Blacks and Whites as Victims and Offenders in Aggressive Crime in the U.S.

Abstract

Abstract This paper analyzes data on the annual incidence of aggressive crime (homicide, sexual assault, aggravated assault) in relation to race, contrasting proportional distribution of Blacks and whites among victims and offenders in relation to their representation in the general U.S. population. Blacks are over-represented among offenders in each category of aggressive crime: in homicide at a level 315% greater than their representation in the general population, in sexual assault at a level 404% as great, in aggravated assault at 274% greater than their representation in the general population. Whites and “others” are under-represented among offenders. Blacks are at highly increased risk, relative to their representation in the nation's population, for victimization in homicide and at some disadvantage (although not at a level appropriately denominated as risk in a statistical sense) for victimization in both sexual and aggravated assault. Episodes of criminal aggression initiated by white offenders account for slightly more than 73% of all single-offender episodes of aggressive crime, while episodes initiated by Black offenders account for approximately 27%, so that white-perpetrated criminal aggression exceeds Black-initiated criminal aggression at a ratio of 2.7:1. Blacks are represented among offenders in aggressive crime slightly more than twice their representation in the nation's population. It is more than five times as likely that a white victim has been set upon by a white offender than by a Black offender and nearly seven times as likely that a Black victim has been set upon by a Black offender as by a white offender. It is 32 times as likely that a white offender will victimize another white as it is that he or she will victimize a Black. But Black offenders victimize whites as frequently as they victimize other Blacks. When gender and age are considered interactively with race, it is seen that Black males in adolescence and adulthood are at astronomically enhanced risk both for homicide offending and for victimization in homicide, such that Black males aged 18-24 are at a risk level for offending nearly 28 times greater and for victimization nearly 17 times greater than their representation in the national population. Data on divergence in “choice” of victim by Black offenders not inflected by age and on the astronomical risk for homicide offending by young Black men likely anchor a phenomenology of fear among whites.