Headline of the month

Kevinc

Well said, Rod. I thought you'd pick this one up. My thoughts exactly. Though this isn't a new problem. I remember "discussing" this issue 30 years ago with a comrade of the old left and suggesting ever so gently that the reason so many black kids went to jail was because of their propensity to commit more crime. Cue predictable apoplexy in other party, and as the "conversation" continued the inevitable physical assault (Luckily, I was bigger than her).

normanc

The most important fact should be that criminals are more at risk of jail than non-criminals. In that subset habitual & violent criminals should be more at risk than petty first time offenders, and so on and so forth.

Race shouldn't matter.

Why are the left so obsessed by race? I've never managed to figure that one out.

McCfuzz

Perhaps the 'authorities' will now address the problem by introducing positive discrimination similar to that imposed in the workplace.

David Alexander

Guardianista Logic has been incubated & promoted by Neo-Marxist Islington fools who may once have been editors or reporters at the BBC.

Your mutant child is now a young adult, deal with it.

Stephanie Tohill

Now, now Liddle. I know whenever your favourite topic (anything about black men, as long as it is negative) rears its head you get excited, but that is no reason to misrepresent.

The article doesn't decide it is down to racism, althouhg, admittedly, that is one thing they mention (and I think it is fair to say that will be one factor of many, particularly if we look at incarceration rates for people of differeing ethnicities committing the same crime.

The article just focuses on how to reduce the numbers:

""The question is how you break the cycle when young men experience custody. Three quarters simply re-offend. We have to intervene with families more effectively to stop kids going to prison. That means looking at school exclusions. You need to deal with issues like mental health and substance abuse. It is not enough to throw our hands in the air."

Working with families, looking at issues linked to substance abuse and mental health (all of which play a part in criminality) does not equal laying the blame at the feet of whitey authorities.

And I am sure you know that so why pretend otherwise?

Stephanie Tohill

PS - The headline has been changed:

"More black people jailed in England and Wales proportionally than in US"

John Levett

Thanks to New Labour's plethora of laws and regulations, we're all at more risk of jail.

Alexandrovich

For comments, see Wednesday 17th and Wednesday 31st of March.

Jack

"Yo!"

What are you trying to say?

Edward McLaughlin

The proportion of black players in the Premier League, far outweighs the proportion of black people in the country. As individuals, they excel on the football field and so make it into the teams.

Are the EHRC suggesting we do something about this?

Oedipus Rex

Not just 'headline of the month' but some wonderful Guardianista content too.

The most interesting thing I find is that it lays out very clearly the statistics and percentages of those in the nick broken down by 'ethnic' backgroud/population.
Of course, there is no (and I have never seen) a similar statistical breakdown for crimes committed by percentage of population. Was it the case that they were not available during the PCC row?
if so, why is that when it would make so obvious any discrepancies between crime and punishment in relation to 'race'. It could only make sense if those two sets of data were compared.

The guardianista journo also reports that there are mental health and drug abuse "issues" - without making any comparison to see if 'white' prisoners have proportionately similar problems (my limited experience more than a decade or so ago would suggest they do).

It also quotes this blog's favourite - the gracious Diane - having a go at Michael Howard. I'm no Tory, but I know who I have more respect for.

What I find so depressing is that the people who are losing out the most from this form of social dishonesty are those very same people in jail - but the smug guardianistas are probably not too worried so long as they can claim to be 'anti-racist' and, who knows, probably send their kids to rather nice schools away from the very same people they pretend to support.

Insular Japanese

I used to work as a Probation Officer and, during my training, I was told without question (on an almost daily basis, and with no opportunity for discussion) exactly what you have said, that black people DO NOT commit more crime than other ethnic or racial groups and that the reason they constitute a greater proportion of the prison population is solely due to "prejudice on the part of the whitey authorities, be it at school or in the criminal justice system", ergo "black people do not commit more crime and, if they do, it's not their fault". I always felt that with such a refusal to address the issue by the probation authorities, the problem of a cultural predilection to commit crime in the black community would remain untackled.

That's one of the reasons why I left.

Jack Dawson

Interestingly, the details of the report show that Chinese, Indian (cf Pakistani) and 'mixed' people are under-represented in the prison population.

Tiberius

"If I go outside, paint my face black and come back in, then can I have some benefit", said the man standing in the dole office queue next to me back in 1977.

