Better Policing Won't Solve High Rates of Black Crime

In the wake of Ferguson, President Obama has called for better education for the police so they can find their softer side when dealing with the black community.  But, at no time is this President willing to admit that we have a serious problem with black crime in this country that results in too many confrontations with the police.

Currently, blacks make up 13.1% of the population.  Yet, 37.4% of the prison population is black.  Meaning that they are nearly 3 times more likely to have to deal with the police. In defense of the high black prison population, many point to the fact that they are being disproportionately arrested for holding, using, or selling drugs.  However, this flies in the face of FBI statistics that show blacks commit 51% of all murders, 69% of all robberies, and 32% of all crimes, while only committing 23.5% of all drug violations.  Obviously, drug arrests are disproportionately lower when compared to other black crime rates.

In 1991, a Lehigh University study found that 70% of prison inmates came from single-parent (broken) homes.  It's not surprising then, that the black prison population is so high. Blacks had a single-parent percentage of 67% in 2013.  That's double the all-race average of 35% in that same year.  Also, that same Lehigh study found that 80% of all inmates were in some way learning disabled; including 50% of all minorities who were functionally illiterate.  Obviously, there is a direct correlation between low rates of education, low literacy rates, and high rates of crime.  In 2009, President Obama's own Department of Education found that 50% of 4th grade African Americans were illiterate, and by the 9th grade things worsened with 56% being illiterate.

As the first black President, Barack Obama was in the unique position to focus in on black literacy and family unit problems as a means of reducing black crime.  Because, if crime rates among blacks more closely matched their population levels, police confrontations with blacks would be significantly fewer.  Instead, Obama constantly focuses on cops as the problem.  We had a sense of this in July of 2009, when a friend of his, a black Harvard professor, was arrested by two Cambridge, Mass police for breaking into his own home.  He wasn't arrested for the break in but instead, for his belligerence at the scene.  Yet, the President attacked the actions of the white police by saying they "acted stupidly". 

Simply, every problem is a result of some cause.  If you want to improve policing in black communities, lower the crime rates.  In doing so, attitudes by cops towards blacks would also improve and blacks would be targeted less for arrests.

References:

Obama Calls for Changes in Policing After Task Force Report: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/politics/obama-calls-for-changes-in-policing-after-task-force-report.html

Federal Bureau of Prisons: Inmate Statistics: http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_race.jsp

FBI: Crime Statistics by Race: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/43tabledatadecoverviewpdf

70% Of Criminals Are From Broken Homes, Expert Says: http://articles.mcall.com/1991-11-15/news/2826825_1_inmates-psychology-professor-raymond-bell

Children in single-parent families by race: http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single-parent-families-by#detailed/1/any/false/36,868,867,133,38/10,168,9,12,1,13,185/432,431

The Drug War And Mass Incarceration By The Numbers: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/08/drug-war-mass-incarceration_n_3034310.html

What’s up with African American literacy rates?: http://ourweekly.com/news/2013/oct/03/whats-african-american-literacy-rates/

Obama: Police who arrested professor 'acted stupidly' - CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/22/harvard.gates.interview/

Henry Louis Gates arrest controversy: Go to:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates_arrest_controversy Police report and 9-1-1 dispatcher recordings: