The theme of the current issue of Skeptic magazine is “crime and punishment.” The conclusions of the researchers who put it together are of interest. Some of their points:
–“One famous study found that just ‘1 percent of the population (is) accountable for 63% of all violent crime convictions.’”
— “Research suggests that people on the left are more prone to crime than those on the right – and that the more left leading they are, the more crime-prone they tend to be.”
— “one recent study, for example, found that the BLM protests of 2020 had the ironic effect of increasing crime rates in areas where the protests took place…(M)urders increased by roughly 11.5 percent, which is over 3,000 additional homicides.”
— “…after careful, peer-reviewed empirical research by economist Roland Fryer found that controlling for suspect behavior, police do not disproportionately kill Black people (White suspects were in fact 27 percent more likely to be shot), then-Harvard University President Claudine Gay tried to fire Fryer. She accused the tenured professor, an African-American academic star, of the use of inappropriate language, an offense for which Harvard’s own policies dictated sensitivity training.”
Seldom does one issue of a newsstand magazine give you this much to think about.
One suspects that “inappropriate language” in the Ivy League casts a very wide net. One also wonders if the conclusions of the study might have something to do with it. Facts have a way of getting in the way of established preconceptions.
It’d be educational to see examples of the alleged offenses.