Crime is merely a defense mechanism.

Albany Times Union: Blacks safer in prison than on the outside
Black Americans are significantly more likely to survive in prison than in their own neighborhoods, according to a new study released earlier this month.

The difference, researchers say, is murder.

Disproportionately high murder rates within black communities have long fueled debates over basic social, economic and educational inadequacies in many minority neighborhoods. But in prison, studies show blacks are the least likely to be killed.

"That's really the story about why blacks have lower death rates in prisons," said Christopher Mumola, a policy analyst for the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the report's author. "It's very much driven by homicide."

While white and Hispanic inmates were slightly more likely to die from disease or violence behind bars, the mortality rate among black state prison inmates was 57 percent lower than their counterparts of similar age on the outside, the study found.
The report was the first truly detailed analysis of death in U.S. prisons.

"It's a sobering statistic," Mumola said.

This latest finding refocuses a debate that has traditionally centered on the pace at which blacks are jailed in America to the neighborhoods these inmates are born into and return to when they get out.

"It doesn't say anything good about prison. It says everything bad about the neighborhoods," said Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.