Arrest/Shooting Rates and Racism

This page is about how racism affects arrest/shooting rates by the police.


It has been investigated that the fatal shooting rate by police is disproportionate based on race. Though the percentage for the overall fatal shootings of Black Americans are approximately 26% (1345 out of 5109 people) in 2020, it is disproportionate when taking the population of Black Americans to account. Black Americans take up approximately 12~15% of the American population, which indicates the disproportionate rate of shooting kills though 50% of those that were shot by the police were white. It is shown on the graph that 34 per million of Black Americans are shot, a significant amount compared to 14 per million for White Americans. This signifies that black people are shot twice as often as white people are shot.
(From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/ (Last Retrived: January 4th))


Another investigation reports that though the marijuana usage between black and white people over 12 are nearly the same, white being 16.5% and blacks being 17.8%, it was reported that the arrest rates per 100k in the US is 3 times more for black people than it is for white people, shown and compared in the two graphs above. This could suggest that the police have a tendency to discriminate against certain races among others, causing the disparity in the arrest rates even though the usage rate is nearly the same.
(From: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-systemic-racism-in-charts-graphs-data-2020-6#black-men-are-roughly-five-times-more-likely-to-be-imprisoned-than-their-white-counterparts-and-nearly-13-times-as-likely-in-the-18-19-age-group-21)