TIL: Today I Learned

[hobbsyoyo]

For that extra flavor of slavery, they even force inmates to work for next to nothing while they're in prison, then charge exorbitant rates for every basic service of life or any of the few allowable amenities. Our system of justice is grossly unfair and should be massively reformed. There have been positive starts in that direction in the last decade but it isn't enough.

 

[Josu]

I imagine he'll stick misfortunes in Spanish football on the ETA.

OMFG, LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

 

[Colon]

TIL the "sprinkle a little crack on him and let's get out of here" meme is more than just real, it's the overwhelming reality.

Police are really out here either planting drugs or lying about the drugs according to this study

10 year mandatory = modern slavery in America

Here's the racial disparity. It was concentrated amongst prosecutors in states with higher incidence of racism (indicated in this case by above median rates of Google searches for racial slurs).

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

TIL I learned you can delete half-written posts in the quick-reply box by clicking on the floppy disk icon and deleting draft.

 

[Berzerker]

TIL the downside of video cams in cop cars. Cleveland Browns RB Kareem Hunt who was suspended for 8 games this season for a violent altercation at a hotel was pulled over for a traffic stop. In addition to the violation the cop got him with an open bottle of vodka and I presume a small amount of pot. Hunt pleaded with the cop who is a Browns' fan, the NFL will nail him even worse given his history.

The cop sounds like he might have given him a break but the cameras were rolling. No break for you, Kareem. OTOH it aint fair for the laws to be enforced against some people while celebs and the powerful and connected skate. Cops are typically more sympathetic to people who dont give them a hard time.

In other news, a 7.7 quake hit between Cuba and Jamaica. Apparently the quake was shallow and on a slip fault where plates slide past each other as opposed to under or over like in Japan, so there were no tsunamis of note. The epicenter was about 80 miles from both islands so damage was minimal. Thats good, 7.7 is a serious shaking.

 

[Yeekim]

TIL

Bloody hell...
@Colon What are the units on y-axis on your graph? Percentages of total? So about 4% of blacks and hispanics doing time for crack possession likely had at least some of the drugs planted? Any idea how many individuals that would be?

 

[Hrothbern]

Here's the racial disparity. It was concentrated amongst prosecutors in states with higher incidence of racism (indicated in this case by above median rates of Google searches for racial slurs).

When that planting can be proved for a police officer, he should be punished by the principle of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels: the same punishment that his victim would get (or already got)

anyway
@Colon , this is great to show to other people

Have you a link to the source and is it hard reliable enough info to know it is not fake ?

 

[Kaitzilla]

TIL the "sprinkle a little crack on him and let's get out of here" meme is more than just real, it's the overwhelming reality.

Police are really out here either planting drugs or lying about the drugs according to this study

10 year mandatory = modern slavery in America

Holy moly, all the 280g convictions should be thrown out.

Just thinking about what occurred in reality to produce that graph pisses me off.

Did the prosecutors and judges just not raise an eyebrow?

Shame on those cops!

 

[Berzerker]

TIL the "sprinkle a little crack on him and let's get out of here" meme is more than just real, it's the overwhelming reality.

Police are really out here either planting drugs or lying about the drugs according to this study

10 year mandatory = modern slavery in America

thats what happens with victimless crimes, no victims to get in the way of the cops

 

[Truthy]

When that planting can be proved for a police officer, he should be punished by the principle of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels: the same punishment that his victim would get (or already got)

anyway
@Colon , this is great to show to other people

Have you a link to the source and is it hard reliable enough info to know it is not fake ?

The graphs in Colon's post came from this Economist article (which is very short):

Spoiler :

YOU DON’T need a degree in statistics to believe that racial disparities plague American law enforcement. Of every 100,000 black adults, 2,300 are incarcerated—five times the rate for whites. This gap is not proof of discrimination: blacks could be five times as likely to break the law. Yet critics say that courts treat blacks more harshly than whites who face similar charges. A recent working paper, by Cody Tuttle of the University of Maryland, bolsters this view by revealing striking evidence of bias.

When suspects are charged with drug possession, the quantities in their indictments only loosely reflect what they were carrying when arrested. Prosecutors can boost amounts using testimony about previous activity, or by charging people for drugs held by co-conspirators. Some convictions cite 100 times as much crack as the defendant had in hand. Such leeway makes these figures as much a measure of prosecutorial discretion as of suspects’ crimes.

In 1986 Congress passed a law requiring anyone possessing 50g or more of crack to serve at least ten years in prison. Legislators raised this cut-off to 280g in 2010, making the minimum sentence for possession of 279g half as long as for 280g. By creating a cliff, the law encouraged offenders to carry less than 280g. It also enabled prosecutors who sought extra-long sentences to secure them, by filing charges just above the limit.

