what connections do you see that tie them all together or what don't you see?

Tell somebody long enough that they're a criminal: and pretty soon they'll become one.

Being poor doesn't make you a criminal, but it can set up conditions of desperation that make it harder not to become one (especially when your kid is sick).

If you belong to a historically oppressed minority that, despite attempts at legal equality still live in poverty: the same conditions apply.

Add to that a media that tells the poor and economically oppressed that they are, by virtue of their ethnic background and economic status, criminals: and it becomes that much harder for them not to comply and become criminals.

Peer pressure has a profound effect. Nation-wide 'media pressure' and 'society pressure': more so.

thats a good analysis i will make own just not right now im too damn tired to write that much.

I was listening to a current affairs program on the ABC the other day that talked about the different groups and crime rates in the US. It was interesting, they said that something like i think it was 13% of African American males were currently incarcerated in some way at any given time in the US. The effect here was that with less available partners, many African American girls were choosing to go onto further education, rather than choosing to marry and have a family. The figures showed a direct correlation between the two. It is interesting that if the figures were accurate, that a positive could come out of a negative like that.

This site is well sourced by US Census and DOJ:
http://www.usefulwork.com/shark/archives/002309.html

This says that there are 2,224,181 enrolled in college and 899,200 in jail.

This site:
http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/
Says that there are more than 2 million people in jail (or were in 2003). Some sites say 2.2 million.

African Americans make up 12% to 13% of the American population, but more than 44% of the population in state and federal prisons.

44% of 2 million = 880,000
44% of 2.2 million = 968,000

so the numbers basically match between the sites.

It goes on to say:


This was 8 years ago.

This is a good site as well:
http://www.cjcj.org/pubs/higher/highercal.html

From this site:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/th.../us.html#People

Current US Population: 301,139,947 (July 2007 est.)
Ethnic Groups: white 81.7%, black 12.9%, Asian 4.2%, Amerindian and Alaska native 1%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.2% (2003 est.)

So there should be 38 to 39 million African Americans. If between 880,000 and 968,000 are in prison, that means that approximately 2.2% to 2.5% of African Americans are in prison.

If there are 2 million people in jail, and the population is about 300 million, that means that approximately .6% of the population is currently in jail.

If there are 300 million people in America, and approximately 82% of them are white: that would mean that there are approximately 240 million whites in America. I've already said that there are about 2 million people in jail. Even if they were ALL white, that would still be only .8 percent of white people in jail. Still less than 1%.

Hope that math works out. Math has never been my strong point.

Looks like we're up to 1 in a hundred.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080228/ap_on_...on_population_7

With race, I think a lot of it will be rollover from previous generations. School can only do so much education-wise...if someone's grandparents never learned how to read, their parents probably won't be terribly educated, and things like proper grammar will be unusually difficult, which will limit employment opportunities. "Local dialect" is amazingly difficult to overcome. I can't speak without a Southern accent, for example, but fortunately for me, it's an "acceptable" way of sounding around here. If my accent sounded "ghetto", potential employers would assume that I might be a crack addict.
Poverty and crime always have gone hand in hand, regardless of racial factors, but in the US, race and poverty go hand in hand because of sociological reasons. Segregation was only 40 years ago; my parents were there for that. It'll probably be a few more generations before the situation comes close to being "right".

kirin you are forgetting all the blacks on probation or on parole.