Perhaps the black defendants in question could ask the judge the same question, suitably amended.

Robbo

JD: no doubt the Guardianistas would like to correct that by banging up more Chinese and Indians

Stephanie Tohill

I guess nobody actually read the article!

Could it be, that the article didn't bang on about the numbers reflecting higher levels of criminality because that's a given.

People have to commit crimes to go to jail. An article which read "Higher numbers of black men in jail because they commit more crime" would be rather short.

What the focus is on is WHY and how to reduce that number, as I would think everybody would agree that less people committing crime is a good thing.

Or would we rather not work out how to reduce the number of black men who trun to crime and instead whinge about the wording in a Guardian article?

Oedipus Rex

I know this off topic but, but for the sake of stirring it up a bit, read this from the BBC website, re. EDL demo in Leicester:

"The English Defence League (EDL) protest in Leicester prompted the largest police operation in the city for 25 years and a counter demonstration by anti-fascists.

But what did the residents think?

Mark James, 40, a property developer, was watching the EDL demonstration. Being black, he said, gave him his own perspective on the event.

"The EDL invited me in to hear what they had to say and I was ready to go in, but the police said I couldn't, it was too dangerous, it could provoke trouble.
You hear and see terrible things about Islamic extremism, so you can see why people would not want that.
And the neighbourhood I live in here in Leicester is mostly Muslim and every community has its own racism - you don't always hear about that."

A fair reporting by the Beeb, I'd suggest.

DougS

The headline isn't followed up by a suggested reason for this situation, but the way it's couched is meant to convey to the reader that racial prejudice is involved.

As Edward McLaughlin points out, we have a disproportionate amount of black premier league footballers. The same is the case with top British athletes.

I've noticed that a disproportionate amount of Asians run corner shops. This might be because they're family oriented and they're all prepared to pitch in and work long hours, or maybe they're just good at it! Anybody think that we should push for racial diversity in corner shops?

It appears only to be organisations like the police force or 'top-jobs' or the number MP's where diversity is required to achieve PC.

I can't wait to read Diane Abbott's take on this one!

Forest Fan

"The commission also warns of the rising numbers of women in jails. It says that the "number of women prisoners has nearly doubled since 1995 in England and Wales, and since 2000 in Scotland – currently around 5% of prisoners are women".

Oh my God! Is this evidence of a damaged relationship between authority and woman?

Are women subjected to an "excess" amount of stop and searches?

Oedipus Rex

Stephanie Tohill -"Could it be, that the article didn't bang on about the numbers reflecting higher levels of criminality because that's a given."

A given!! I seem to remember the most almighty barney when it was argued that it was not 'a given'.

And I certainly read the article, before I saw Rod's blog in fact.

Johnnydub

I would love to see a statistical modelling of the chances of growing up in a one parent household vs the chances of ending up in prison.

My gut feel is that when 75% of black kids grow up without a father their chances of avoiding gang life (as a substitute for male authority) are pretty small...

Frank P

It seems to have been forgotten that the children of the post war influx of West Indian immigrants were nobbled in the 1960s by predominately leftist Black Power activists from America, the West Indies and Africa who working in unison, first in London then in other provincial cities - through political fomentation and via youth clubs, community centres, shebeens and the medium of the 'music' industry, instructed them in the dark arts of mugging, dope peddling and other forms of lucrative crime, brainwashing them into thinking it was not only their right but their racial duty to reek revenge on the whitey colonialists and erstwhile slave masters, by stealing from them and corrupting their children.

Prior to that, the vast majority of first generation West Indian immigrants came to find work and and a better life and were dismayed by this development. They were predominately pro-British, well educated under the British system in the West Indies; then the leftist internationalists recruited their children as useful idiots. The current demographics of the prison population are directly related to that. A succession of governments of both stripes have failed to address the subversion involved in that phenomenon. Once again suppression of free speech under its guise of 'political correctness' is the successful ploy of crypto- communism.

normanc

Forest Fan: "The commission also warns of the rising numbers of women in jails. It says that the "number of women prisoners has nearly doubled since 1995 in England and Wales, and since 2000 in Scotland – currently around 5% of prisoners are women".

I don't suppose there was any mention of Lesbian, Gays, Bi-sexuals & Transvestites?

