You see this claim all the time: “crack and cocaine are the same chemical, one is just criminalized harder because blacks use it.” Crack cocaine and “regular” cocaine (cocaine hydrochloride) are not effectively the same thing, however.
Continue readingCriminology
On Single Motherhood and Crime
So, the most popular option offered by conservatives to explain race differences in crime or criminology in general is single motherhood. Some popular pundits who expunge this theory are Larry Elder, Thomas Sowell, and Charlie Kirk. Overall, this theory is strongly flawed.
Continue readingPercent Black and Crime
An interesting predictor of local crime rates is the percent of the region examined that is black. Some may point to this and say that this is a result of discrimination. This is unlikely, as Rubenstein (2016) finds “Victim and witness surveys show that police arrest violent criminals in close proportion to the rates at which criminals of different races commit violent crimes.” Other reasons could include socioeconomic standards in the neighborhood, race differences in IQ, and underlying genetic differences in crime-committing-variables (aggression, ASB, etc.). Whatever the cause, the evidence for the association is documented in this blog post.
Continue readingCrime and IQ: A Review
NOTE: This article was posted on someone’s Twitter on 7/20/2020 which prompted me to correct some errors I remembered having in it. The first sentence, which the tweet quoted to my dismay, read “there is a moderate to strong relationship between criminality and intelligence.” This was a misrepresentation of the data on my part, and I changed it to what it is now (below). I also responded to some criticisms about “high IQ people just being less likely to get caught” and deleted a couple sentences.
There is a low to moderate correlation between criminality and intelligence, but the average IQ of criminals and non-criminals is large and sociologically important. The evidence for this will be documented below, though explanations for why this is will be saved for another day:
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