Truck and Barter: Statistically significant, judicially bothersome.

January 21, 2005

Statistically significant, judicially bothersome.

By Ian

Amusing tale about being exempted from a jury over at the Division of Labour.

Lawrence White gets asked a statistical question -- "do any of you think that members of certain groups in our society are more likely to commit violent crimes than members of other groups" -- and gives an affirmative, knowing that there is statistical evidence that the prison population does not accurately reflect the general population of the US.

What we said was a statistical answer to a statistical question, not an expression of racism. Nonetheless the defense attorney may have rationally excluded us, figuring that those who didn’t agree with us were better indicating that they would not be biased against a black defendant. They were indicating that they would not volunteer to say anything that might seem unsympathetic to the defendant. Any (non-dissembling) anti-black racist in the pool would raise his hand (for the wrong reason); anybody who thinks that “over-representation of blacks in the prison population is entirely due to bias in arrests and convictions” would not raise his hand.

Posted at January 21, 2005 11:13 AM

Comments

Even Jesse Jackson would have to answer the question in the affirmative. He once complained that even he felt worried for his own safety when certain kinds of people walked up behind him (the kind of people described as "youths" when newspapers write about their actions after the fact.)

Just because it is statistically significant doesn't make it eugenic. Once can argue that the "over-representation" is a cultural artifact of slavery, Jim Crow, an unintended consequence of northen migration and the Great Society, etc.

Comment by Buzzcut at January 21, 2005 04:47 PM | Permalink