We only need sexual orientation to complete the left's holy trinity of pigeonholing - race, gender, and sexual orientation, two of which have absolutely no bearing on any life activity that I can think of but are obsessed over as though they hold the meaning of life.

Old Slaughter

Rod,

Its because the only variable in these equations the trendy left can stomach is the racism within the justice system.

That or some weak 'poverty' argument is all they will allow. Their heads explode if any other argument is entertained

Stuart Seacole Smith

Now, now Tohill.

Judging by your commenting habits I think your special interest in young black men and crime is easily the equal of RL's.

Further, I recall that you've previously opined that crimes should each be dealt with individually, and that the colour of the perpetrator is irrelevant. Which is all very nice and all. No good to anyone when it comes to targetting crime in defined "cultures" of course. But very nice none the less.

That this means the police steer clear of known trouble spots for fear of being branded racist or getting bogged down in endless PC quicksand, and people in those areas consequently being abandoned to crime and underachievement means little, I suppose, so long as the liberal left get to keep spouting their now orthodox platitudes and feeling good about themselves.

Ozzy

Be careful writing these types of articles Rod. They tend to provoke mindless PC responses from readers. A classic response is for them to point out that most pedophiles are white (which is hard to prove as I would suspect that most non-western countries don't publish crime statistics).

GaryO

Guardian (especially Cif) is a veritable quagmire of white guilt progressives, islamophilic Israel bashers, who have also run a campaign or two against your good self, Rod. Publish this you want, I'm past caring, it’s the truth anyway, you know it, I know it and the world knows it.

But on the report, are the police sweeping the streets of black folk going about their daily business and putting them in prison willi nilly or have the black incarcerated ones actually done something wrong, the report doesn't say.

A. MacAulay

Clearly the problem would be solved by introducing a positive-discrimination quota system. Either up the number of non-black prisoners until the proportion to population is reached, or gaol less blacks! Simple really. So where's the problem?

anne allan

As a white grandmother, I feel I need to do my bit to help even up the statistics.
So, should I just tootle down to the local nick and hand myself in?
Or, watching the Commonwealth Games perhaps I should join in the men's 10,000 metres.

Pete

The Left is obsessed with race (and gender) because to address the real issue underlying the social problems that they think they care about - i.e. class - would mean facing up to the fact that they, as middle class muppets driven solely by a congenital sense of entitlement and petulant self-obsession, are the problem and not the solution after all.

The resulting catastrophic collapse of identity would mean they could no longer lord it over the rest of us, ethically sourced pontifications in hand.

As simple as peas.

Anyway, I'm at risk of a couple of pints so I'll leave you all to it.

Fergus Pickering

I really don't care if more black men go to jail than white men. I don't see that it is a problem. If they commit the crimes then bang 'em up. I'm sure more working class people are in jail than middle class people. And lots more men than women. So what? So what? So what? I reckon there are more accountants than vicars in prison. What do you think?

Stephanie Tohill

"Stephanie Tohill -"Could it be, that the article didn't bang on about the numbers reflecting higher levels of criminality because that's a given."

A given!! I seem to remember the most almighty barney when it was argued that it was not 'a given'.

And I certainly read the article, before I saw Rod's blog in fact."

Erm a given in relation to the particular article: i.e. It is a given that people are in jail because they have committed a crime. Much as the legal system has its problems, I am not so sure it is filled with innocent people.

I don't know what this barney is you're speaking of but back to my point, yes we know there are loads of black people in jail because they have committed a crime, what this article is focusing on is how to manage improve that situation. I cannot think of one possible complaint people could have about getting less people (of whatever hue) to commit crimes. Prevention is far more important than quibbling on about the fact some article didn't state that more Black men/Men in general are in jail because they have committed more crimes.

Stephanie Tohill

Johnnydub
October 11th, 2010 1:44pm
I would love to see a statistical modelling of the chances of growing up in a one parent household vs the chances of ending up in prison.

My gut feel is that when 75% of black kids grow up without a father their chances of avoiding gang life (as a substitute for male authority) are pretty small...

Johnny - Out of interest do you have a link to that statistic. I hadn't read anywhere that 75% of black children grow up without a father. Do you mean actually without a father or in a single parent family as they aren't necessarily the same. Plenty of children's parents separate and they still enjoy contact with both parents. (I should know, I was such a child.)

