Assuming the data is accurate it can be used to show disparities between groups for a variety of situations - traffic stops, arrests, jail vs. diversion programs, charge stacking, etc..
How is that policing the police? Are disparities supposed to be evidence of something nefarious going on? Given that there are fundamental distinctions between members in different groups (otherwise they would be in the same group) and almost certainly many other non-fundamental distinctions that correlate with the group-defining distinction, is it not entirely plausible that there should be disparities in police statistics even when police act appropriately 100% of the time?
I will say that we are not wading into this. We focus on accessibility; if you point to a big pile of ugly data, the first thing that will happen is that a bunch of very smart people will analyze it. We’re trying to make the big pile, which is currently in like half a million small piles.
>is it not entirely plausible that there should be disparities in police statistics even when police act appropriately 100% of the time?
The National Crime Victimization Survey says yes. Also any article you see trying to debunk FBI crime stats but doesn't mention the NCVS (and how the NCVS largely corroborates the FBI stats) is either ignorant or willfully deceiving you.
Depends on what the data shows. For instance, nobody ever wants to talk about why 95% of those killed in police shootings are males. It's far more disproportionate than any of the race based numbers that make headlines daily, and yet..nothing.
This seems to indicate the data will always and only be used to tell a preferred narrative.
Downvotes aside I think I'm more worried about this. The preferred native approach, that's the risk that undermines things like this.
Despite the downvotes your example is good I think it's safe to say the 95% male to female ratio is likely to be down to males more likely to be involved in violent incidents than females. No one really has a problem with this until skin colour comes into it. As a society though tackling the cause of why males get into violent confrontations seems like a no brainer.
...because there's a plausible and uncontested rationale, unlike skin color? Men generally have more testosterone, which leads to aggression and worse impulse control. Nobody's talking about the reason men are 95% of police shootings because it's pretty obvious.
> ...because there's a plausible and uncontested rationale, unlike skin color? Men generally have more testosterone, which leads to aggression and worse impulse control.
Why isn't it plausible that different groups are different in some ways? For instance, when it comes to testosterone, this seems to be the science.
> In fact, African American men have higher exposure to testosterone, the main biologically potent circulating androgen, than their Caucasian and Asian counterparts, beginning in the in utero period. African American women have testosterone levels that exceed those of Caucasian women by 50% or more in early pregnancy, an exposure that has been hypothesized to permanently alter the “gonadostat,” the hypothalamic-pituitary-testicular axis, in African American male offspring relative to Caucasians. African American men during young adulthood also have substantially higher circulating testosterone levels than their Caucasian counterparts (approximately 13 to 15% difference at age 20 years). Although this difference appears to dissipate with age, African American men still have slightly higher testosterone levels than Caucasians (≈3% higher) at age 40 years.
You're right that men are far more likely to be involved in violent incidents which are likely to lead to potentially violent confrontations with police. You're also right that this difference largely explains the disparity in the percentage of people shot by police by gender.
I guess the question is why people don't think that correlation holds true by race (or culture) as well. The percentages match up. For instance, white males (and black males and hispanic males) are actually over-represented as demographic cohorts who are victims of police shootings, whereas asian males and women of all races are under-represented. This tracks exactly with violent crime rates.
Perhaps we should address this a gender problem more than a racial problem. At least, that's what the data tells us.
