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[nenjin]

Oh, all respect to Buddhism, I think it's slimy he co-opts that wisdom to dodge around having to take a position.

but assuming that your enemies have a monopoly on the data is dangerously close to assuming that they're right?

They don't monopolize the data, the data just is. What matters is the interpretation of what the data means, and what action to take from it. That's where we're at in the Information Age. We all have access to the same data, bad, sparse, manipulated or otherwise. Where we're at as a society is now how to deal with that information. I'm reminded of high school and college. We had a library of resources and the internet, all the data available. But when it came time to use that data to form a conclusion, many people didn't know what to do with or blindly stabbed out at a conclusion that was divorced in some way from the reality of the data. Information alone isn't enough. The wisdom, insight and justice of the reading matters just as much.

[Maximum Spin]

Oh, all respect to Buddhism, I think it's slimy he co-opts that wisdom to dodge around having to take a position.

I got what you meant, I was just joking that now it would make me look bad to say something Buddhist about it.

[Rolan7]

@Maximum Spin
Sure, fair!  I was more questioning (heh) the original question than you answering it.  It's fine to simply answer an off-topic question.

"I'm just sayin" *waggles eyebrows* "it's interesting is all" *waggles eyebrows* "I mean I don't really have a position, just showing you the data" *waggles eyebrows* "so that you can draw your own conclusions"

Actually, to be fair, that same "what is your goal with these arguments?" was what led me to look past the proverbial trees and see the forest.  I was usually technically right (the best kind) and arguing in good faith, but I was always arguing easy benefit-of-the-doubt positions.  "This wasn't necessarily racism", "the suspect resisted", etc.  I thought I was just being the devil's advocate, and maybe I was to some extent, but I don't think contrarianism is necessary on this particular topic nowadays.  Under Obama is different than under Trump.

So when I ask for a conclusion, I'm not looking for some "gotcha!  You're bad!".  I'm hoping for the same kind of self-examination that I think improved me.

[Maximum Spin]

@Maximum Spin
Sure, fair!  I was more questioning (heh) the original question than you answering it.  It's fine to simply answer an off-topic question.

Sure, sure, it wasn't so much your initial interjection than the quick tide of responses that, I admit, made me a little defensive to forestall one of those internet arguments where everyone says you said something you didn't.

[hector13]

Re: Defunding the police:

Defunding the police doesn’t (read: shouldn’t) mean taking resources away from the police, it means diverting funding from the police to other agencies (like social work) to relieve the burden from police of dealing with non-police matters.

Ideally, this would free the police up from not being police to actually police issues like dealing with violent crime, while the issues that influence visit crime get dealt with by different, now better funded agencies.

The big problem with the phrase “defund the police” is the part after the money is taken from police doesn’t get explained by the pithy phrase, so people wonder how the now (in their minds) underfunded police actually do their job.

[Bumber]

Police reform will primarily yield economic benefits by reducing our incarceration rate, which is a major economic drain on minority communities.

However, if reducing incarceration rate leads to more looting, then businesses may abandon the area, further draining the community.

There need to be other reforms alongside it, such as education.

[Frumple]

Reducing incarceration rates almost certainly wouldn't, especially over a longer period. It's incarceration and its effects that significantly causes areas to be shitty enough that sort of behavior is incentivized. Economic effects of being tossed in jail are generally several orders of magnitude worse than some business's shit getting nicked or whatever.

[feelotraveller]

It is incarceration rates that drives the Australian problem of black deaths in custody.

While it is true that non-Indigenous people die in custody at a slightly higher rate than Indigenous people the far more significant fact is that Indigenous people adults are 15 times more likely to be incarcerated, and juveniles 26 times more likely.  So a random Indigenous person is far more likely to suffer a death in custody than a random non-Indigenous person.  And this is what black communities here know - that their family members and loved ones die far more freqently in custody than those of the non-Indigenous community(s).

[Reelya]

On that point, the list of things that Jimmy stated are the core driver behind the incarceration rate exactly the same as the deaths in custody numbers.

Saying "incarceration rate" instead of "black deaths in custody" doesn't actually enlighten anyone about what to do about the source of the problem. In action, the direct way to achieve that would be just for the police to turn more of a blind eye to stuff they see happening in front of them.

There are cases of wrongful arrests and convictions, etc, but those make up a small proportion of the incarceration rate for stuff they pretty much actually did do, so just tightening up the rules for police investigations won't actually make much of a noticeable dent in the incarceration rate. This is still chipping away at the corners.

Again, the core way to fix the problem is more funds for social services. Changing police tactics and rules of engagement won't solve this.

Here are some stats about what people are in prison for.
https://www.alrc.gov.au/publication/pathways-to-justice-inquiry-into-the-incarceration-rate-of-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-peoples-alrc-report-133/3-incidence/offences-that-lead-to-a-sentence-of-imprisonment/

Notice that the leading type of charge for aboriginal Australians is assault (33%), whereas for non-aboriginal australians the leading type of charge is drug-related. 60% of aboriginal inmates are being held for crimes in the categories of "acts intended to cause injury (comprising 33% ...); burglary (15%); offences against justice* (11%); and robbery (11%)".

