Friday, July 20, 2018

Benefits by ethnicity - note last graph








The last graph reminded me of another recently viewed.

Graphed in the same colours and groups prisoners by ethnicity looks like this:


Quite a close match. Hardly surprising.


Posted by at

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

ABS data across the ditch -

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/4517.0~2017~Main%20Features~Imprisonment%20rates~12

wazz in Canberra

11:36 AM
Lindsay Mitchell said...

Thanks wazz, I wrote about the over-representation of Aboriginals in the report Imprisonment and Family Structure and again, the correlation with fatherless families is evident.

“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners accounted for just over a quarter (27% or 11,307 prisoners) of the total Australian prisoner population. The total Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population aged 18 years and over in 2017 was approximately 2% of the Australian population aged 18 years and over.”

In Australia, in 2016, 46 percent of Aboriginal families with children were one parent.

12:24 PM
Mark Wahlberg said...

It was only 50 years ago Australian Aboriginals were legally considered vermin in many states. and not that long ago I believe in the Northern territories Saturday night recreations included getting pissed and hunting and killing native bush people. Not suggesting it was or is a cure, but for aboriginals, prison was probably the safest place to be.

Meanwhile in Gods Own and unlike the mean streets, for many, prison provides a warm bed and 3 meals a day.

7:07 PM
Lindsay Mitchell said...

Criminologist Greg Newbold, who has direct experience of prison, writes:
“While few if any would exchange liberty for life inside, [for] men and women with long histories of incarceration, who find the pressures of the outside world difficult, who often go without food or a roof over their head, the quality of freedom may not be much better than that of captivity. Consciously or unconsciously, therefore, some released prisoners, who struggle with life at large, are drawn back to the prison’s protective womb.”

10:19 PM
david said...

I can't help coming back to iq. The diagrams you show imply differences are due to race. But they are not. Murray showed that if you control for iq the probability of being in prison is independent of race. Pose the problem as being that people of low intelligence have difficulty coping with modern society and the potential solution set changes. Now the solution may be education. Education doesn't have much long term effect on iq but it might improve the ability to do useful jobs. Education (without racial quotas) also let's people escape from racial stereotyping. More generally high iq seems to have been an adaption of northern Europeans to life in a challenging environment. Other peoples adapted differently - sprint speed in the savanah for example. Racial characteristics may help identify where people might excel - in sport for example. If governments must intervene (and this is if) better to find ways of ensuring that there is a range of work opportunities for people of varying ability than to push people into jobs to which they are unsuited. And remember the differences are based on iq not race - there are highly intelegent Maori just as there are some pretty dumb Europeans. Treat people as individuals not identity groups.

12:48 PM
Lindsay Mitchell said...

Early last century very few Maori were in prison. Now they make up half. What changed? Their individual IQ's?

Put as simply as I can my point is that dysfunctional families (serial step parents, multiple-partner fertility, jobless, violent) create the environment that produces criminal adults and there are more dysfunctional families among those self-identifying as Maori.

Needless to say the vast majority of Maori work and look after their families.

I could resolve to ignore ethnicity/race but government departments do not. And policy 'solutions' don't either.

1:59 PM
david said...

Your point is well made. But Murray puts forwrd a slightly different hypothesis and that is that the correlation between dysfunctional families and a tendancy to criminality is because both are IQ related. In other words both are a failure to cope with aspects of modern society. As to what has changed since early last century, I dont know: early last century there may have been productive oportunities for people like Maori who had a different set of skills. Think freezing works for example. Certainly there was no minimum wage, so employers could hire less productive people at lower wages. The traditional family structure was stronger making coping easier both emotionally and financially.

My point is that the IQ angle suggests other possible solutions might work. And that some of the current policies wont.

2:57 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)