[the OlLine Rebel]

For the life of me I cannot figure out those numbers.

How can a “total” ever be less than any of the constituents? Why can I not add white and “all other” together and get total?

Likewise in the rest of that paper. Males always have a bigger number than the “total”.

What am I missing? And no, I did not dive in to read any explanations....

[WilliamofCarmichael]

"A race-specific arrest rate refers to the number of arrests per 100,000 inhabitants belonging to a defined race."

I took that to mean that the numbers represent x-occurrences per 100,000 of a race population or in some cases a group of races or all races were considered.

Elsewhere in the report I understand that in 1993 (the first line) data for approximately 83% of the population was collected from 10,000+ sources and figures for the rest were extrapolated.

I never paid much attention to TOTAL I assumed it represented the arrest rate per 100,000 for the population of the country at the time. But I see that it is a puzzle.

I have to leave it to more knowledgeable people for that and to explain why or why not the column figures do or do not add up. But as I understand the figures..

one example going across the white portion of the first line of the first table (Crime Index) for whites we have for 1993

• under 18
  • total: 1,277.7 arrests per 100,00 under 18 total population?
  • white: 1,045.9 arrests per 100,00 under 18
  • All other races: 2,177.2 arrests per 100,00 under 18
• 18 and over
  • total: 1,097.6 arrests per 100,000 18 and over total population?
  • white: 755.7 arrests per 100,000 18 and over
  • All other races: 2,975.6arrests per 100,000 18 and over

Hey! If it turns out that these numbers show whites get arrested six to nine times more often that blacks then great! Truth is the objective. Whites outnumber blacks six to nine times -- in fact in the 1960s it was 10-to-1 thus black revolutionaries' slogan "Take ten!"

But I don't think the numbers show that.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

In trying to find a definition for Total in this series of documents going back to the 1960s I found this outside of the reports.

A note about these data from "Although there is a large disparity between the crime rates of whites and those of African-Americans,14 any perception that this is based solely on racism quickly evaporates when family structure is considered in the data. When researchers control for marriage, the rates of crime for whites and blacks in each family group are very similar."

That is obvious to FReepers but others may not get it.

Still not even an attempt to explain what total means anywhere that I looked so far.