Stephanie Tohill

"Now, now Tohill.

Judging by your commenting habits I think your special interest in young black men and crime is easily the equal of RL's."

a) You'd be wrong on matters which interest me. Or at the very least you haven't paid attention to where, or what I post on. Nor which bloggists I comment on (a fair few more than Liddle) so we can dismiss paragraph one out of hand.

"Further, I recall that you've previously opined that crimes should each be dealt with individually, and that the colour of the perpetrator is irrelevant. Which is all very nice and all. No good to anyone when it comes to targetting crime in defined "cultures" of course. But very nice none the less."

You are completely muddled, or at least didn't begin to understand what I wrote. Treating crimes 'individually'? Actually I asked why people are obsessed with the ethnicity of a person committing a crime which I do deem to be irrelevant. Or at least on a par with their gender, which, I have yet to see high levels of discussion about. I believe 'ethnicity' in itself doesn't help much in denoting anything but pigmentation levels. We need to look at factors such as family background, socio-economic background, education etc... I am pretty sure that crimes stats, for example, between middle class black males and working class black males are completely different. My point, however was aimed solely at those who lament that, when a crime is described on the BBC, for example, they don't spend the next five minutes pointing out the colour of the perpetrator. Does it really matter to the everyday man on the street. Should I care, on a personal level, that the person who pinched my car is black/Asian/white? If so, why?

"That this means the police steer clear of known trouble spots for fear of being branded racist or getting bogged down in endless PC quicksand, and people in those areas consequently being abandoned to crime and underachievement means little, I suppose, so long as the liberal left get to keep spouting their now orthodox platitudes and feeling good about themselves."

I cannot comment on the liberal left as I don't even know what that is, apart from the label du jour which people toss around. Suffice to say I have never seen any unwillingness on the part of the police, to go into certain areas, for fear of being branded racist. Nor would I suggest that the police do not do their jobs.
Although can you exaplin if the police are frightened of stopping black men for fear of being accused of being racist, who on earth is arresting these black men who end up in jail?

I also don't know how the police can play any part in tackling 'underachievement'.

Ordnance

Most football hooligans are White - and are therefore disportionately represented in the courts and prisons for that offence.
Politically Correct solution:
a) Target the relatively few Blacks hooligans in order to get the numbers up.
b) Reduce the number of White hooligans arrested otherwise the figures will become even more disportionate.
What other crimes could this apply to?
There seems to me to be something confused and befuddled at the heart of left-wing thing.

Forest Fan

Stephanie…the only way we can prevent people from committing crime is to show them that crime doesn’t pay in the long term and that there is another way.

How we make this change happen is a massive challenge to any society but I suspect it should start in the home.

Only by shining a light on the truth will we able to start the process.

Ron Todd

Ozzy

If some of the rape statistics for South Africa are even half true then there is no shortage of Black African Peodos

Hally

Frank P. Couldn't agree more. Even here at the bottom of the African continent, the leftist 'wreckers' have also sown their seed well. South Africa was a much more significant prize for Black Power than it's land-locked northern neighbour. Consequently, the Zimbabwean black population is generally far better educated and far less violent than their South African brothers. This propensity to anti-social behaviour is nothing to do with race and everything to do with racial indoctrination and class hatred.

Edward McLaughlin

Stephanie Toothill

"Should I care, on a personal level, that the person who pinched my car is black/Asian/white? If so, why?"

If your mate had his nicked last week by two white blokes, and your other mate suffered the same fate the week before, and then two more white blokes took yours, then we have a trend. Far from infallible as a pointer to who will take the next one, but we can't help it.

ooops. Spooks is on.

Kennybhoy

Frank P.

I make no apology for repeating what I wrote over by on yesterday's Wall. You really should write a book.

justabloke.

we should have more black policemen and woman to nick the black crims and then the white polce cannot be racist if they nick more of the whitey crims only fair init.

Kennybhoy

Edward McLaughlin wrote.

"ooops. Spooks is on."

ARRGGHH!! Left-liberal agitprop! LOL!

Jim Seacole Mock

There is a simple explanation for the aparent anomaly between UK and US black incarceration stats: The US has a vast Hispanic population competing for available prison beds.

