it seems quite intuitive that any effective approach to reducing mass incarceration in the U.S. will have its biggest impact in ‘communities of color’
It is very hard for me to respond to this without breaking my own rules; “this post is not intended to start an object-level discussion about which race, gender, political movement or sexual orientation is cooler”, but let me try.
First: ‘people of color’ is simply a Social Justice term meaning “not white”, and explicitly includes (far east) Asian Americans. Without implying here any form of superiority, it is a fact that the incarceration rates for Asian Americans most certainly do not put them into the same broad category as other “people of color”.
So in this context, the term “people of color” is not a category that carves reality at its joints. A martian xenosociologist would not find the category “all people who are not white European” useful for trying to maximise the objective of “substantially reducing incarceration while maintaining public safety”, when compared to the more natural categories of actual races. Uncharitably, one could explain the non-carving-at-joints term “people of color” as a brazen attempt to rope Asian Americans and other “Model minorities” into a political coalition that actively harms them.
Second: the stated goal of 80,000 hours here is not to reduce incarceration. It is to reduce incarceration while maintaining public safety. The mere fact that more “people of color” (sorry, Asian Americans!) are incarcerated than white European people is not enough to get to the the claim that you are making—“biggest impact in ‘communities of color’
”.
And then there is the further claim by the ASJ that we should “reduce racial disparities in incarceration”. That’s an additional jump from “having the biggest impact in communities of color”, because it implies that you could keep the same level of incarceration in communities of color, but incarcerate more white people. That would technically reduce the disparity. Are they trying to invent affirmative action for courts/prisons?
Go back to our martian alien who knows nothing of SJWs. He starts trying to come up with a plan to reduce incarceration whilst maintaining public safety, he looks at the well-established facts about differential incarceration rates. Then maybe he communicates with the earthling ChristianKl who has just started having potentially useful ideas about “rewarding prisons financially for low recidivism rates”. What does the alien, who is apolitical and doesn’t know to avoid the taboos of the culture war think about next? He might look at redictivism rates by race?
At this point, the alien would perhaps start to question whether the goal of “reducing incarceration while maintaining public safety” was really an accurate specification of what humans wanted. Maybe what they want is some combination of
less incarceration overall
more safety for the law-abiding public
a justice system which exhibits equality of outcomes when that would benefit groups that are high status within the SJ movement (e.g. African Americans), and equality of process when equality of outcomes would be to the detriment of groups that are high status within the SJ movement (e.g. women)
This combination of goals is good at explaining the words that are being emitted by the ASJ. It explains the focus on people of color as well as the total lack of any mention of the fact that males are vastly over-represented in prisons, and the conspicuous absence of efforts to reduce the gender disparity in prisons.
Now you might say, “wow, you have really broken your own rules there!”—well, let me disclaim that I am not implying any form of moral superiority between culture-war salient groups here. There are certainly many people of color who have suffered injustice at the hands of a highly imperfect and unfair, sometimes racist, system.
I am simply pointing out that if you casually assert the “intuitive” equivalence of statements that are not equivalent in all possible worlds, then you are taking some pretty big risks regarding good epistemology.
This combination of goals is good at explaining the words that are being emitted by the ASJ. It explains the focus on people of color ….
This just doesn’t seem to be a fair characterization of what ASJ is actually working on. It’s simply a fact that ‘communities of color’ [sic] are most impacted by mass incarceration—that’s a rather trivial consequence of the statistics you rightly pointed to. ASJ is most focused on reducing incarceration for non-serious and non-violent offenders (i.e. precisely the sorts of offenders for whom the alternatives work best!) and spending the savings on crime prevention. The focus on ‘people of color’ you picked up on is thus not necessarily indicative of a damaging bias here; it might just make the org more attractive to more SJW-inclined funders.
The focus on ‘people of color’ you picked up on is thus not necessarily indicative of a damaging bias here
But let’s suppose that the most effective intervention in this field resulted in increasing the racial disparity in incarceration. Would ASJ pursue it? Can we take their outward focus on race as evidence that race-favoritism is a goal that they internally pursue, perhaps over and above the high-level goal that 80,000 hours advertises them under?
Does their focus on race bias them about where the tradeoff between incarceration and safety should be struck? For example,
The tradeoffs here are at least somewhat controversial.
Tradeoffs are always controversial, but if these two are the most ‘controversial’ examples one can think of, then color me unimpressed. It’s not at all obvious that these people would belong in jail under a sane criminal justice system, and the “citation” reported as an alternative still does a good job of bringing consequences for the offender.
And 80,000 hours is advertising that they aim to help everyone, but then they are funding an organisation that is explicitly aiming to favor certain groups. As I have already said, males are disproportionately incarcerated by a very large margin, and any realistic decrease in incarceration will therefore help males, but that fact is not being trumpeted. It’s the color label that is getting extra special attention here and being promoted from a side effect of doing something else good to a goal in its own right.
