When Optics and Demographics Trump Common Sense

Within recent years non-profit organizations have sprung up in an effort to correct what they view as a racial injustice within the nation’s judicial systems.  Citing only raw demographic statistics, outfits such as the Bronx Freedom Fund makes it their mission to bail out minorities who find themselves incarcerated while awaiting a disposition on their pending cases.

Much like those who revert to the tiresomely debunked gender wage gap myth, raw figures do not tell an accurate story. Unfortunately, the data shows that minorities commit violent and drug crimes at a significantly higher proportion to their population representation than their white counterparts.  As with most issues, raw numbers rarely give a complete picture or explanation of a particular issue, especially one of a controversial social or political nature.  It is this nuance, or lack there of, that creates a sense of urgency to correct a perceived wrong imposed upon a victimed class of people.

As it turns out, this insistence to grant the benefit of the doubt to people, who’s record –criminal or public — does not suggest they deserve it, is dangerous.

(NY Post) — Lynneke Burris, 30, of Brooklyn, already had a lengthy rap sheet, including for violent muggings, and had been jailed on a new assault charge when The Bronx Freedom Fund posted his $1,000 bail on April 5.

On April 12, he followed a 23-year-old high school English teacher into the elevator of her Concourse Village apartment building, choking her there until she passed out.

Then he dragged her into a stairwell. When she regained consciousness, he ordered her to remove her clothing and sexually attacked her.

Society has undertaken in the past couple decades, a conscious dedication to ignore reality in an effort to feel good about themselves.  A self-imposed sense of guilt for crimes of which you are not guilty lead you down a path surrounded by more victims, not fewer.

It seems counterintuitive, but it’s almost as though these social benefactors are just fine with real victims so long as those victims fit a description, or don’t as the situation may dictate.  It’s not so much as righting a wrong, or reducing evil, as it is balancing out or reversing the kind of person who is on the receiving end.

Unless and until we deal in real life the way it is, and not what we wish it were, no problems can be solved.  Actual problem solving requires the proper identification of it.  If you pretend that a man with a violent criminal history is simply misunderstood, or repeatedly falsely accused, and is deep down a good person who would just behave if only he know someone out there believed in him, you wont decrease injustice, you’ll only transfer it to their next victim.