Osred

Mr L re sublime Arabic oxymorons (viz 'Gay Mecca'). I give you the wonderful 'Funky Cold Medina?'

JW

Stephanie Tohill has made the huge mistake of trying to make a reasoned case in a forum dominated by people who merely want to have a pop at the "leftwing, anti-white, guilt ridden, Guardian reading, PC obsessed, anti-British elite" that have taken over this country and are determined to turn it into Zimbabwe.

Alan Edwards

The Guardian are truely the masters of Double Think

Noa

Rod.

So, any thoughts on how do we stop the government, its ludicrous Equalities Commission and the whole ethos of political correctness from continuing this madness and get them to start treating people as that, people?

no? Me neither. but at least there's always the power of laughter.

Osred

Stephanie (Tohill)

You have a great advantage in this and every other mainstream blog and fora in that your views conform to that which mainstream outlets wish to pretend is true.

Arguing against your view by using examples of why race/ethnicity or culture does matter and does affect police and other policy does not get published in anything like the amount it should. Great care is taken by this and other outlets to prevent a 'critical mass' or 'campaign' developing or emerging which would address properly the ways in which race/culture/ethnicity have affected this country adversely.

qbbsw

Another significant factor not mentioned in the article is that, recessions notwithstanding, America has a significant and rapidly growing black middle class, who are no more likely to be involved in criminality than their white counterparts (Actually there are good reasons to suggest that they are rather less likely).

annabel

A retired barrister friend of mine said that ethnic minorities were much more likely to be given a custodial sentence for a first offence (or maybe, more accurately, a first conviction) than a white offender.

Apparently, women first offenders are also more likely to be given a custodial sentence than male first offenders; and beautiful people are less likely to be convicted than ugly ones.

Pick the bones out of that.

politically incorrect social worker

Norman C - the Left are obsessed with race because it allows them to identify with 'victims' and adopt the moral high ground. Obsession with race also allows lazy thinking about some difficult 'social issues' including questions about personal responsibility and values, and social integration
The negative impact of this obsession is explored in this month's Prospect Magazine (although not dealing directly with the criminal justice system): posed with the question 'has multiculturalism had its day' four writers (all BME) all say yes

Edward McLaughlin

annabel

As you, me and your barrister friend well know: there are no ugly people. We're all gorgeously, inclusively pink on the inside.

Well if you can talk complete bollocks.......

maddy1

Well the headline is a close cousin to the fact that nearly 50 per cent of the women in our prisons are Caribbean drug smugglers.

maddy1

@ Steph
What the focus is on is WHY and how to reduce that number,

ha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha ha

Oedipus Rex

@ politically incorrect, etc...

Totally agree about Prospect Magazine's excellent articles, including the peerless Tony Sewell. I'd recommend it to all who take a genuine interest in this so called 'issue'.

@ JW "Stephanie Tohill has made the huge mistake of trying to make a reasoned case in a forum dominated by people who merely want to have a pop at the "leftwing, anti-white, guilt ridden, Guardian reading, PC obsessed, anti-British elite" that have taken over this country and are determined to turn it into Zimbabwe."

Sorry JW but I think you're wrong.

@ JW
Stephanie has, I believe, her heart in absolutely the right place. But she hardly makes a 'reasoned case'.

@annabel

The anecdotal evidence about discrepancies in conviction rates is possibly true - it certainly was 20 years or so ago. However, it could all be so much more easily seen if we had published all the figures I mention above at Oct 11th 10.30 am.
The Grauniad article masters selective reporting, which is what this thread was originally about.

Baron

Stephanie Tohill and her Guardian friends pose a question:

“The question is how you break the cycle when young men experience custody. Three quarters simply re-offend. We have to intervene with families more effectively to stop kids going to prison. That means looking at school exclusions. You need to deal with issues like mental health and substance abuse, bla,bla,bla."

and “We need to look at factors such as family background, socio-economic background, education etc... I am pretty sure that crimes stats, for example, between middle class black males and working class black males are completely different bla,bla,bla”.

well now, Stephanie darling, that about sums up pretty well what we’ve been doing for the past 40 years or so, at great expense, too. Haven’t you noticed? Did it do anything to reduce crime whether in aggregate or in any racial group? Nope, it did FA, yet the loonies keep on devising some more of the same as crime, violent crime in particular, keeps growing. They would, wouldn’t they, the ‘that’s-not-you-but-the-circumstances approach keeps them in jobs with good pensions, why change the tack.

