Race Crime and Violence

Who is committing crime in this country and against whom? How much crime do blacks commit? Are Hispanics as violent as Blacks? What about Asians? How much so-called hate crime is there in the country and who is committing it? The U.S. Department of Justice collects a huge amount of information on crime – enough to answer these questions. And, indeed, there are very substantial differences in crime rates by race.

Government statistics are essentially of three kinds: survey data, statistics on crime reported to the police, and arrest figures. The annual Department of Justice survey is important because it gathers information on crimes that victims don’t report to the police. Even more important, every few years it gathers information on the race of both victims and perpetrators of violent crimes. It is therefore the only information about interracial crime collected at the national level. The survey is about as accurate a picture as it is possible to get of crimes Americans say they have suffered.

The Department of Justice also collects data on the number of crimes reported to the police and the number of arrests made and racial data are included on most people who are arrested. Needless to say, these three kinds of information – crimes reported in surveys, crimes reported to the police, and arrests – represent a steady decrease in volume. For example, in 1997, the most recent year for which there is complete information, the annual survey found there were 1,883,000 cases of aggravated assault

(attacks that could cause serious injury or death). Only 1,022,000 cases were reported to the police, and only 535,000 resulted in an arrest.

It is significant that the racial proportions for perpetrators as found in the survey data and the racial proportions for arrests are remarkably similar. Americans report in the survey that close to 60 percent of all robberies are committed by blacks and, indeed, 57 percent of arrests for robberies in 1997 were of blacks. The proportions are close for other violent crimes as well, which means that the police are arresting people of different races at essentially the same rates at which the public is being victimized by them. Endless assertions that the police arrest non-whites because of racism are largely false.

So who is committing the crime – and against whom? To start with the survey data on interracial violent crime, in 1994 (the most recent year racial data were gathered) there were about 1,276,00 single-offender crimes and 490,000 multiple-offender crimes. Although the survey categorizes victims and perpetrators as only white, black, and other, 89 percent of the single-offender crimes and 94 percent of the multiple-offender crimes were committed by blacks against whites.

Single Offender Black-on-White Crime (Rate as Multiple of White on Black)

These are astonishing lopsided figures. One way to understand just how lopsided they are is to express them as rates. The frequency of crime is usually expressed as a rate per 100,000 people. In these terms, 3,494 blacks out of every 100,000 committed a violent crime against a white person in 1994 while only 63 whites out of every 100,000 committed a violent crime against a black. The black rate is more than 55 times the white rate, meaning that the average black was 55 times more likely to attack a white man than vice versa. In the case of robbery, or mugging, blacks were 103 times more likely to go after whites than the reverse.

The numbers are even worse for group attacks. For overall group violence, the black-on-white rate is 102 times the white-on-black rate, and for robbery it is 277 times the white-on-black rate. It is very unusual to find multiples this great when comparing the behavior of different groups. If blacks are just two or three times more likely than whites to drop out of school or die of prostate cancer, it is considered a matter of national importance. But practically no one even knows that blacks are 50 to 200 times more likely than whites to attack someone of the other race. If whites were just four or five times more likely to attack blacks than the reverse, it would be considered a crisis that required national attention.

Some people have argued that blacks attack whites because whites are richer and more likely to be profitable robbery targets. However, fewer than 20 percent of all violent black-on-white crimes are robberies. The rest are assaults and rapes, which presumably do not have an economic motive. In 1994 more than 30,000 white women were raped by black men while only 5,400 black women were raped by whites (the latter figure is uncertain because the actual survey found too few actual white-on-black rapes to permit confidence in extrapolation to the country at large). Blacks are thus approximately 40 times more likely to rape whites than vice versa. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that much of the violence committed by blacks against whites is motivated by racial hatred.

