Hispanic Crime
A debate over ‘spanic crime has paleoconservative “intellectuals” Ron Unz and Jason Richwine desperately trying to out tard each other.
Unz, whose spurious claim that Hispanics have a lower crime rate than whites stirred off the debate, relies on faulty data and a few mistruths (eg. pairwise comparisons of cities with significant Hispanic populations to cities with larger black populations). Richwine (and other bloggers at Alternative Right) uses data showing that U.S.-born Hispanics have higher incarceration rates than immigrant Hispanics* as evidence of an impending Hispanic crime wave and Hispanic acculturation to inner-city black norms. While it should be clear to anybody making blog posts about crime and immigration that when immigrant Hispanics face charges of drug trafficking, simple assault, robbery, they can expect to be deported. U.S.-born Hispanics facing similar charges can expect to spend a few years in jail. Richwine demagogically chooses to either ignore this point or is simply incapable of comprehending it on his own.
Unz’s data and conclusions are probably wrong but his discussion of the relatively low violent crime rates of nearly entirely-Hispanic cities is an interesting one. El Paso appears to have the 2nd lowest murder rate (2.8 per 100k) of any city with a population greater 500,000. El Paso is not an aberration. Other overwhelmingly (90+%) Hispanic cities along the Rio Grande have similar low numbers:
McAllen at 2.91 per 100k.
Brownsville at 2.26 per 100k.
While these cities are relatively safe compared to the black-influenced US national average (5.6 per 100k), they are relatively violent compared to the average white American murder rate of ~2 per 100k (according to Jared Taylor**). Reliable age- and poverty- adjusted numbers would be interesting to analyze. These cities have very high poverty rates and the average Hispanic Texan is around 26 years old.
La Griffe du Lion has claimed that Hispanics have fewer serial murderers, per-capita, than whites. Anybody who pays attention to violence just across the river finds that very hard to swallow….
I’ll have more on why majority Hispanic cities in the United States are much less violent than Mexican cities along the border and why the Hispanics in these cities seem relatively well-behaved compared to their co-ethnics in more diverse cities. Hint: Bowling.
*Studies have shown that U.S.-born Mexicans have worse health outcomes than their Foreign-born parents. The effects of the environment on crime would fit well with the general theme of this blog and I will get to get to some studies on that later (re: blacks and lead). But as I pointed out, Richwine is full of shit.
**Jared Taylor describes himself as a ‘white nationalist’ and it’s worth keeping in mind that nationwide Hispanic stats are skewed by the very criminally-inclined Dominicans and Puerto Ricans in the Northeast. That said, I’d trust his data more than I’d trust Richwine or Unz. Q: Are NY Puerto Ricans more violent than NY Blacks?
Publius Quinctilius Varus 
Crime can be fixed relatively easily with stricter laws, as NYC has shown.
My major problem with Mexican immigration is that (for whatever reason) Mexicans still have low IQ’s, and even 4th to 5th generation mexican immigrants fail to reach median levels of prosperity. They don’t assimilate well, and their neighborhoods are run down and trashy. There are deep cultural and possibly genetic issues here. How many extremely fecund Mexican peasant migrants can one country support? We seem to be determined to find out.
A very large majority of inmates are in jail/prison for non-violent “crimes” such as the possession or sale of drugs (including the benign herb Mary Jane. If we stopped putting people in jail for these silly things, we would see a HUGE decrease in what we call “crime”.
Jail and prison should only be for violent crimes.
Q: Are NY Puerto Ricans more violent than NY Blacks?
No.
I assume “Bowling” is a reference to Putnam’s “Bowling Alone”.
The crime rate for heavily-hispanic CITIES may be higher than the NATIONWIDE white crime rate, but that’s a bit apples-and-oranges. Unz noted that crime is generally higher in cities, so he used heavily white cities (Seattle, Portland, Omaha, Lexington) as a comparison. He didn’t just do pairwise comparisons either, he looked at all major cities and checked correlations for (white+asian) as well as hispanic portion of population with crime. His major error was age-adjusting figures that had already been age-adjusted (as Richwine pointed out). He originally claimed that (after adjustment) Hispanics appear to have roughly the same crime rate as whites, with Hispanic Divided by White rates coming out to 1.1. After Richwine corrected his error it moved up to about 1.4.
Also, I don’t think Richwine is a paleo. He’s a resident scholar at AEI, which is well-known to be of neo-conservative inclination (though there have been some shakeups recently). Unz is questionably paleo as well, I think he likes to take digs at neocons in part to shore up paleo cred after taking over Buchanan & Taki’s publication.
The problem is, incarceration isn’t really a fair measure of crime rates when you have a substantial population of criminals being continually deported. Illegal immigrants are quickly deported (if they’re in jail) for non-violent crimes and this lowers the overall population’s incarceration rate. Hence, Richwine’s claim that “entrenched” Mexican communities are more dangerous than immigrant ones because they have higher incarceration rates.
It really does prove Unz’s original point. Faulty pronouncements about immigrant crime rates are overwrought with emotion and often easily refuted. Those sorts of arguments really do make the whole ‘movement’ look bad and detract from the real issues.
La Griffe du Lion has claimed that Hispanics have fewer serial murderers, per-capita, than whites. Anybody who pays attention to violence just across the river finds that very hard to swallow….
Is the serial killer phenomena worth citing in such a post?
Serial murderers kill for the “sport” and other sexual or sensual appetites. Though the killer probably follows a twisted inner pattern in his choice of victim, the victim is essentially the unlucky winner of a very unfortunate lottery.
Murders related to the Mexican drug wars hardly fit this mold. In fact, I would castigate this analogy for it offends those partaking in the honorable tradition of serial murdering.
Ted Bundy must be rolling in his grave.