more puts you in the top 21% of American income earners; this means that incomes below this number are overrepresented by four times compared to the income distribution in how often they are killed by police.
Jeffrey Reiman is a criminologist, sociologist and philosopher based at American University. In 1979, Reiman published the first edition of the book, The Rich Get Richer, The Poor Get Prison. The book had a simple but counterintuitive thesis: the rich are actually committing society's most destructive crimes in terms of both financial damage and loss of human lives, but our criminal justice system is harshest toward the poorest Americans, whose crimes inflict the least damage....
The poor commit the lion's share of street crime, but widespread, destructive crime is the domain of the wealthy.
The average punishment for homicide is six years. The punishment for negligence by an employer in a workplace death is generally a modest fine.
Who gets shot by the police?
Below are quoted the most interesting take-aways.
Quote:
Police kill more whites than blacks.
Of the 700 killings it has recorded, the Guardian reports that 340 were white, 179 black and 101 Hispanic. The Post reports that African-American men were 40 percent of the unarmed deaths, but whites and Hispanics made up the majority. The system has a class bias as well as a race bias. An investigation by Alternet’s Zaid Jilani revealed that in the first five months of this year, 95 percent of police killings occurred in neighborhoods with median family incomes under $100,000.
There were no killings in neighborhoods with median family incomes of $200,000 or above.
Quote:
For the 441 police killings I researched, the average neighborhood family income where a killing occurred was $57,764. The median family income was $52,907.
Just over five percent of the killings were in neighborhoods with over $100,000 median family income. The richest neighborhood that saw a killing was the 700 block on 14th street in northwest Washington, D.C.
This skews against what the actual income variation in America is.
A household income of $100,000 or more puts you in the top 21% of American income earners; this means that incomes below this number are overrepresented by four times compared to the income distribution in how often they are killed by police.
Quote:
Jeffrey Reiman is a criminologist, sociologist and philosopher based at American University. In 1979, Reiman published the first edition of the book, The Rich Get Richer, The Poor Get Prison. The book had a simple but counterintuitive thesis: the rich are actually committing society's most destructive crimes in terms of both financial damage and loss of human lives, but our criminal justice system is harshest toward the poorest Americans, whose crimes inflict the least damage....
The poor commit the lion's share of street crime, but widespread, destructive crime is the domain of the wealthy.
The average punishment for homicide is six years. The punishment for negligence by an employer in a workplace death is generally a modest fine.
0 commentaires:
Enregistrer un commentaire