From the national survey data it is possible to tell how much violence is interracial and how much is not, and in fact there is more black-on-white violent crime than black-on-black. When blacks committed violent crime in 1994, they attacked whites 56.3 percent of the time, whereas when whites committed violence they attacked blacks only 2.6 percent of the time. This does not mean that blacks are victims of violent crime no more often than whites are. Even if blacks are victims of only about half of all black violence, that half is concentrated in the 13 percent of the population that is black. Therefore, blacks are still about five times more likely than whites to be victims of violent black criminals.

These findings from the national survey data are very important, but the data are limited to crimes of violence other than murder (you cannot survey a murder victim) and the racial breakdown of white, black, other tells us nothing about Hispanics or Asians. For information on other crimes and for better racial categories we can turn to arrest data.

Murder is, of course, the most spectacular violent crime but it is relatively rare. Of all violent crimes reported to the police, fewer than 1 percent are murder. In 1997 there were 15,289 known murders in the United States, which represented a rate of 6.8 per 100,000 Americans. This is the lowest rate since 1968, and represents the fourth straight year of decline. The murder rate hit an all-time high of 10.2 per 100,000 in 1980.

Of the 15,289 Americans who were killed in 1997, 49 percent were black, 48 percent were white and the rest were other with a handful of unknowns. More than half of those arrested for murder were black. Murder is the one crime for which the federal arrest data give some information about the race of both the victim and criminal, and murder usually does not cross racial lines: Approximately 90 percent of murderers were the same race as their victims.

When murder is interracial, blacks are considerably more likely to be the offenders. There were approximately 1,100 whites killed by blacks and 480 blacks killed by whites, which means that a black was about 15 times more likely to kill a white than vice versa.

Because blacks are so much more likely to commit murder and robbery than any other racial group, the percentage of blacks in the local population is probably the best single indicator of the level of potential violence.

Needless to say, big cities with large black populations had the highest murder rates. In 1996, New Orleans came in first at 72 per 100,000 followed by Atlanta (47), Baltimore (46), St. Louis (44), Detroit (43), and Birmingham (42). By contrast, Seattle – mostly white – had a murder rate of 7 per 100,000.

When arrest data for other crimes are compared by race, the results are as shown in the graph below.

Arrest Rates by Race (Multiples of White Race)

Here, arrest rates for different groups are calculated as multiples of the white arrest rate, with the white rate always set to 1. The black rate of about 9 for murder, for example, in the first graph does not mean that blacks committed nine times as many murders as whites, but that they were arrested for murder at nine times the white rate. Since there are about six times as many whites as there are blacks, it means that in absolute numbers, more blacks than whites were arrested for murder – in this case about 7,200 as opposed to 5,350.

This first graph shows a very clear pattern: Asians are arrested at lower rates than whites, and American Indians and Blacks are arrested at consistently higher rates. As we saw earlier, arrest rates are a very good indicator of actual crime rates. Blacks are the most dangerous, crime-prone group in America and Asians are the least dangerous. Only a few crimes break this pattern.

Arrest Rates by Race (Multiples of White Race)

This second graph shows multiples of arrests rates for atypical crimes. Gambling, for example, is the only crime for which Asians are arrested at a higher rate than whites (Blacks are arrested at a much higher rate). Alcohol offenses are unusual in that whites are arrested for them at essentially the same rate as blacks, while Indians – true to their reputation – are the worst offenders. For white-collar crimes like forgery, fraud, and embezzlement, blacks are arrested at about three times the white rate and Indians at something close to the white rate. For most crimes, however, the pattern is consistent, with blacks committing the most crimes, followed by Indians, whites, and Asians.

