I hate daylight saving time.  I have no preference for one time over the other, but I detest the process of abruptly and arbitrarily offsetting your time by one hour.  Many devices will automatically adjust their own time, but some won’t.  Most of us will still have one device where we either don’t know how to set the time, or it is too much of a nuisance.  For me, that device is the stereo in my car.  We end up making that one compromise; we won’t set the time but make a mental adjustment that the time displayed is an hour off.  The time will be right again in a few months.

We inevitably make a similar compromise with more persistent items.  That squeaky step on the staircase continues to squeak for years.  There’s a hole on the wall from replacing the old thermostat, which you vowed to fill and paint over… someday.  We eventually end up in one of two camps as these continue to linger unresolved.  First, these become so common that we simply stop noticing; for instance, we stop using that side of that step.  Or second, we understand the problem, but we can’t be bothered to fix it; it’s too much trouble to fix at least right now.

Fix the problem, not the symptom

There’s a passage from a book about programming that talks about RCA (root cause analysis).  I think it’s from a Microsoft Press book by Steve Maguire, but I can’t place it.  The story goes like this:

You’re walking upstream by the bank of a river.  As you walk, you see a man drowning in the river.  You jump in to save them and pull them onto the bank of the river to safety.  Once you establish that they’re fine, you continue to walk up the bank of the river.

Minutes later, another person screams for help in the river, you jump in and repeat this task… again and again.  It doesn’t occur to you to ask about how these people are ending up in the river.

The idea is that ‘the person falling the river’ is the symptom not the problem.  The bug (the source of the problem) is ‘why do they fall into the river?’.  This may be a slick sidewalk or a loose handrail.  If you fix the problem, then the symptom goes away.

The lesson here is ‘fix the problem, not the symptom’.  This is easier said than done, however.  If we reflect back to the start of this post, this may mean finding that old manual for the car stereo, finding a handyman for the squeaky step, or paint matching your wall.  Sometimes we’re too lazy to bother with fixing the problem, we just deal with the symptom.

This may mean that someone eventually drowns in the river, even if you saved every person that you saw in the water that day.  You can’t be on the bank of that river every minute of every day.

There is a type of problem we don’t see anymore

There are a class of learned behaviors that we exhibit that are problems that we don’t even notice anymore.  I discussed one such issue with a friend and asked him point blank:

“Do you think the pigmentation of your skin makes you predisposed to commit crime?”

That question not only shocked but also offended him.  He resented the implication that he was a racist.  I honestly wasn’t intending to offend.  It’s the classic nature versus nurture debate.  If we dismiss this notion that a particular race is biologically predisposed to commit crime, then the only conclusion is that it, criminal behavior, is a function of environment, or life experiences.

Here are the cold hard facts; this isn’t spin.  The inmate population in the United States is 38.3% black, yet they only account for 12.6% of our population.  We can demonstrate that black people are disproportionately imprisoned at over three times the rate of their population; certainly, we can fix the environment that causes this.

In an effort to minimize the mischaracterization of what I’m asserting, I’ll call it out explicitly.  I am not suggesting that they didn’t commit these crimes; many of those convicted absolutely committed those crimes.  I am suggesting that their environment causes them to be statistically more likely to end up in prison and consequently staying in longer.

So in an effort to defuse the emotional baggage of this topic, let’s treat this issue, the disproportionate number of black people in prison, as the symptom and let’s search for the cause (or causes).

Racism doesn’t necessarily mean that something never happens, like the United States electing a Black president, nor does it necessarily mean that something always happens, like every interaction between black person and police being tense.  Racism can simply be that it happens disproportionately.

The amount of time spent in prison

This first cause is rather simple.  In other words, the longer your sentence happens to be, the more you’ll contribute to that 38.3% figure.  Ruling out parole and similar factors, if they sentenced you for twelve years, you’ll serve longer than a ten-year sentence.

We assume that when convicted of a crime like burglary, that sentences are handed out equitably.  I mean sure there’s some play in it, there may be a mandatory minimum, but there’s often a range, like ‘ten years to life (in prison)’.  That said, the sentences are handed out by judges, surely, they’re handing out sentences proportionately, right?

They are not.  Black people get disproportionately longer sentences, nearly 20% longer in fact.  Do I believe that judges look at two identical convictions, and say to themselves, “That white person gets 10 years, and this black person gets 12 years”?  No, I don’t believe that they’re doing it intentionally.  I believe that judges will come up with a figure based on experience and ‘gut feel’; sadly, the numbers indicate that the color of the skin does contribute to that ‘gut feel’ and ultimately to the duration of the sentences.

In this case, both white and black convicts are criminals, but ultimately the amount of time that one group serves is disproportionately longer.  It is unjust.