Interracial Crime

Research on Interracial Crime

Recent work that examined the association between economic inequality and crime found different measures of global inequality, interracial economic inequality, and/or intraracial inequality in assessments of the linkage. Previous research indicated that Blacks used other Blacks as a reference point for assessing themselves and that variations in race-based crime rates are best predicted by within-group, rather than between-group, economic inequality. This is best evidenced in studies that compare race-specific arrest data drawn from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCRs) with National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) victimization data relating to the race of criminal offenders to determine the relative amount of crime committed by Blacks and Whites. Most robbery victims in the NCVS report their assailants to be Black, and the people arrested for robbery by police are also Black. Blacks are overrepresented in the UCR arrest data for the crimes of rape, aggravated assault, and simple assault. Some have argued that this overrepresentation is due to the fact that crimes involving Black offenders are less apt to be reported to police than are crimes involving White offenders.

Critics of the NCVS have posited that the data ignore crimes committed against businesses, government, and religious organizations, and tend to overinflate rates of crime for cities with a large nonresident population. Other studies that have used NCVS data to assess the connection between economic inequality and race-specific crime levels are also vulnerable to these criticisms. Still others indicate that although causes behind the predominantly intraracial nature of violent crime remain important for study, the proposition that Black offenders' racial hatred for Whites is what prompts high levels of interracial offending is often dismissed. Events of criminal violence motivated by racial hatred can occur in some instances. Other studies have shown that aggregated patterns demonstrate that assault offenders do not exhibit a general propensity to select victims interracially. Rather, these studies indicate that although violent offenders tend to select victims intraracially at the local level, the intraracial character of violent offending varies by crime, offender race, and locale.

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