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Comment by error54 | Hacker News Reader

You're rewording what they said. If any group of people is more policed than another group of people, said group is more likely to have a criminal record. Doesn't mean they're more "criminal" than any other group but more of a reflection on the current state of the criminal justice system.

To paraphrase Warren Buffet: "If a cop follows you for 500 miles, they're going to find a reason to give you a ticket."

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Could be true for trivial felonies like a ticket, but if we talk about real crime thats not really an excuse. Would be more inclined to think black people commit more crime because socioeconomic factors, as poverty correlates crime.

It really depends on how you define crime. Usually crime and prosecution is defined in such a way as to impact the lower classes more than the upper classes.

Murder is rather easy to define. There is a dead body with holes in his/her head, there is a murder. The tragedy being that murder is way more prevalent in the black community, partly because of underpolicing.

I wouldn't be so fast with that assertion.

If your life is a cesspit and you can count on the authorities to be part of the problem, where does murder end and self defense begin?

See the song "I shot the sheriff." I'm most familiar with the Eric Clapton version, but googling it recently suggests to me it was originally written by Bob Marley.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Shot_the_Sheriff

This is a rather naive understanding. For example, there were nearly 3000 deaths in the 9/11 attacks, and about 4800 soldiers have died in the subsequent war with Iraq.

There are plenty of dead bodies with holes in their heads, but it's not clear how one accounts for crime among those 7800 dead.

...which, even if true, would circle back to 'being black' being a correlation to but not causative of criminal records.

"The offending rate for African Americans was almost 8 times higher than European Americans, and the victim rate 6 times higher. Most homicides were intraracial, with 84% of European Americans victims killed by European Americans, and 93% of African Americans victims were killed by African Americans.". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S....

How does overpolicing explain both arrest for murder rate and victim of murder rate have a significantly higher prevalence within black community?

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