@raphjd:
I might agree with your "just lock them all up" preference, if the state didn't do illegal things and also prevent people from investigating the case properly. If we start locking corrupt DAs, police, etc, etc, then your stance would have more "juice".
DAs, police and others actively fight against DNA testing even when a private group is willing to pay for it. Take a time machine back to when GWB first ran for President as Gov of Texas. There was a man scheduled to be executed and GWB wouldn't delay the execution to wait for the DNA results. The man was executed on scheduled. About 3 weeks later the DNA results cleared him of the crime. GWB maintained that he never executed a guilty man because LEGALLY the man was still "guilty" when he was executed.
I've told the story of the 4th of July 76 rapes in my home town.
Do you think law enforcement is growing more or less corrupt as time passes? A trip back in time through cinema will show you clearly that 1) people feared the death penalty and 2) the cops were corrupt, especially in the south. The previous generations of civil rights lawyers have neutered the Death Penalty and corruption in the police force isn't anywhere near what it was during Gotham times.
Is it perfect? No. But it's worlds better than it had been and with body cams and other new technologies, it's getting better, not worse.
As for DNA. John Oliver did a report on it showing how unreliable it is. That's not a secret. If you pay attention to the news you'll see two kinds of reporting, one where someone is wrongly convicted through DNA and the other where they are exonerated. In the end, people are tried and prosecuted on circumstantial evidence and DNA is just one tool to that end. Eliminate this method of deciding if one is guilty or not and you'll eliminate the corruption in the bureaucracy, too.
To your other point, you're not going to like it, but you can find exceptions to anything. I've called these the extremes and they're not useful in arguments.
@raphjd:
Black people make up 13% of the US population.
Black people commit 56% of the murders in the US and 54% of all violent crimes in the US.
Blacks make up 44% of cop killers. I can't find a stat for wounding cops by race.
Blacks are 26% of those shot (wounded or killed) by police.
What do you think about cholesterol? Good or bad? How about salt intake? What is the ideal diet? How about what causes cancer?
All these questions are answered weekly in the press using new sets of data gathered from yet another person reinterpreting statistics. The old adage is true: You can find anything you want in the numbers, especially when lay people are interpreting them.
Another analogy is The Bible. In the hands of a learned priest or scholar, the books within have clear contextual meanings. Put those same books in the hand of the average person and all hell breaks loose. This is the danger of you and I using statistical evidence to back up a given claim like what you're citing. If I were inclined I could easily go online and pull numbers to back up literally anything I wanted to. It's less frustrating to speak broadly and generally to uncover the truths in these situations.
Let me say that a very different way. We've all the potential to be Laci Green.
@raphjd:
Prior to welfare, blacks had 8% to 10% higher marriage rates than whites. Blacks had the 2nd highest marriage rates after far east Asians. Now blacks have by far the worst marriage rates in the US.
The stories I've heard to explain this are that The War on Drugs incarcerated a disproportionate number of black men for minor crimes. Concurrent to that, black women were told they could get welfare if they weren't married. If these are both true then the Democrats and Republicans helped destabilize black families.