for centuries, until the pseudo-liberal nutters took over the criminal justice system, the solution for reducing crime was simple and obvious. The system may have taken a lenient view of the first offence unless it was a capital crime, got much harsher for the second, and pretty unpleasant for the third. The miscreant got hit, he felt the pain, a real pain that carried the message ‘it doesn’t pay to do crime’, none of the nonsense of gym muscle building, drug parcels, weekend visits to shopping malls and stuff. Hard labour, 2,500 calories per day, solitary confinement for breaking the rules.

Those who governed the hoi polloi figured that the best way to prevent re-offending was to make the stay in prison as unpleasant as it gets. As a result, few suffered alot but deservedly, the majority lived in peace, the law abiding burghers didn’t fear to leave their houses at night for fear of getting mugged, raped, killed.

and since you’ve asked, no I don’t give a shite either whether those who commit crime are white, black, single, young. And neither should the law, the time-tested solution that we’ve abandoned worked for all.

Lupus

'why change the tack?' good point Baron, that just about sums it up.

Nicholas

Stephanie Tohill: "I cannot comment on the liberal left as I don't even know what that is, apart from the label du jour which people toss around."

Yes you do. You are just in denial about it and this is a clever way of skirting the issue. Everyone knows what left-liberal means. It is the collective viewpoint of the BBC promulgated by a minority and reinforced by propaganda, coercion and legislation. It is the current power base in Britain, epitomised by the Guardian and its readers and infesting academia (where it brainwashes our children). It is Ken Loach, Jon Snow and Kirsty Wark. A left-liberal can be spotted at twenty paces because they have the same cloned outlook on the world and the same coded talk.

We know full well the highly selective issues that tax them so, their highly structured pecking order of elites, victim groups and villains, and the hypocrisy and closed minds they exhibit in dealing with them. And so do you.

Eddie

I laughed out loud when I read this. It's that quota obsession again - the woolly thinking that all jobs or roles in life must be exactly proportionate to the wider population (but ONLY when it involves disadvantaging men or white people, of course).

But hey, I look forward to muggers being proportionate to the wider population. If that were the case, no more than 10 out of 100 muggers would be of an ethnic minority and non more than 3% black. Hmmm.... I look forward to real diversity and equality in action in the criminal population...

BTW It seems that the 'London and the Black Child' awards have just taken place; this was Diane Abbott's baby - an initiative set up to 'big up' black kids who are apparently the terrible victims of racism in schools (weirdly, this racism seems to escape Indian and Chinese and Jewish pupils...). Yet more fake bricks added to the tottering construction of the racial discrimination industry in Britain. Helpful for anyone? Well, I hear a lot of people make a lot of money out of the race relations inductry. Diane Abbott, for example...

David Ossitt

Nicholas.

“A left-liberal can be spotted at twenty paces because they have the same cloned outlook on the world and the same coded talk.

Spot on, you are absolutely right.

The opposite is also true, as an example we were watching Jeremy Paxman conducting a debate at the conservative party conference, as the camera swept across the faces of the participating audience for the third or fourth time, I turned to my wife and asked, do you notice anything?

Yes she replied “they all look wholesome, they all look normal”.

Frank P

Nicholas (8.04am)

Perfect. That will travel well.

Baron

Lupus @ 12.37: listen, my observant friend, a sincere apology to you and others, the excuse of being a poorly educated Slav is wearing abit thin; be this a lesson for you all, you let in people speaking awful English, you suffer.

Nicholas @ 8.04:

except for the list of the pseudo-liberal nutters (far too short), spot on, sir.

Stuart Seacole Smith

Now now tohill 6.52 11th Oct: muddled? Moi? Never. Well sometimes after a few too many beers maybe.

Anyway, I can only hope that you are being deliberately obtuse in your postings. But I'm not at all sure of it.