Well, I am probably overstepping if I claim to know for certain that Prop 47 was a mistake. 80,000 hours is advertising that they will maintain public safety with their efforts in this area, but the consensus is that Prop 47 has done the exact opposite.
It is very hard for me to respond to this without breaking my own rules; “this post is not intended to start an object-level discussion about which race, gender, political movement or sexual orientation is cooler”, but let me try.
First: ‘people of color’ is simply a Social Justice term meaning “not white”, and explicitly includes (far east) Asian Americans. Without implying here any form of superiority, it is a fact that the incarceration rates for Asian Americans most certainly do not put them into the same broad category as other “people of color”.
So in this context, the term “people of color” is not a category that carves reality at its joints. A martian xenosociologist would not find the category “all people who are not white European” useful for trying to maximise the objective of “substantially reducing incarceration while maintaining public safety”, when compared to the more natural categories of actual races. Uncharitably, one could explain the non-carving-at-joints term “people of color” as a brazen attempt to rope Asian Americans and other “Model minorities” into a political coalition that actively harms them.
Second: the stated goal of 80,000 hours here is not to reduce incarceration. It is to reduce incarceration while maintaining public safety. The mere fact that more “people of color” (sorry, Asian Americans!) are incarcerated than white European people is not enough to get to the the claim that you are making—“biggest impact in ‘communities of color’ ”.
And then there is the further claim by the ASJ that we should “reduce racial disparities in incarceration”. That’s an additional jump from “having the biggest impact in communities of color”, because it implies that you could keep the same level of incarceration in communities of color, but incarcerate more white people. That would technically reduce the disparity. Are they trying to invent affirmative action for courts/prisons?
Go back to our martian alien who knows nothing of SJWs. He starts trying to come up with a plan to reduce incarceration whilst maintaining public safety, he looks at the well-established facts about differential incarceration rates. Then maybe he communicates with the earthling ChristianKl who has just started having potentially useful ideas about “rewarding prisons financially for low recidivism rates”. What does the alien, who is apolitical and doesn’t know to avoid the taboos of the culture war think about next? He might look at redictivism rates by race?
At this point, the alien would perhaps start to question whether the goal of “reducing incarceration while maintaining public safety” was really an accurate specification of what humans wanted. Maybe what they want is some combination of
less incarceration overall
more safety for the law-abiding public
a justice system which exhibits equality of outcomes when that would benefit groups that are high status within the SJ movement (e.g. African Americans), and equality of process when equality of outcomes would be to the detriment of groups that are high status within the SJ movement (e.g. women)
This combination of goals is good at explaining the words that are being emitted by the ASJ. It explains the focus on people of color as well as the total lack of any mention of the fact that males are vastly over-represented in prisons, and the conspicuous absence of efforts to reduce the gender disparity in prisons.
Now you might say, “wow, you have really broken your own rules there!”—well, let me disclaim that I am not implying any form of moral superiority between culture-war salient groups here. There are certainly many people of color who have suffered injustice at the hands of a highly imperfect and unfair, sometimes racist, system.
I am simply pointing out that if you casually assert the “intuitive” equivalence of statements that are not equivalent in all possible worlds, then you are taking some pretty big risks regarding good epistemology.
This just doesn’t seem to be a fair characterization of what ASJ is actually working on. It’s simply a fact that ‘communities of color’ [sic] are most impacted by mass incarceration—that’s a rather trivial consequence of the statistics you rightly pointed to. ASJ is most focused on reducing incarceration for non-serious and non-violent offenders (i.e. precisely the sorts of offenders for whom the alternatives work best!) and spending the savings on crime prevention. The focus on ‘people of color’ you picked up on is thus not necessarily indicative of a damaging bias here; it might just make the org more attractive to more SJW-inclined funders.
But let’s suppose that the most effective intervention in this field resulted in increasing the racial disparity in incarceration. Would ASJ pursue it? Can we take their outward focus on race as evidence that race-favoritism is a goal that they internally pursue, perhaps over and above the high-level goal that 80,000 hours advertises them under?
Does their focus on race bias them about where the tradeoff between incarceration and safety should be struck? For example,
and what is Prop 47?
and also:
The tradeoffs here are at least somewhat controversial.
Tradeoffs are always controversial, but if these two are the most ‘controversial’ examples one can think of, then color me unimpressed. It’s not at all obvious that these people would belong in jail under a sane criminal justice system, and the “citation” reported as an alternative still does a good job of bringing consequences for the offender.
And 80,000 hours is advertising that they aim to help everyone, but then they are funding an organisation that is explicitly aiming to favor certain groups. As I have already said, males are disproportionately incarcerated by a very large margin, and any realistic decrease in incarceration will therefore help males, but that fact is not being trumpeted. It’s the color label that is getting extra special attention here and being promoted from a side effect of doing something else good to a goal in its own right.
IMO this is not a good thing to fund.
Well, I am probably overstepping if I claim to know for certain that Prop 47 was a mistake. 80,000 hours is advertising that they will maintain public safety with their efforts in this area, but the consensus is that Prop 47 has done the exact opposite.