What explains racial differences in crime?

As we've seen, not testosterone. A much better candidate for explaining racial differences in criminality: racial differences in intelligence. Robert Gordon demonstrated decades ago that simply controlling for IQ eliminates almost the entire black-white gap in juvenile delinquency, and Murray and Herrnstein similarly find IQ explains most of the black-white difference in incarceration rates:
Sociologist Robert Gordon has analyzed black-white differences in crime and concluded that virtually all of the difference in the prevalence of black and white juvenile delinquents is explained by the IQ difference, independent of the effect of socioeconomic status. The only reliable indicator from the NLSY that lets us compare criminal behavior across ethnic groups is the percentage of young men who were ever interviewed while incarcerated.The figure below shows the standard comparison, before and after controlling for cognitive ability. Among white men, the proportion interviewed in a correctional facility after controlling for age was 2.4 percent; among black men, it was 13.1 percent. This large black-white difference was reduced by almost three-quarters when IQ was taken into account. The relationship of cognitive ability to criminal behavior among whites and blacks appears to be similar. 40 As in the case of other indicators, we are left with a nontrivial black-white difference even after controlling for IQ, but the magnitude of the difference shrinks dramatically.

[The Bell Curve, pp. 338-339; two papers by Robert Gordon are cited:
Gordon, R. A. 1987. SES versus IQ in the race-IQ-delinquency model. International J . of Sociology and Social Policy 7:30-96.
Gordon, R. A. 1976. Prevalence: The rare datum in delinquency measurement and its implications for the theory of delinquency. In The Juvenile Justice System. M. W. Klein (ed.). Beverly Hills, Cal.: Sage Publications, pp. 201-284.]
A more recent paper by Gordon (Everyday life as an intelligence test: Effects of intelligence and intelligence context. Intelligence, 24, 203-320.) confirms his results for juvenile delinquency and extends them to adult criminality.

17 comments:

Mark said...

Even higher IQ blacks still have behavioral problems. They're not only an eyesore but an earsore. They on average are angrier, ruder, louder, incompetent, careless and lack empathy.

Anonymous said...

Er, that most recent paper you mention appears to be from 97.

I believe this relationship has been strongly debated in psychology as well.

Anonymous said...

The Big 5 would be a good place to look, too. For example, impulsivity -- the other end of the spectrum of where conscientiousness sits -- seems pervasive in every aspect of black life.

I'd like to see amygdale sensitivity comparisons as well.

Another candidate: high self-esteem combined with low competence is known to correlate with criminality.


re: Big 5. I'm not sure if intergroup comparisons work very well with the Big 5 traits.

Mark said...

"Another candidate: high self-esteem combined with low competence is known to correlate with criminality."

Right, narcissism. I'm sure they have narcissistic personality disorder at a much higher rate.

Reminds me of a clip I saw of the Howard Stern Show on YouTube, where Dr. Drew gave them a narcissism test. And the black female co-host Robin Quivers scored nearly the maximum and far higher than anyone else.

Rap music is very narcissistic.

Anonymous said...

Variants of the MAO-A gene may also be relevant.

'As one of the few studies of MAOA that lays out such racial prevalences, this study is quite an enigma to me. One might expect a study of nearly 1,500 subjects to more accurately reflect reality than smaller studies, but the study apparently discovered no subjects with the 2-repeat allele, which has a markedly greater association with violence than the 3-repeat allele that has received so much attention. Other studies, like one of 1,100 American males by Guo et al, found that 1% of American males possess this allele. MAOA is on the X chromosome, of which females have two, giving the Sabol et al study well over 2,000 chromosomes to examine. Therefore, I would have expected about 20 or so chromosomes to have the 2-repeat allele, instead of none.

I point all this out because Harpending, for one, relied on Sabol et al to describe the allele frequency of the MAOA promoter in black people. Other studies have replicated the allele frequency of Sabol et al for white males, always with about 1% having the 2-repeat allele. However, two smaller studies offered evidence of a significant proportion of black people having the 2-repeat allele."

http://cordeliaforlear.blogspot.com/2009/06/deus-ex-machina-genetics.html

" Boys who carry a particular variation of the gene Monoamine oxidase A (MAOA), sometimes called the "warrior gene," are more likely not only to join gangs but also to be among the most violent members and to use weapons, according to a new study from The Florida State University that is the first to confirm an MAOA link specifically to gangs and guns."


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090605123237.htm

Anonymous said...

"Right, narcissism. I'm sure they have narcissistic personality disorder at a much higher rate."

Not merely narcissism. You might have an IQ of 140 and think you are a genius. The world would often confirm this belief. No problem. There's a match. Ditto for being good looking, a good lover, articulate, or any other self assesment one could make.

It's when you ahbve an IQ of 90 and think you're a genius that you run into a problem: admit you're not smart or blame external forces (racism, white folk, etc). Now you're a victim. Now you're anger about not getting what you're owed is justified. Now you gonna take it out on someone. F tha world!

Again, ditto for being good all other self-rated categories.

Mark said...

Narcissism isn't about merely having self-esteem, it's a mentality of selfishness and the violation of others. It is linked to sociopathy.

Tanstaafl said...

