CRIME STATISTICS: THE CRIMINALIZATION OF MASCULINITY? –“…40% of white males i

CRIME STATISTICS: THE CRIMINALIZATION OF MASCULINITY?

–“…40% of white males in their early 20s having been arrested at least once and 49% of black males in their early 20s having been arrested at least once … obviously this is due to increasing criminalization of activities that should not be criminalized.”–

(Peter Boettke )

MASCULINE OFFENSES

It’s pretty obvious that if you take drugs, alcohol, traffic, ‘fighting’, and ‘regulatory violations’ because of they’re just too poor to comply, that between the ages of 17 and 25, the chance that any given male violates at least one one of those prohibitions, suggests that the 40% number is reasonable.

They don’t keep age data at Justice, (just juvenile vs adult) But given that the numbers are almost evenly distributed, we can make good guesses: drugs, alcohol and ‘consensual testosterone driven reproductive age nonsense’ mean that masculinity has been criminalized.

Loosely speaking this means that under 5% of young males are affected annually, but cumulatively we end up with 40% of males affected.

In other words “victimless crimes” in an effort to suppress masculine signaling account for most male arrests.

ABOUT THE DATA

The data is collected from individual county ARREST records, and the Justice department applies a little normalization for different terms, and differences in data collection. However, I believe that this is in fact ARREST not CONVICTION data. Those are the only two types of data we have. Because ‘crime’ data has no meaning, and no empirical test we can apply.

Now, I can be wrong in how I interpret the sources of data given what Justice says, but to my knowledge (without making some phone calls from the other side of the planet) this is about as accurate as we can get.

VICTIMLESS CRIME ISNT BROAD ENOUGH OF A CRITICISM

And I think my analysis is more informative that the simple victimless crime argument. It is more accurately stated that these statistics represent the systematic suppression of voluntary, mutually consensual, masculine expression.

(I do agree with the three strikes rule in general, and I am not sure that suppression of drunk driving is, at least in american, not justifiable using libertarian propertarian reasoning.)

SUPPRESSION OF MASCULINITY AS THE MAJOR FOCUS OF THE STATE

If anything these victimless crimes:

(a) Marijuana offenses;

(b) victimless driving offenses;

(c) victimless regulatory conformance and fees;

and most probably :

(d) consensual ‘fighting’;

constitute an unnecessary avenue for the state to expand and interfere in our lives.

And it is through this organized suppression of masculine signals that the state has justified intrusion.

HEARTBREAKING

It is heartbreaking to sit in a court room and watch male after male permanently removed from the possibility of employment, losing work, losing pay, and criminalized for the accident of being poor, or institutionally forced into poverty for the celebration of youth, or the defense of what little honor poor males have. My most exasperating example being punishment for credit that they have been given as a means of entrapment, or having driving revoked and employment prohibited for an offense unrelated to crime. The most criminal is the subjugation of young males to permanent poverty by child support they cannot possibly pay and survive on. In an era of 3% unemployment and postwar miracle of underclass privilege that might have seemed to make sense, but in a world where 15%+ unemployment and 25-50% youth unemployment is the norm, and world competition for labor puts extraordinary pressure on the lower classes, it is no longer possible to expect young males to either break out of poverty, refrain from crime, or even retain even sustainable respect for society, its myths, traditions, norms and laws.

I AM NOT SOFT ON CRIME

Just the opposite. I’m hard on both crime, and hard on the state for prosecuting non-crimes.