SAN FRANCISCO CHALLENGES

Statistics Don't Support Official Explanations For High Black Arrest Rate

How did it happen that San Francisco, a city that prides itself on
tolerance and liberal traditions, now arrests African Americans for
felonies at rates 11 times higher than residents of other races and
3.4 times higher than blacks living elsewhere in California?

The explanation offered by many police and local leaders quoted in
The Chronicle's series on this phenomenon (Dec. 12, 2006) is this:
San Francisco's black communities, decimated by gentrification and a
middle-class exodus, have deteriorated from yesterday's stable
neighborhoods into today's destitute war zones of broken families,
violent gangs, "kids shooting each other" and "dealing drugs," and
consequent harsh policing.

But dig into detailed information compiled by San Francisco police,
the U.S. Census and public-health agencies during the last three
decades however, and the issues become more complex.

It is true that San Francisco's African-American population has
fallen sharply -- to 57,0000 from around 95,000 in 1975 -- and
suffers higher poverty and lower incomes than in the '70s. The 2000
Census found 44 percent of black households in San Francisco
(including 6 in 10 headed by young adults) have annual incomes of
less than $25,000.

However, the city's African-American neighborhoods have not gotten
deadlier. Statistics show that black residents suffer about the same
levels of homicide and other violent deaths today as they did 30 years ago.

Young African Americans in San Francisco today, though suffering
epidemic poverty, act no less responsibly than previous generations.
Crime rates have risen only modestly in the last three decades among
young black San Franciscans, while their rates of drug overdose,
burglary, larceny and motor-vehicle theft, births by younger teens
and school dropout have fallen sharply.

The fastest-growing arrest rates and racial disparities afflict older
adults, not young people.

Among all races, San Francisco's Criminal Justice Profile shows,
felony rates (adjusted for population changes) quadrupled in
populations age 40 and older in the last three decades but stayed the
same for younger adults and dropped for youth.

Among black San Franciscans age 40 and older, felony arrest rates
jumped 640 percent in the past 30 years, including an 1,800 percent
rise among middle-age black women. Today, while black teens endure
felony-arrest levels nine times higher than nonblack teens -- an
appalling enough disparity -- middle-age blacks suffer felony arrest
rates 18 times higher than nonblack middle-age residents and 60
percent higher than for black teenagers.

Could high black arrest rates simply reflect real levels of crime?
For violence, perhaps. Black arrest rates for violence appear to
reflect high levels of violent victimization. African Americans
comprised about 40 percent of the 2, 700 individuals arrested for
murder in assault in 2005, and about 40 percent of victims of
homicide and hospital-treated injuries from assault). But black
arrest rates for drugs clearly are excessive. African Americans
comprised 60 percent of the 6,000 San Franciscans arrested for drug
felonies in 2005, compared to one-fourth of the city's deaths and
hospital treatments for abuse of illicit drugs.

In fact, the largest and fastest-rising populations being treated in
hospitals for and dying from abusing illicit drugs are middle-age
whites (55 percent of the city's drug abuse casualties), distantly
followed by middle-age blacks (21 percent). The lowest rates of drug
casualty are found in teens and young adults of all races (9 percent
of total cases). If authorities used public-health statistics to
develop drug-abuse prevention strategies, the target for additional
policing would be in aging, not poorer, neighborhoods.

Add up the ironies: San Francisco, which is perceived by many as more
crime-ridden today, is actually less so, largely because of the
safer, better behaviors of young people (who everyone thinks are
getting more criminal and violent). Even after a generation of
dramatic changes, today's law-enforcement authorities, with their
thinking stuck in decades past, perceives of crime and drugs as
"youth crises." So they continue to blame young people -- who
comprise small and diminishing fractions of the city's arrests. This
backward thinking prevents formulation of innovative policies that
match the trends.

Two sobering new realities confront us: First, federal "War on Drugs"
policies punishing casual drug users and San Francisco's de-facto
policy of tolerating drug use while harshly policing dealers result
in over-arresting minorities and failing to stem growing middle-age
addiction. Second, violence will not abate until cities alleviate
concentrated neighborhood poverty.

Where do we start? Let's ask young people. Whatever strategies
they've evolved to avoid drug abuse and crime in this upside-down
time are working a lot better than ours.