“Crime statistics within Britain, Canada, and the United States show that people of East Asian ancestry are disproportionately under-represented while those of African ancestry are disproportionately over-represented relative to those of European ancestry. For example, in Canada, a government commission found that Blacks were five times more likely to be in jail than Whites and ten times more likely than Asians (Ontario, 1996). In Britain, the Home Office (1999) found that Blacks, who were 2% of the general population, made up 15% of the prison population. (No figures were reported for East Asians such as the Chinese, but Asians from the Indian subcontinent were 3% of the general population and 2% of the prison population.)”
“To test whether the race differences in crime found within Britain, Canada, and the U.S. occurred more universally, Wilson and Herrnstein (1985) and Rushton (1990, 1995) collated data from INTERPOL Yearbooks (1980 to 1990) and found that Pacific Rim countries reported less violent crime (an aggregate of murder, rape, and serious assault) than did European countries and much less than did African and Caribbean countries. Summing the crimes, and averaging across years, Rushton (1990, 1995) found statistically significant differences per 100,000 population of: 44 (Pacific Rim), 74 (European), and 143 (Afro-Caribbean) total crimes, respectively. These results did not depend on the selection of countries because when only ethnically more homogeneous sets were chosen, for example, by limiting countries to those from northeast Asia, central Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa, the proportionate differences remained the same—or became even greater. Nor did the pattern alter for other sets of countries. For example, in the Caribbean data set, six mainly White/Amerindian countries averaged 72 per 100,000 whereas eight mainly Black countries averaged 449 violent crimes per 100,000 population (Rushton, 1995).”
“Most notably, while HIV/AIDS is a serious public health problem for all racial groups, it is especially so for Africans and people of African descent (currently almost 9 out of every 100 Africans are infected with HIV/AIDS; the rate is 2.2% in the Black Caribbean; in the U.S. about 2% of African Americans are living with HIV/AIDS compared to 0.4% of European Americans and less than 0.1% of East Asian Americans (UNAIDS/WHO, 2001). Since there is little cultural contact between the various African descended populations, the explanation is most likely a genetic one.”
In Cross-National Variation in Violent Crime Rates : Race, r–K Theory, and Income
J. Philippe Rushton, University of Western Ontario
Glayde Whitney, Florida State University