Before 2010, convictions for 270-280g or 290-300g were just as common as for 280-290g. After that year, the share of sentences for 280-290g surged, from 0.5% to 4%; the rates for adjacent amounts barely changed. Moreover, the burden of these strategically sized charges fell disproportionately on minorities. In 2011-15, 4% of convictions of black and Hispanics for possession were for 280-290g, compared with 1.5% of sentences for whites. The shares for both races were similar at 270-280g and 290-300g.

Mr Tuttle finds that only a minority of prosecutors (around 20-30%) display this bias. These officials tend to work in states with above-median rates of searches on Google for racial slurs, suggesting racism is more common in their regions. In other states, “bunching” at 280-290g did occur, but affected blacks and whites equally.

On its own, ending this gap would barely dent the racial imbalance in American jails. But if prosecutors are biased against black suspects in these cases, they may carry that animus to other crimes as well. ■

Sources: US Bureau of Justice; World Prison Brief; World Bank; “Racial Disparities in Federal Sentencing: Evidence from Drug Mandatory Minimums”, by Cody Tuttle, University of Maryland; FBI; The Economist

The paper by Cody Tuttle is this. It's extremely long, though I did jump around and read some bits here and there. Tuttle claims the clustering issue is basically about prosecutors, not cops. And note that 280g is thousands of dollars worth of crack. So cops aren't planting that. It's about what prosecutors are opting to charge (edit: these graphs are showing convictions, not charges) people with. Also, I think there'd be some bunching around 280g for various non-nefarious reasons. Eg, amounts > 280g getting pled down to 280g or trafficking offenses getting pled down to 280g possession. However, that doesn't explain the disparity between whites and hispanics/blacks.

 

[Morty]

Eg, amounts > 280g getting pled down to 280g

To expand on this, I'd presume there's little (if any) difference to the charge once you get above 280g, e.g. 300g presumably gets you the same charge as 280g? So if you're measuring/weighing lots of small quantities once you get to 280g it'll be seen as a waste of effort/time to count the rest of it to get an exact figure.

Re the Hispanic/blacks issue, I guess it's also worth considering cause and effect. Are they more likely to be pulled because of racism or is it just an indicator of deprivation/social standing?? I'm not saying it's not racism, but it's quite possibly a lot more complex than that.

 

[Takhisis]

I'd say that racism and marginalisation (lumpenisation if you will) are part of a vicious circle with a positive feedback effect.

 

[Truthy]

To expand on this, I'd presume there's little (if any) difference to the charge once you get above 280g, e.g. 300g presumably gets you the same charge as 280g? So if you're measuring/weighing lots of small quantities once you get to 280g it'll be seen as a waste of effort/time to count the rest of it to get an exact figure.

Re the Hispanic/blacks issue, I guess it's also worth considering cause and effect. Are they more likely to be pulled because of racism or is it just an indicator of deprivation/social standing?? I'm not saying it's not racism, but it's quite possibly a lot more complex than that.

I was also wondering if there’s more probability mass to the right of the 280g mark on the graph for white people, maybe indicating a greater willingness/ability for whites to go to trial instead of taking a plea. But a lot of things could be going on and it’s hard to tell by eyeballing the graphs.

I’d also really like to know what’s going on to the left of the 50g mark and am wondering why the old 50g mark doesn’t look just like the new 280g one.

The Tuttle guy’s paper could clear these issues up, but it’s so long. I wish the Economist article had been more thorough and detailed. Pretty bad article, tbqh.

 

[Berzerker]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31916890?otool=nynyumlib&myncbishare=nynyumlibmlib

Magic mushrooms can ease stress and anxiety in cancer patients

 

[Traitorfish]

To expand on this, I'd presume there's little (if any) difference to the charge once you get above 280g, e.g. 300g presumably gets you the same charge as 280g? So if you're measuring/weighing lots of small quantities once you get to 280g it'll be seen as a waste of effort/time to count the rest of it to get an exact figure.

If that is how the police are collecting evidence, it's a serious problem in and of itself.

 

[Commodore]

TIL: The original concept for the first Halo game was as a top-down RTS and was going to be an Apple exclusive franchise until Microsoft bought Bungie from Apple.

 

[Synobun]

TIL: The original concept for the first Halo game was as a top-down RTS and was going to be an Apple exclusive franchise until Microsoft bought Bungie from Apple.

I've never played Halo but even I can tell that would have been much worse than what it ended up being.

 

[Commodore]

I've never played Halo but even I can tell that would have been much worse than what it ended up being.

Yeah and Bungie realized that which why they changed it to a third-person game, then eventually to the FPS we all know today.

 

[Traitorfish]

In fairness, I can see why ambitious developer in the late nineties would prefer to participate in the golden age of the desktop RTS over the mass of Quaker-clones that was the console FPS field.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned about the glass cliff. Women are more likely to achieve leadership roles during bad economic times, which is also when they're most likely to fail.