Anodyne
2009-11-19, 03:14
My recent discussion with a poster here about crime in Britain reminds me of an interesting post from another forum on that subject.
http://www.racedebate-msf.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8
Hi y'all.
Thought I'd lead off in customary fashion:
Yesterday the BBC website carried a shock! horror! piece announcing that homicide rates in Britain have risen again to the same levels in the middle of the 19th century. After falling for more than a century to their low point in the 1950s:
UK homicides back to mid-Victorian level (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008/12/teen_homicide.html)
(Click the link for graphs)
In the original article, as well as a follow-up one (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008/12/the_history_of_homicide.html)today there is much speculation about what it all means, and a number of hypotheses are set out as to why it should be happening. They range from more efficient policing (sic) to a public inured to the taking of innocent life by the experience of two world wars. There appears to be only one potential cause that is conspicuously missing , and it doesn’t a great deal of imagination to figure out what it is.
The dramatic increase in the non-white population since the 1950s, and the consequent effect on crime rates, is the taboo subject, the elephant behind the sofa.
Comprehensive statistics on criminality by ethnicity are notoriously sparse in most liberal democracies, as a matter of public policy. In Britain, however, there is a statutory requirement under Section 95 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 for the ‘Secretary of State to publish, annually, information relating to the criminal justice system with reference to avoiding discrimination on the ground of race’. The latest version of the Annual Report can be downloaded here.
In reality, the report is intended to demonstrate the extent to which ethnic minorities in Britain are treated fairly or otherwise by the criminal justice system, and there is consequently heavy emphasis on minorities as victims of discrimination within the system. Nevertheless, ther are nuggets of gold that can be extracted with a little diligence.
Table 3.5 on p.21 provides one such nugget, the “Ethnic appearance of currently recorded homicide victims by ethnicity of principal suspect: England and Wales, combined data for 2004/05 to 2006/07”. From the data presented here we can arrive at a very important point, one which answers the unanswered question in the BBC reports:
“What is the relative contribution of the white and non-white population to the overall homicide rate?”
From Table 3.5, we can glean that over the three years in question, there were 1756 (1792 -36) homicides in which the ethnicity of the principal suspect is known. Of this total, 1247 suspects were white, 509 were non-white. Averaging this out over the three years gives 416 white vs 170 non-white.
The population of England and Wales is around 54 million, and it is reasonable to assume a non-white population of 10% overall (8.6% in the 2001 Census for the UK as a whole, including NI and Scotland). Applying the annual homicide figures to the population goves the following homicide rates:
White: 416/(48.6*10) = 0.85 murders per 100,000 population
Non-white: 170/(5.4*10) = 3.15 murders per 100,000 population
It seems that the homicide rate amongst the indigenous population is of the same order of magnitude (i.e. less than 1.0) as it was in the 1950s, while the reversion to mid-Victorian rates appears to be entirely due to the presence of a now-sizeable non-white minority. I wonder why the intellectual wizards at the BBC couldn’t have worked this out as easily as I did.
Edit: Corrected non-white suspect totals
http://www.racedebate-msf.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8
Hi y'all.
Thought I'd lead off in customary fashion:
Yesterday the BBC website carried a shock! horror! piece announcing that homicide rates in Britain have risen again to the same levels in the middle of the 19th century. After falling for more than a century to their low point in the 1950s:
UK homicides back to mid-Victorian level (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008/12/teen_homicide.html)
(Click the link for graphs)
In the original article, as well as a follow-up one (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008/12/the_history_of_homicide.html)today there is much speculation about what it all means, and a number of hypotheses are set out as to why it should be happening. They range from more efficient policing (sic) to a public inured to the taking of innocent life by the experience of two world wars. There appears to be only one potential cause that is conspicuously missing , and it doesn’t a great deal of imagination to figure out what it is.
The dramatic increase in the non-white population since the 1950s, and the consequent effect on crime rates, is the taboo subject, the elephant behind the sofa.
Comprehensive statistics on criminality by ethnicity are notoriously sparse in most liberal democracies, as a matter of public policy. In Britain, however, there is a statutory requirement under Section 95 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 for the ‘Secretary of State to publish, annually, information relating to the criminal justice system with reference to avoiding discrimination on the ground of race’. The latest version of the Annual Report can be downloaded here.
In reality, the report is intended to demonstrate the extent to which ethnic minorities in Britain are treated fairly or otherwise by the criminal justice system, and there is consequently heavy emphasis on minorities as victims of discrimination within the system. Nevertheless, ther are nuggets of gold that can be extracted with a little diligence.
Table 3.5 on p.21 provides one such nugget, the “Ethnic appearance of currently recorded homicide victims by ethnicity of principal suspect: England and Wales, combined data for 2004/05 to 2006/07”. From the data presented here we can arrive at a very important point, one which answers the unanswered question in the BBC reports:
“What is the relative contribution of the white and non-white population to the overall homicide rate?”
From Table 3.5, we can glean that over the three years in question, there were 1756 (1792 -36) homicides in which the ethnicity of the principal suspect is known. Of this total, 1247 suspects were white, 509 were non-white. Averaging this out over the three years gives 416 white vs 170 non-white.
The population of England and Wales is around 54 million, and it is reasonable to assume a non-white population of 10% overall (8.6% in the 2001 Census for the UK as a whole, including NI and Scotland). Applying the annual homicide figures to the population goves the following homicide rates:
White: 416/(48.6*10) = 0.85 murders per 100,000 population
Non-white: 170/(5.4*10) = 3.15 murders per 100,000 population
It seems that the homicide rate amongst the indigenous population is of the same order of magnitude (i.e. less than 1.0) as it was in the 1950s, while the reversion to mid-Victorian rates appears to be entirely due to the presence of a now-sizeable non-white minority. I wonder why the intellectual wizards at the BBC couldn’t have worked this out as easily as I did.
Edit: Corrected non-white suspect totals