Crime correlates with a lack of scruples.

High IQ groups commit crime. They're just clever enough to stick to complex gray areas like fraud, and unscrupulous enough to pay off lawmen and lawmakers.

Tanstaafl said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Tanstaafl said...

Writing the above I was thinking primarily of recent cases like Agriprocessors and Big Rig, but I just ran across Pierce's Paying the Organizatsiya -- Free Speech, June 1998, and reread it. There's a genetic ashkenazi lack of scruples, often described in more flattering terms, but specifically because it's jewish any wrongdoing it produces has to rise to a higher threshold than usual to be considered noteworthy, never mind prosecutable. As Pierce points out, even when it does come to light it's attributed by the media to "Russians".

DixieMicket said...

Even higher IQ blacks still have behavioral problems. They're not only an eyesore but an earsore. They on average are angrier, ruder,

Apparently higher IQ whites "still have behavioral problems." On the abortion front the highest rate of abortion are in white nations such as Russia where in various decades, there were 3 babies aborted out of every live birth, a massive demonstration of white "leadership" on the child killing front. Loveless and Holman (2006)


On the homosexuality front, whites do quite well, showing twice, sometimes 3 times the incidence of homosexual behavior than blacks (Rogers and Turner 1991, Remafedi, Resnic Blum and Harris 1992, Binson et. al 1995)

Whites are also leaders in the consumption of pornography also (The Southwest Journal of Criminal Justice Volume 2 ● No. 2 / 2005).

On the child molestation front, Whites also post higher rates of child molestation than other groups (Hattery and Smith 2007) As one conservative police chief report states:

"Criminal profiling has a legitimate and successful history when applied to serial killers, rapists, hijackers, child molesters and arsonists. Ironically, some criminal profiles show a racial relationship between white males and serial killers, rapists, and child molesters."
(-- Carl Milazzo (1999) Race Relations in Police Operations: A Legal and Ethical Perspective. International Assn. of Chiefs of Police)

Anonymous said...

Whites are also leaders in the consumption of pornography also (The Southwest Journal of Criminal Justice Volume 2 No. 2 / 2005).

Lie. In the study you are citing, there was "a convenience sample [collected from
1997 to 1999] of 1,342 respondents who were recruited from participants in client intervention programs for men arrested trying to hire street prostitutes in these four cities [Portland, Oregon, San Francisco and Santa Clara, California, and Las Vegas, Nevada]." 57.8% of the respondents were white. Portland was 74.1% white around 2005-2007, San Francisco 45.1% white around 2006-2008, Santa Clara 55.6% white in 2000, and Las Vegas 51.8% white around 2005-2007. Whites were not overrepresented among the survey respondents.

Table 3 reported the mean frequency of pornography use of the respondents by race on a scale from 0 [never] to 5 [several times a day]
White: 1.082
African American: 1.086
Hispanic: 0.871
Asian: 1.264
Other: 0.858

On the child molestation front, Whites also post higher rates of child molestation than other groups

Blacks like to claim whites are more likely to be serial killers and pedophiles, or even that almost all serial killers and pedophiles are white. The truth is that blacks are less overrepresented among serial killers and pedophiles than other types of criminals, but they are still overrepresented. Less overrepresented does not mean underrepresented. You ought to learn the difference.

Anonymous said...

Lying about a study the way you did proves you are incorrigibly mendacious, DixieMicket.

Anonymous said...

I just stumbled across this site and have no formal statistical or academic training, but the articles here read like it's a pro-white eugenics blog. Interesting.

Anyway, in the comments I see a dispute over an apparent connection between pornography consumption and criminality. At least that is what I gather from the attempted rebuttals to DixieMicket's comment.

With that in mind, I noticed this:

Asian: 1.264

This was highest of all in the pornography consumption list you posted.

So it looks like Asians, not blacks or whites, are the leaders of pornography consumption.

What, if any, relationship to criminality among Asians versus blacks or whites do you think this shows?

Anonymous said...

PS "no formal statistical or academic training" - sorry I do have academic training, what I meant is no statistical or academic training in these fields of sociology, criminology, genetics, etc.

Salgo said...

Africa has the highest prevalence of child sexual abuse for both sexes:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse#cite_ref-stolt_153-0

Black women are reported for child sexual abuse more than White women accounting for population:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16816321

Black children are reported for sexual abuse more than White children accounting for population:

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2011/03/black_childabuse_statistics_report_debunks_bias_assumptions/

Salgo said...

Blacks are far more represented in American serial killings than Whites accounting for population:

https://archive.org/download/6396bf06c11b81777c27ca0edcb4fdbb4ae17354576954101f6d6ce3a015b806/6396bf06c11b81777c27ca0edcb4fdbb4ae17354576954101f6d6ce3a015b806.jpg

https://ia801206.us.archive.org/15/items/SerialKillerRate/Serial-Killer-Rate.png

Blacks are also far more represented in American mass shootings:

https://ia601206.us.archive.org/10/items/95b096d78817aafee0941d039bebc5b957b63798661e9c3aea17a4dcb79680ea/95b096d78817aafee0941d039bebc5b957b63798661e9c3aea17a4dcb79680ea.jpeg