DiIulio on Whites, Blacks, and Crime in America

While looking for reliable crime statistics in the USA to examine ethnic groups' differential crime rates, and alert for anything else that may have been interesting as well, I came across a quite well-written article in something called "City Journal." The author is that rara avis, a professor from a working class environment who kept something of a working class perspective. We need more of these if "diversity" is indeed a goal to be striven for. He talks about children picking on each other, which is something that needs close study for the future by developmental psychologists as well as by sociologists of, I should hope, a more moderate political bent than the majority of the people who enter that profession. The main thrust of his article appears to be a reasoned and calm refutation of whether the US criminal justice system, including the juvenile ofender system, is racist or racially prejudiced in any meaningful, rational sense. He provides interesting analyses of drug offender statistics as well. He draws data from a number of sources that sound interesting, including a study by Stanley Rothman and Stephen Powers that I am going to try to find. He discusses the Racial Justice Act which I know nothing about but wish to research, which he says was going to apply a "racial quota" to murder cases. He also mentions jury nullification -- it's quite important sounding.
The article at least touches on a great many issues and points the way to further discussion.

Here is a teaser quote that is not representative of the careful and measured tone of the article but that is quite interesting: "You can’t have it both ways—protesting that police are less responsive to black crime victims than to white ones in one breath, charging that “too many” black victimizers get caught, convicted, and sentenced, in the next;"

http://www.city-journal.org/html/6_2_my_black.html