Kram Ekosum

Baron, Frank P, Insular Jap - great posts indeed. Rod picks another corker of a topic, yet again! It is actually quite complex with many, many different issues(i.e. drug-addiction, class, poverty, fascism, misuse of statistics, left-wing hypocrisy, right-wing ignorance). First and foremost how do we all accurately define "black" and why? [N.B. There is a high rate of mixed-race relationships within the Caribbean populace.] Secondly, how has Afro-Caribbean community collapsed so severely? The crux of the matter is this second point; summarised very well by Frank P. I know from hearing the speech and testimony of elderly West Indians. The lack of black male role models is a MEGA factor even in middle class households such as Diane Abbot's! She realised this so sent her son to a private school. Racism still plays a significant role but the race card is overplayed time and again to no benefit. The real hidden statistics are probably the true levels of educational failure, innumeracy & illiteracy. When prison becomes a true recreational misery but convicts are released after some real "education" then crime may become far less appealing, especially to poor (underclass), "black" youths... "Is it coz I is black?!"

DEB

"The interesting thing is that the notion that the figures are such as they are because of greater crime committed within those racial groups is not really touched upon at all, scarcely even considered. It is not addressed."

And it is certainly not addressed in articles in English newspapers deploring the racial disparity in the prison population of the United States, either.

George

This is for test purposes only-- either my postings are unpalatable or there is something wrong. If it is the former, Moderator, would you have the courtesy to inform me?

Stuart Seacole Smith

Oedipus Rex Oct 13 8.55: you are quite right that Tohill fails to make a reasoned case. I'd go further, I think she fails to show much indication of even following reasoning - this may be a means of avoiding issues to which she has no answer, it may be that she's grown up in a generation that has been taught not to dare question certain multiculti orthodoxies, or she may just be a bit dense, who knows.

And as to whether her heart is in the right place or not, I'm sure you'll have heard the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Personally, I find I've less and less time for weighing what people's intentions are vs what their actions or ideologies actually do. I'm probably getting less patient as I get older, and also less tolerant of all the dishonest PC chicanery as, it seems to me, the detrimental consequences for society become ever more plain.

I know conservatives (which I consider myself) have the reputation of thinking society was going to hell in a handcart since children were stopped from going up chimneys, but still, I find it very difficult to be optimistic about the future for society in Britain, and indeed for western europe more generally, unless a much higher level of individual and collective responsibility can be brought back. Greater freedom of speech (currently selectively constrained by thought-police nu-lab legislation), and at least some modicum of honesty in political debate (too much short termism, expediency, and outright lies) are desperately needed before we can even make a start.

I couldn't care less about now-now-tohill as an individual, but as a representative of a certain cohort, and a dangerous one in my view, it makes no difference whatsoever whether her "heart is in the right place" or not. I'm sure Jack Straw would try to argue that his was too.

George

To Miss Tohill who asks "Or would we rather not work out how to reduce the number of black men who trun(sic) to crime".
Much, much, simpler is it not, to just not to admit them to our shores in the first place? Save all this therapy, rehabilitation and Gurdianista angst.It would be richly ironic and perfect justice if it were the chattering classes( and those who were opposed to immigration but did speak out against it) who were the victims of this epidemic of black crime, but I fear they suffer the least, being safely ghettoised in suburbia.

George

to FrankP
A very interesting point you make between the first wave of West Indian immigrants and later arrivals.I had the occasion in the sixties to know both types of West Indian you refer to-- one was a clergyman who came here to work on the buses, and who was a very decent man. The other was a drug-dealing pimp(which my school-friends who had drifted into hippiedom were associated with.)
I think the point to be drawn from your comment(cue shrills of Guardianista outrage) is that Blacks need a strong hand to guide them along the right path -be it a white hand or a black hand is of no consequence. Of course,Blacks were not helped in this by joyfully leaping into the abyss of single- mother parenting so beloved of the Left.
BTW, the pimp was an affable type, not the violent jive-ass Hollywood stereotype. He was no less dangerous to the public weal -perhaps more so, as, not being combatative, he never got his come-uppance.

C Cole

The Rev Jesse Jackson has joined the debate in today's Observer.

Headline: How can enlightened societies have institutionalised policies of race profiling?

Subhead: The UK's use of police powers against black people is ugly and immoral

Cheeringly, the Cifers don't seem to be buying what the good reverend is selling. One even had the nerve to call for the government to supply a breakdown of who is actually committing street/gun crime so as we can judge for ourselves whether police actions are "disproportionate". Anyway, the link is below.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/17/race-profiling-jesse-jackson#start-of-comments