Hispanic Crime

What about Hispanics? The national arrest data give the impression that Hispanics are never arrested for anything. Hispanic criminals are, of course, included in the four obligatory racial categories for arrest: white, black, Indian, and Asian. How many in which categories? The U.S. Census Bureau gives us a clue. Its official estimate of the 1997 population divides all 268 million Americans into four racial groups, but adds that there were also 29 million Hispanics who can be of any race. However, it also gives an estimate of non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, etc. Thus we find that according to the strictly racial classification there were 221 million whites in the country in 1997 but only 195 million non-Hispanic whites. When American Hispanics – approximately half of whom are Mexicans – are apportioned to the four racial categories, the Census Bureau thinks 91 percent are white, 6 percent black, 1 percent American Indian, and 2 percent Asian. This is crazy – it would be more accurate to consider the majority of them American Indians – but as far as the U.S. government is concerned, almost all Hispanics are white.

This makes for odd census results. For example, according to the 1990 census, of the 3,485,000 people in Los Angeles, 52.9 percent were white, 13.9 percent black, 0.4 percent Indian, and 22.9 percent Asian – which adds up to 100 percent. This makes the city sound majority white. However, Los Angeles was also 39.3 percent Hispanic, and if we subtract the 91 percent of them who were probably classified as white, the real white population suddenly drops to 16.6 percent.

What does this mean for crime rates? Since at least 91 percent – if not all – Hispanics are lumped in with whites, if Hispanics commit crimes at higher rates than whites, official statistics inflate the white crime rate. Fortunately, some government jurisdictions can tell the difference between whites and Hispanics. The state of California, which has more Hispanics than any other, classifies its criminals as black, white, Hispanic, and other. This graph shows California arrest rates for the major violent crimes. As expected, blacks are the most violent, and specialize in mugging. Hispanics are roughly three times more likely than whites to be arrested for violent crime.

There is another way to estimate Hispanic crime rates. In 1996 the Department of Justice calculated incarceration rates per 100,000 population for non-Hispanic whites (193), Hispanics (668), and non-Hispanic blacks (1,571). Expressed in multiples of the white race, the Hispanic rate is 3.56 and the black rate is 8.14. These multiples are close to the California arrest data and justify the conclusion that Hispanics are roughly three times more likely to commit various crimes.

We can calculate more accurate racial arrest rates if we separate out the 91 percent of Hispanic criminals we can assume are classified as white when they are arrested. By doing so, the white arrest rate decreases by about 20 percent and the arrest multiples for other races increase proportionately (in some cases Asian rates begin to approach white rates). For lack of more precise information, the Hispanic multiple is set at three times the white rate for all crimes even though there is certain to be some variation for different crimes. Both graphs are drawn to the same scale, with the white arrest rate set to one. They show at a glance how treating Hispanics as whites distorts crime figures.

Why Crime is Down

Politicians and the press have made much of the fact that crime rates are inching down – and indeed they are. The rate of violent crime declined every year from 1991 to 1996 and decreased by a total of 12.7 percent during that period. However, violent crime rates were still 300 percent higher than they were in 1960. President William Clinton likes to take credit for the recent decline, claiming that his initiative to spend federal money on a few thousand more police officers is what did the trick. Reality is not so kind. Crime rates are down because of the huge increase in the number of bad guys who are in jail. As the following graphs below show, we have never had so many people in prison, and incarceration rates, in terms of prisoners per 100,000 population are at unprecedented highs.

Total Prisoners

Prisoners Per 100,000 Population

As the graph for incarceration shows, America has traditionally had about 100 people in jail for every 100,000 citizens. In the decade of the 1960′s there was a terrific increase in crime. Perhaps not coincidentally it coincided with the triumph of silly liberal views about crime: society rather than the criminal is to blame, imprisonment is ineffective, the police are brutal, blacks never get a fair shake, etc. And so, despite the surge in crime, prison sentences were reduced and incarceration rates actually went down during the decade. By 1970, however, the combination of more crime and less imprisonment had reached intolerable levels, and we started sending people back to jail: to the point that we now have 400 prisoners per 100,000 citizens – a 400 percent increase in incarceration rates.

