I accidentally in your base

helenic has been doing some reading up for a forthcoming Police State UK article about the DNA database. She's been posting highlights into an IRC channel we're both in. I am ashamed to say that I was taken completely by surprise by this paragraph:

In spite of the over-representation of black people in the CJS, there is evidence to suggest that black people have lower offending rates than white people: 42% of white people commit an offence in their lifetime, compared with 28% of black people; 21% of white people commit a serious offence in their lifetime, compared with 14% of black people.

I had always assumed that the reason the criminal justice system is heavily biased against young black guys is that young black guys are slightly more likely to be involved in crime - i.e I assumed it was an injustice of scale only. I am really ashamed of myself for never having found out what the reality was behind that institutional bias - not only is there not a positive correlation, there is in fact a substantial negative correlation. Nobody taught me that in cultural conditioning school, huh?

Posted to remind myself that I should examine my assumptions more often, and also FYI in case you had the same assumption.