Black people are being falsely convicted of serious crimes at alarming rates, report finds

[ck4829]

Black people in the U.S. are seven times more likely to be falsely convicted of a serious crime like murder than white people, according to a new report published Tuesday by the National Registry of Exonerations. The finding is based on an analysis of exonerations for serious crimes in the U.S. over the last four decades, which found that Black people make up less than 14% of the U.S. population but account for 53% of exonerations in the country.

“(The report) focuses on how it’s dangerous, in a particularly disturbing way, that there’s a possibility of being convicted of a crime that you didn’t commit,” Samuel Gross, a University of Michigan law professor and the lead author of the report, titled "Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States 2022," told Yahoo News. “The general conclusion is no surprise. Black people are much more likely to get the short end of the stick than white people.”

Data gathered from exonerations for murder, sexual assault and drug crimes from 1989 through August 2022 highlighted significant challenges in obtaining national criminal justice statistics, including finding clear answers on who reports data to whom and how this data is disseminated to react to trends. Most often, Gross said, counties rather than states are responsible for reporting crimes, which results in misreporting and/or a lack of accountability because of sheer volume.

“Criminal justice statistics in the United States are not bad,” Gross said. “They’re abysmal.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/black-people-are-being-falsely-convicted-of-serious-crimes-at-alarming-rates-report-finds-141857010.html

[FBaggins]

1. Seems like the wrong data point to draw that conclusion

I admit that I would probably assume the same conclusions going in, but the report doesn’t appear to support it (or contradict it).

For instance, I’d be willing to bet that the same analysis between men and women would show a far larger disparity on the same statistic. But it wouldn’t be because of some gender bias in charging.

The better statistic would be "of those who are charged with a crime, how many acquitted and how many of those convicted are later shown to have been innocent?" and then evaluate that by race.

[ck4829]

2. More research should be done, but exoneration statistics shows something is very off

[FBaggins]

3. Except they don't - unless we start off assuming that there is a problem

As I implied above - men make up slightly less than half of the population... but they make up 99% of people exonerated from rape convictions. Does that mean that "something is very off" or just that men make up 99% of rapists?

Not knowing what percentage of convictions (or indictments) occur by race, I can't tell whether a given percentage of exonerations is high or low.