Richard Rosenfeld: Hello everyone,

I'm Rick Rosenfeld and will be leading today's discussion on race and crime. I will begin by addressing some of the questions already posted. Join in at any time.

RHarnack: 1. What is the literacy rate of prisoners? I have heard that some estimates of illiteracy in the prison population is between 75% - 95%.

2. Would remedial education programs bring about a change in recidivism due to increased ability to read and develop job skills?

Richard Rosenfeld: The literacy rate among prisoners is quite low, but in fact the percentage of prisoners with some college has increased over time, along with the growth in educational attainment of the general population. There is evidence that prison vocational and education programs reduce recidivism.

trux: My question is this. Is your discussion going to be an honest attempt to describe the problem of crime with valid statistics or do you plan to pick and choose those that would seem to support your prejudices toward a socio-economic causality for crime? Will you demonstrate the causal relationship between race and violent crime? Will the statistics you present show the contrast of white on black crime and black on white crime? Will you please show the statistics that relate to the number of rapes of white women by black men and white men on black women? Will please answer why 6% of the population (black males) commit the vast majority of violent crime? And lastly, when you are done with your presentation will you entertain alternative reasons for the disparate amount of violent crime by race other than the theoretical notions of socio-economic influence and discuss equally valid presumptions like genetic predisposition to violence.

Richard Rosenfeld: Yes, we should have an honest and open discussion. The vast majority of violent crimes are intra-race -- victim and offender of the same race. A partial exception is robbery. 20 years ago, upwards of 40% of white robbery victims (includes Hispanics) were robbed by black offenders. But that figure has been cut in half and now is about 20%. A small percentage of all populations commits roughly half of the crimes. There is some strong research on genetic propensities to violence. The genetic variation does not appear to be correlated with race and interacts with environmental circumstances, such as poverty.

Jbuchanan: Author : Tim (IP: 74.223.52.114 , 74.223.52.114.nw.nuvox.net) E-mail : mrclean1020@charter.net
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You know what I would like to know? (This is way off topic from race btw, but what the hell.) Why don't we have truth in sentencing laws for speeding tickets? If you get a moving violation why can't it be a rule that you have to get the points put on your license. I think that would go a long way towards slowing people down (assuming of course that such a law could be passed...I don't know that it is Constitutional as I am not a lawyer).

Richard Rosenfeld: You'd have to solve the problem of local municipalities trading points for fines to supplement their budgets.

skeptic55: The city of St. Louis has posted some rather remarkable decreases in its crime rate in recent years. Are these statistics credible? Have other large cities been able to have this kind of success? Could either the high numbers been too high or the current numbers too low?

Richard Rosenfeld: Like other cities in the nation, St. Louis had a substantial decline in crime during the 1990s that extended into the current century. The decline is well establish.