Current research suggests that every year of incarceration prevents 12 to 21 crimes. If we returned to a rate of 100 per 100,000 it would require releasing nearly 1 million jailbirds – and would loose upon the country a crime wave that would drive every citizen into the arms of the National Rifle Association. The connection between falling crime rates and increasing incarceration rates should be clear to even the dimmest liberal; a crook who is doing time can’t stick a knife in your ribs. And yet, the most common big-media reaction to the swollen prison population is to argue that it is caused by some kind of malicious prison-industrial complex, and to worry that so many of the prisoners are black.

The prison population will turn increasingly non-white – whites are already a minority. According to the Department of Justice, the 1995 racial breakdown in American prisons was as follows:

Total 1,126,287
Black 544,005
White 455,021
Indian/Eskimo 10,176
Asian 6,483
Not Known 110,602

110,000 Not Known? A footnote to the table warns that in California, Illinois, New Jersey, Nevada, Wyoming, and 15 other states, some or all Hispanic prisoners [are] reported under not known! Footnotes also tell us that Montana considers all Hispanics to be white and that seven states – including big ones like Texas and Mississippi – just estimate the racial numbers. Once again, crazy bookkeeping makes it impossible to keep track of Hispanics, and impossible to know how many are lumped in with whites. But even if we ignore all the not knowns and assume none of the whites is Hispanic, whites account for only about 40 percent of all prisoners.

In 1995 there were 100,250 federal inmates, of which 20 percent were non-citizens. The feds do not have any not knowns, and report their prison population to be 36.9 percent black, 32.6 percent white, and 27.5 percent Hispanic, with Indians and Asians at 1.5 percent each. It is clear that an all-white America could make do with a much smaller prison system.

The dwindling minority of white prisoners – now likely to be controlled by non-white prison guards – will be increasingly vulnerable to rape, humiliation, violence, and extortion. More and more will seek protection by joining white-consciousness prison gangs. Already, in largely non-white prisons, it is whites who are members of racist gangs who maintain the best morale.

Police Bias? Says Who?

The racist police officer is practically a cliché. White cops all over the country are supposed to be shooting, beating, and arresting innocent blacks and Hispanics – or at least trying a whole lot harder to collar them than whites. Aside from some isolated incidents of racially motivated brutality, this is a false image. The police arrest blacks and Hispanics because they commit crimes.

The first line of evidence is the close correspondence between survey data and arrest data. If the public says half the muggers are black, and half the muggers the police arrest are black, it is unlikely the police are making biased arrests. Even more to the point, the police have essentially no discretion over whom they arrest for a violent crime. Except for murder victims, most people get a good enough look at an assailant to know if he is black or white. If the victim says a white man took his wallet, the police can’t very well go out and arrest a black man even if they wanted to.

The police have a lot of discretion over whether to make an arrest in the case of non-violent crimes, such as violation of liquor laws. Unlike murder or rape, there is not a great deal of public pressure to make arrests, and the police can walk away from a crime if they want to. Presumably, a racist officer would see a drunk on the street and make an arrest only if the drunk were black. In fact, drunk driving and other liquor offenses – in which police can make arrests or not largely as they choose – are the very crimes for which the black multiple of the white arrest rate is the smallest (see previous page). If racist cops are picking on blacks they are not doing a very good job.

Finally, if the police are racist, why are Asians arrested at consistently lower rates than whites? Wouldn’t racist cops think of some way to snare Asians?

It is often argued that the large number of blacks arrested for drugs – particularly crack cocaine – is evidence of police bias. However, there is a completely independent indicator of who is using illegal drugs, which suggests that the police are arresting the very people they should. The Department of Health and Human Services keeps statistics on people admitted to emergency rooms because of drug over-doses. Blacks are admitted at 6.67 times the white rate for heroin and morphine, and no less than 10.5 times the white rate for cocaine (Hispanics are admitted at 2 to 3 times the white rate). What better evidence could there be that people of different races are using drugs at markedly different rates, and that the police are simply doing their job?

Like so many other destructive racial myths, the myth of the racist cop refuses to die.