ReferencesThe methodology of this report is briefly explained in thefootnotes. For a more detailed explanation, “MethodologicalNotes on The Color of Crime” is available from New CenturyFoundation, P. O. Box 527, Oakton, VA, 22124, or by writingto
[email protected] Warren, “Revenge on System Cited as Motive forRampage,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 15, 2005.2ABC/Washington Post Poll: Race Relations, ABC Newswebsite, Jan. 22, 2003, p. 1.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/im-ages/pdf/9 ... ations.pdf. Accessed Aug. 11, 2005.3The UCR use race categories from the census: white,black, Asian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Alaskanative. In 2002, the Census Bureau classified 92 percent of Hispanics as white.4Arrest data are from US, Dept. of Justice, Federal Bureauof Investigation (FBI),Crime in the United States, 2002[Thisis the official title of document that is based on the UniformCrime Reporting Program (UCR).] (Washington, DC: US Gov-ernment Printing Office [USGPO], 2003), p. 252. Unless oth-erwise indicated, all information about arrests in this report isfrom this source. Population data are from Population Divi-sion, US, Census Bureau (Census Bureau), “Annual Estimatesof the Population by Sex, Race and Hispanic or Latino Originfor the United States: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2004 (NC-EST2004-03)” (Washington, DC: Census Bureau, 2005), http:/ /
www.census.gov/popest/national/asrh/NC- ... 004-03.xls. Accessed July 11, 2005.5Police are often accused of “racial profiling,” or stoppingand questioning blacks more frequently than whites becausepolice mistakenly believe blacks fit a “criminal profile.” Eigh-teen states have passed anti-profiling legislation that requirespolice to report the race of the driver in all traffic stops. Somestates require police to collect racial data on pedestrian stopsas well. Many cities collect racial data on police stops even if no state law requires it. [Northeastern University, Institute onRace and Justice, Racial Data Collection Resource Center at Northeastern University(Boston: Northeastern University),
http://www.racialprofilinganalysis.neu.edu/. Accessed on May15, 2005.] These laws are based on the assumption that unlesspolice are forced to account for their actions they will makebiased decisions.Evidence for police bias almost always takes the form of racial disproportions. Police critics compare the percentage of a non-white group in an area’s population with its percentageof traffic stops. If, for example, blacks are 15 percent of Illinois’s population, but account for 23 percent of traffic stops,this proves police are unjustifiably targeting blacks. [Ameri-can Civil Liberties Union, “Driving While Black: Racial Pro-filing On Our Nation’s Highways” (New York: ACLU, 1999).]Data of this kind do not prove police bias. If blacks ac-count for 23 percent or more of traffic violators, police are justified in pulling them over more frequently (see page 5.)6Heather Mac Donald, Are Cops Racist?(Chicago: IvanR. Dee, 2003), pp. 9-34.7NCVS incident-level data for the years 2001 to 2003 wereextracted from US, Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statis-tics (BJS), National Crime Victimization Survey, 1992-2003[Computer file], conducted by Census Bureau (ICPSR 03995-v2), ed. Inter-university Consortium for Political and SocialResearch (ICPSR) (Ann Arbor, Mich.: ICPSR [producer anddistributor], 2005.) Estimates of the percentage of offenderswho were black is for both single- and multiple-offender crimes.Details on treatment of single- and multiple-offender crimes,and how data were aggregated across different crime catego-ries are available in the Methodological Notes, available byrequest from New Century Foundation.Some of the information in this report comes from pub-lished statistics, but most of it, including NCVS information,comes from collections of raw data published by the NationalArchive of Criminal Justice Data, which is maintained by theInter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research,and by the Federal Justice Statistics Resource Center, which isrun by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and The Urban Insti-tute. Statistical software must be used to extract informationfrom this data. When collections of raw data are used, there isalways a reference to “Computer file” in the citation. Furtherinformation on the use of the NCVS is available in the Meth-odological Notes.Arrest data: FBI,Crime in the United States, 2001(USGPO, 2002), p. 252. FBI,Crime in the United States, 2002(USGPO, 2003), p. 252. FBI,Crime in the United States, 2003(USGPO, 2004), p. 288.8The data do, however, open the door to a different chargeof police bias. As we will see, when blacks are victims of crime,the perpetrators are almost always black. It would be possibleto argue that police arrest fewer blacks than would be expectedfrom victim surveys because they have little sympathy for black victims and do not try very hard to catch criminals who preyon them. Needless to say, this argument is incompatible withthe more common view that arrest rates for minorities are in-flated by overzealous police work.9Samuel Walker, Cassia Spohn, and Miriam DeLone,TheColor of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America, 3rd
