Roy M, that’s a tough one to quantify, as statisticians would probably agree. Based on my limited education performing studies using statistics, I know you have to account for variables — in this case, percentage of crimes committed by a particular ethnicity, broken down by percentage of crimes committed by low income suspects, etc. And then there’s the “spoilers,” which could include the fairness of imposing harsher punishment on crack versus powder cocaine (a good number of crimes are drug related) and so on. I don’t envy researchers their task.
Your question is valid. I’d be willing to bet economics, across all racial spectra, trumps race. However, I’d also be willing to bet proportionally, within ethnic or racial groups, there are higher rates than within the Caucasian group.
