14.) wants to repeal laws that disproportionately incarcerates blacks/latinos
What exactly does this mean? Are you going to relax laws for minorities just to make it look good on paper? If blacks and latino's commit more crimes as a percentage of the population then their numbers in prison SHOULD be higher. I suspect he's setting up some kind of drug legalization stance.
I expressed something similar. How can something written be the cause. A law doesn't come into play unless someone breaks it.
Actually, a law comes into play when a cop stops and frisks you because you "look"
black suspicious.
Based on the premise of #14, isn't about looking suspicious, it's about actually having done something. It deals with INCARCERATION which means the person was proven guilty in a court of law nor just someone checking things out. Next thing you'll tell me is that those proven guilty weren't, that professional wrestling is real, and the moon landing was fake.
Let's assume for a moment that marijuana use is equally frequent between blacks, Hispanics, and non Hispanic whites. I don't have stats off hand, but to illustrate the mechanism let's say for argument's sake that it's 10% of people, regardless of race. Now, let's take 300 people and send them walking down the street in proportions approximately equal to the US population, 135 whites (45%) 120 blacks (40%) 45 Hispanics (15%). Pick out 30 (10% of the total), stop and frisk for shits and giggles. There is a 10% chance the person frisked will be found with maryjane and subsequently get arrested. If all races are equally stopped and frisked without prejudice, the resulting drug charges will approximate the frequency of each race within the greater group of 300 people. That is to say, about 45% of the people found with maryjane will be white, 40% will be black, and 15% will be Hispanic. Any given individual has a 10% chance of being frisked, and then 10% of those people will have maryjane on them. This leads to 1% of people being both frisked and having maryjane.
This works out as, for every
300,000 people in the population we should expect to see drug charges for approximately 1,350 whites, 1,200 blacks, and 450 Hispanics.
However, non-prejudicial police scrutiny does not typically exist. Of the 30 people stopped and frisked, only 3 of them will be white (thus a .02% chance they will be frisked, substantially lower than the 10% sampling). The remaining 27 will be composed of 15 blacks, and 12 Hispanics. Since every person has a 10% chance of having maryjane on them, that will result in drug charges for .002 whites, 1.5 blacks, and 1.2 Hispanics in the 300 person sample.
That is to say that for every
300,000 people in the population we now will see drug charges for approximately
2 whites, 1500 blacks, and 1200 Hispanics.
So, while your point is correct that (at least assuming general perfection in the trial and conviction process) conviction requires breaking the law in the first place, it is also a largely irrelevant point to the phenomenon that he was addressing. The laws that result in over representation of minorities in the correctional system are things like petty offenses and victimless crimes that typically rely on police interactions which stem from subjective decision making processes. They are also state and local policies that further empower subjective police intrusion, though those would be outside of the venue of federal action.