The Color of Crime

Race, Crime, and Justice in America

Second, Expanded Edition, 2005

Major Findings:

• Police and the justice system are not biased against minorities.

Crime Rates

• Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder, and eight times more likely to commit robbery.

• When blacks commit crimes of violence, they are nearly three times more likely than non-blacks to use a gun, and more than twice as likely to use a knife.

• Hispanics commit violent crimes at roughly three times the white rate, and Asians commit violent crimes at about one quarter the white rate.

• The single best indicator of violent crime levels in an area is the percentage of the population that is black and Hispanic. Interracial Crime

• Of the nearly 770,000 violent interracial crimes committed every year involving blacks and whites, blacks commit 85 percent and whites commit 15 percent.

• Blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against blacks. Forty-five percent of their victims are white, 43 percent are black, and 10 percent are Hispanic. When whites commit violent crime, only three percent of their victims are black.

• Blacks are an estimated 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against a white than vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery.

• Blacks are 2.25 times more likely to commit officially-designated hate crimes against whites than vice versa.

Gangs

• Only 10 percent of youth gang members are white.

• Hispanics are 19 times more likely than whites to be members of youth gangs. Blacks are 15 times more likely, and Asians are nine times more likely.

Incarceration

• Between 1980 and 2003 the US incarceration rate more than tripled, from 139 to 482 per 100,000, and the number of prisoners increased from 320,000 to 1.39 million.

• Blacks are seven times more likely to be in prison than whites. Hispanics are three times more likely.

http://amren.com/colorofcrime/color.pdf

http://www.amren.com

2007-06-26