My general skepticism about soundbite claims,from activists on the Left who don't bother to question the agit-prop of their sides more hyperbolic advocates.
Questioning Michael Moore was ok a few yrs. ago.
Another example. Portside did not publish this reply.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Michael Pugliese <michael.098762001 at gmail.com> Date: May 30, 2005 11:01 AM Subject: Re: Stereotyping black men To: portside at portside.org
>...Is the figure still correct that 75% of all black men
in this country will have been incarcerated in either a
juvenile or an adult facility in their lifetime?
Georgia Q
I don't have handy , "Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society, " by a set of leftist sociologists at UC, Berkeley http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9866/9866.contrib.html which has abundant stats, but, this is three times higher than what I've heard.
Googling Georgia's question http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=75%25+of+all+black+men+in+this+country+will+have+been+incarcerated+in+either+a+juvenile+or+an+adult+facility+in+their+lifetime , one source, http://www.prisonactivist.org/pipermail/prisonact-list/2000-September/003108.html by Manning Marable, says, "As of December 1989, the total U.S. prison population, including federal institutions, exceeded one million for the first time in history, an incarceration rate of the general population of one out of every 250 citizens.
For African Americans, the rate was over 700 per 100,000, or about seven times more than for whites. About one half of all prisoners were black. Twenty-three percent of all black males in their twenties were either in jail or prison, on parole, probation or awaiting trial. The rate of incarceration of black Americans in 1989 had even surpassed that experienced by blacks who still lived under the apartheid regime of South Africa.
In their lifetime, another Google hit, from Sam Smith's Progressive Review http://prorev.com/statscl.htm says, quoting AP and the CSM, "CURT ANDERSON, AP - About one in every 37 U.S. adults was either imprisoned at the end of 2001 or had been incarcerated at one time, the government says. The 5.6 million people with "prison experience" represented about 2.7 percent of the adult population of 210 million as of Dec. 31, 2001, said the report, released Sunday. . . The number of people sent to prison for the first time tripled from 1974 to 2001 as sentences got tougher, especially for drug offenses. There are more ex-prisoners as well, the result of longer life expectancies and a larger U.S. population.
Almost 5 percent of men in 2001 had done prison time, compared with less than 1 percent of women. Almost 17 percent of black men in 2001 had prison experience, compared with 7.7 percent of Hispanic men and 2.6 percent of white men. The percentage of black women with prison time was 1.7 percent, compared with less than 1 percent of Hispanic and white women.
No matter their ethnic origin, people between ages 35 and 44 in 2001 had the highest rates of lifetime incarceration -- 6.5 percent for men, almost 1 percent for women.
US HAS WORLD'S HIGHEST INCARCERATION RATE
GAIL RUSSELL CHADDOCK, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - More than 5.6 million Americans are in prison or have served time there, according to a new report by the Justice Department released Sunday. That's 1 in 37 adults living in the United States, the highest incarceration level in the world. It's the first time the US government has released estimates of the extent of imprisonment, and the report's statistics have broad implications for everything from state fiscal crises to how other nations view the American experience.
If current trends continue, it means that a black male in the United States would have about a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison during his lifetime. For a Hispanic male, it's 1 in 6; for a white male, 1 in 17.
. . . Nor does the impact of incarceration end with the sentence. Former inmates can be excluded from receiving public assistance, living in public housing, or receiving financial aid for college. Ex-felons are prohibited from voting in many states. And with the increased use of background checks - especially since 9/11 - they may be permanently locked out of jobs in many professions, including education, child care, driving a bus, or working in a nursing home. More than 4 million prisoners or former prisoners are denied a right to vote; in 12 states, that ban is for life."
-- Michael Pugliese
-- Michael Pugliese
On 5/31/05, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> Michael Pugliese quoted:
>
> >This "peer reviewed study" is a piece of polemical garbage. Everybody
> >is supposed to take away the bumper sticker summary, "Coalition kills
> >100,000 Iraqi civilians, half of them children," without reading the
> >details. It tries to use crude epidemiological models like those used
> >to study disease and applies them to the conscious infliction of
> >violence by human beings. The result is statistical static.
>
> I'm usually uncomfortable about appeals to
> authority, but a peer-reviewed study in The
> Lancet is generally about as far as you can get
> from "polemical garbage." It's funny that
> accusation should come from a blog, a genre that
> is well known for polemical garbage ("I am
> betting that...," says our blogger - with
> techniques like that who needs peer review?).
>
> And what is conceptually wrong with using an
> excess deaths technique in this case? It's not
> just bombs that kill people in war - it's also
> all the dislocations that come with war, from bad
> water to busted hospitals to stress.
>
> The author thinks he's onto something with the
> claim that Falluja skews the sample:
>
> >Mistake One:
> >
> >"A cluster sample survey was undertaken
> >throughout Iraq during September, 2004"
> >
> >It is bad practice to use a cluster sample for a distribution known to
> >be highly asymmetrical. Since all sources agree that violence in Iraq
> >is highly geographically concentrated, this means a cluster sample has
> >a very high chance of exaggerating the number of deaths.
>
> The Lancet estimate of 100,000 excess deaths
> *excludes* Falluja
> <http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673604174412/fulltext>:
>
> >The risk of death was estimated to be 2·5-fold
> >(95% CI 1·6-4·2) higher after the invasion when
> >compared with the preinvasion period. Two-thirds
> >of all violent deaths were reported in one
> >cluster in the city of Falluja. If we exclude
> >the Falluja data, the risk of death is 1·5-fold
> >(1·1-2·3) higher after the invasion. We estimate
> >that 98000 more deaths than expected
> >(8000-194000) happened after the invasion
> >outside of Falluja and far more if the outlier
> >Falluja cluster is included. The major causes of
> >death before the invasion were myocardial
> >infarction, cerebrovascular accidents, and other
> >chronic disorders whereas after the invasion
> >violence was the primary cause of death. Violent
> >deaths were widespread, reported in 15 of 33
> >clusters, and were mainly attributed to
> >coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly
> >killed by coalition forces were women and
> >children. The risk of death from violence in the
> >period after the invasion was 58 times higher
> >(95% CI 8·1-419) than in the period before the
> >war.
>
> And what's with this racist claptrap?
> "Self-reporting in third-world countries is
> notoriously unreliable." Iraqis are not a bunch
> of illiterates.
>
> What was your point in forwarding this Michael?
>
> Doug
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
-- Michael Pugliese