[sangnoir]

> Predicting the likely response to this, of course, we get into the (surprisingly hard to accurately work out) question of what proportion of crimes are committed by people of various races

I find this argument (the one you are referring to) to be spurious. We don't calculate the number of rapes committed by men and there is no subsequent societal bias against men as criminal by default (or suspect by default). Not to mention the mindset leads to a feedback loop: "Of the bugs found during team code reviews, 50% were in Bob's code" will lead to everyone going through Bob's code with a fine tooth comb - and finding yet more bugs, while Stacy's code never gets a second glance regardless of its quality[1].

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/06/04/the-b...