* "offenses against justice" includes bail or parole breaching, which could be said to be biased as they're more likely to have contact with the criminal justice system, however, a large chunk (46%) of that is breaching AVOs including domestic violence orders. So we have a fair chunk of that being family violence and the police intervening to prevent that from happening. It's a general community expectation that people who commit domestic violence actually get arrested. So you have the balancing act of not locking up black people vs locking up people who've committed "wife beating". These things overlap.

There is definitely a perception the media presents that the cops are just rounding these people up for basically nothing, but every one of these things are generally things where the community has an expectation that the people committing them aren't just going to be walking around the next day after being charged. That, too would undermine justice.

We can't just say stop the incarceration, we do actually need a plan to prevent the assaults and robberies from taking place.

[feelotraveller]

Certainly the situation that Jimmy draws attention to contributes to the problem and remediating those issues will help.  And no doubt those background issues contribute to the stats you mention. 

(I was just pointing out that 'deaths in custody' has not that much to do with rates of death once in custody so citing those figures is a classic piece of misdirection.)

There is more to it than that.  There is a systematic racist prejudice pursued (consciously or otherwise, not making that argument here) by the police in Australia. For example Indegenous people are far more likely to be fined when pulled over whilst driving (3.2 more likely in WA) but slightly less likely to receive a penatly from a traffic camera.  They are more likely (1.6 times in NSW) to be pursued through the courts for possessing minor quantities of cannabis and severely more likely to be apprehended under publice nuiscance laws (QLD).

Quite a few of these 'extra' cases result in imprisonment, either immediately or because down the track they then get characterised as 'repeat offenders'.

[Reelya]

(I was just pointing out that 'deaths in custody' has not that much to do with rates of death once in custody so citing those figures is a classic piece of misdirection.)

It does however. The implication they leave you with is clearly that even in jail, black people are a target.

But the media themselves always talk about the "deaths in custody" thing as their go-to issue. It's not misdirection to point out that there's not much basis for that. It's the media's main talking-point after all

[feelotraveller]

(I was just pointing out that 'deaths in custody' has not that much to do with rates of death once in custody so citing those figures is a classic piece of misdirection.)

It does however. The implication they leave you with is clearly that even in jail, black people are a target.

But the media themselves always talk about the "deaths in custody" thing as their go-to issue. It's not misdirection to point out that there's not much basis for that. It's the media's main talking-point after all

I'm not going to pursue this too far, since it inevitably seems to get petty.  But to state it clearly if you are an Indigenous person in Australia you are 10 times more likely to die in custody than if you were non-Indigenous.  That is signficant.

[Reelya]

But that's phrasing it in a way that's very misleading. Anyone reading that out of context would assume you mean if there are 100 black inmates and 100 white inmates, then if 1 white inmate dies then 10 black inmates will die. See videos about misleading statistics and Bayesian logic, they're full of examples of exactly what you just did. That it's in a good cause rather than a bad one isn't the point here.

And if you focus the narrative that way then the clear answer would be "prison reform". But it's not the prisons that are the specific problem here. That's my point. Conflating different issues into a pithy sound-bite causes effort and money to become misdirected. In your case since you're using "deaths in custody" as the ultimate metric, and you're not differentiating what that actually means, they merely need to pad the cells and the entire PR problem goes away. And if you look at the stats, that's what they actually seem to optimizing for

[feelotraveller]

But that's phrasing it in a way that's very misleading. Anyone reading that out of context would assume you mean if there are 100 black inmates and 100 white inmates, then if 1 white inmate dies then 10 black inmates will die. See videos about misleading statistics and Bayesian logic, they're full of examples of exactly what you just did. That it's in a good cause rather than a bad one isn't the point here.

And if you focus the narrative that way then the clear answer would be "prison reform". But it's not the prisons that are the specific problem here. That's my point. Conflating different issues into a pithy sound-bite causes effort and money to become misdirected. In your case since you're using "deaths in custody" as the ultimate metric, and you're not differentiating what that actually means, they merely need to pad the cells and the entire PR problem goes away. And if you look at the stats, that's what they actually seem to optimizing for.

No it says if you take 100 non-Indigenous people and 100 Indigenous people then if one non-Indigenous person dies in custody then 10 Indigenous people will die in custody.

[Reelya]

If you have to explain that your stat works a specific way and you have to know the correct way to interpret it then that's not a good point to say it wasn't misleading.

If I was to say that white people were 10 times more likely to die scuba diving than black people, that's a misleading statement in the same sense as yours, and i can't caveat that later and say "but I meant 10 times as many white people actually go scuba diving, whereas the actual risk once you're scuba diving is the same". I was already guilty of using misdirection in my original statement, by deliberately conflating different numbers. The relevant information in this exchange was merely that 10 times as many white people go scuba-diving compared to black people, the bit about dying was in fact a total red herring.

As to why it's harmful, they did a royal commission into this 30+ years ago, they found no racial difference in deaths in custody, but ever since they've spent money on an ongoing commission to track the deaths in custody figures. The same figures they've never found any difference in. This is millions in wasted resources which could have gone to addressing the actual issues. (hell, the death rate for aboriginal people not in custody is higher than the death rate in custody according to what I can ascertain).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_deaths_in_custody

In my example this would be equivalent to noticing that there are more white scuba-diving deaths than black ones, having an inquiry, discovering that white people were in fact no more likely to die because of this, then deciding to create an ongoing government department that tracks white scuba-diving deaths just to make sure. Rather than spending on scuba-diving safety or anything.