The criminologist John DiIulio sparked panic in 1995 when he predicted there would be an explosion of juvenile superpredators in the coming years, resulting in widespread violence. His baseless theory was wrong; youth crime has fallen dramatically ever since.
Mr. DiIulio has retracted some of his ideas, but the damage is done. The “superpredator myth” [he started] ushered in a wave of intensified policing and harsher sentences that fueled mass incarceration.But here is what I don't get: Isn't the (red) sentence in the second quoted paragraph, "The super predator myth [in 1995] ... fueled mass incarceration" actually the cause of the drop in youth crime (the red clause in the first paragraph)?
In other words, doesn't the author prove something they were at least inferentially arguing against: That mass incarceration has led to the drop in superpredators and in fact youth crime since 1995?
On the other hand was it not merely, as I do each morning, waving in the air to keep the elephants away? None come around, so it must be working.
ReplyDeleteNo proof, just wonderment, which is what you proffer.
Back to the other hand, we do know that young black people are far far less likely to have contraband and drugs in their cars, but far far more likely to be stopped and searched, even murdered by police, and if not murdered, beaten and at least given extremely harsh prison sentences. Is the extreme policing what keeps them from driving with contraband? Well, this is what parents, grandparents, friends, and each other, drill into them so that they live through another day, and with those family and friends.
Thank you Rus for your comments. I really was commenting on the poor proofs of the author’s position but yet he attempts to use the evidence against his position as for his position. Which is very sloppy thinking. Or an aggressive attempt to make something seem it is not? There are a million good arguments why mass incarceration and racial injustice are wrong —— why she one that proves the opposite? Or am I missing something?
ReplyDeleteHi Julie,
ReplyDeleteMaybe we use the word "proof" differently, a lawyer versus one with a degree in math. For me, "proof" means there is no arguing the case any longer. It's definitive, it's proven. Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, for instance, are known to have proven that 1 + 1 = 2. If somehow some Einstein were to come along and show that this is not the case, or not necessarily the case, then no longer is what Whitehead and Russell forwarded to the world proof at all. Such an Einstein may also overturn what they forwarded as proof that 1 + 1 = 2, but also show that it is still so because proof indeed exists elsewhere.
For example, I may prove that 64/16 is indeed 4/1 or the just 4 by cross canceling the 6s in the numerator and denominator. It is true that 64/16 is 4, but not for that reason.
In what you have put forward, using this criteria, neither you nor the NY Times article proved anything. What you showed me is that the NY Times proved nothing, not that the opposite is true, that they did not cross cancel their 6's.
However, if we challenge one side to prove something one way or another, one could say that that side is bringing to the fore their "proof" -- a different use of the word, that seems to be said to bring confidence and respect to the people attempting to prove or bringing forward their hopeful case.
In the end, however, after all cases are brought forward, each or all sides bring their "proofs" so to speak, the truth cannot be "unproven" or disproven. No proof can challenge it, only support it. Also, there may be an infinite number of sound proofs, but they all show the same thing, 1 + 1 = 2.