New Century Foundation - 22 - The Color of Crime, 2005ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2004),p. 46.10FBI,National Incident-Based Reporting System, 2002[Computer file], compiled by the FBI, ed. ICPSR (Ann Arbor,Mich.: ICPSR [producer and distributor], 2004.) Further in-formation on the use of NIBRS data is available in the Meth-odological Notes.Using NIBRS 1999 data, Florida International Universitycriminologists also found black offenders were less likely tobe arrested than white offenders. [Stewart J. D’Alessio andLisa Stolzenberg, “Race and the Probability of Arrest,”SocialForces81:4 (2003): 1381-97.]11The ACLU argues that although blacks and whites usedrugs at equal rates, police bias results in blacks making up amuch higher percentage of arrests for drug crimes. [AmericanCivil Liberties Union, “Race and the War on Drugs,” (NewYork: ACLU, 2003), p. 1] The ACLU’s estimate of the racialmakeup of drug users comes from a government survey thatasked a sample of the population about drug use. [SubstanceAbuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Results fromthe 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Volume I. Summary of National Findings(NHSDA Series H-17, DHHSPublication No. SMA 02-3758) (Rockville, MD: Office of Applied Studies, 2002).] There is reason to doubt whetheranswers to survey questions about illegal drug use are reli-able. [Janet L. Lauritsen and Robert J. Sampson, “Minorities,Crime, and Criminal Justice,” inThe Handbook of Crime &Punishment , ed. Michael Tonry (New York: Oxford Univer-sity Press, 2000), pp. 64-5.]12BJS,Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 2002(USGPO, 2003), p. 267.13For methods of handling missing data in the Supple-mentary Homicide Reports, see James Alan Fox, “Weightingand Imputation Procedures for the 1976-2002 Cumulative DataFile” (BJS),
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/ imputationandweighting.htm. Accessed June 20, 2005.14BJS, “Homicide Trends in the U.S.: Trends by Race,”(BJS),
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/ oracetab.htm. Accessed June 20, 2005. This is a tabulation of data from the Supplementary Homicide Reports.15 Are Cops Racist?, pp. 28-34.16Brian Forst, “Prosecution,” inCrime: Public Policies for Crime Control, ed. James Q. Wilson and Joan Petersilia(Oakland: ICS Press, 2004), p. 511.17The National Urban League, a black advocacy group,claims a black arrested suspect is no less than three times morelikely to become a prisoner than a white. [National UrbanLeague,The State of Black America, 2004(New York: Na-tional Urban League, 2004), p. 31.] The authors do not ex-plain how they calculate this number.18Marvin D. Free, Jr., “Race and Presentencing Decisionsin the United States: A Summary and Critique of the CurrentResearch,”Criminal Justice Review27:2 (2002), pp. 210-14.Studies using data from the 1960s and 1970s were more likelyto find bias, but even a generation ago, some investigators foundno evidence of prejudiced prosecutions.19Data are from BJS,State Court Processing Statistics,1990-2000: Felony Defendants In Large Urban Counties[Computer file], Pretrial Services Resource Center [producer],2004, ed. ICPSR (Ann Arbor, Mich.: ICPSR [distributor],2004). Only 2000 data were used because they were most re-cent and because earlier data do not break out Hispanics. Fur-ther information on the use of SCPS data is available in theMethodological Notes.20The following criminal background characteristics werecontrolled for: the most serious arrest charge, the total numberof charges against the defendant, whether the most serious ar-rest charge was for an attempted or a completed crime, thestatus of the defendant at the time of arrest (i.e., whether hewas on probation, parole, a fugitive, etc.), the number of priorfelony convictions, and whether he was rearrested for anothercrime while out on bail.21Arrest data for 1997 to 2001 are from FBI,UniformCrime Reporting Program Data [United States]: Arrests By Age, Sex, And Race(Years 1997 to 2001) [Computer file],compiled by the FBI, ed. ICPSR (Ann Arbor, Mich.: ICPSR[producer and distributor], 2002).Data for state prison populations are from Paige M.Harrison and Allen J. Beck, “Prisoners in 2002” (USGPO,2003), p. 10. Information on federal prison populations arefrom BJS,Compendium of Federal Justice Statistics 2001(USGPO, 2003), p. 102.For the comparison between arrests and prison populations,only adult arrests were used because juveniles are normallynot sent to prison. Comparisons were made for murder, rape,robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, andfraud because arrests for these crimes are almost always felonyarrests. Misdemeanor arrests almost never result in prison time.In a category like drug offenses, for example, a large numberof arrests listed in the UCR are for misdemeanors, so a com-parison between arrests and prison populations could be mis-leading. Further information on comparisons between black arrested suspects and prison populations is available in theMethodological Notes.22For the unreliability of arrest data on race/ethnicity, seeThe Color of Justice, p. 14.23“Prisoners in 2002,” p. 9.24All prison data are for 2001. Information about prisonpopulations was used to calculate multiples of the white incar-ceration rate for blacks and Hispanics, and information aboutprison admissions was used to calculate multiples for Indians,Asians, and Pacific Islanders. The reason is that prison popu-lation data are highly reliable, but are available only for whites,blacks, and Hispanics. There is no “other” category, and a cer-tain number of prisoners are left uncategorized.Unless otherwise indicated, all information used to calcu-late black and Hispanic multiples of the white incarcerationrate are from “Prisoners in 2002,” p. 10 (state prisons), andCompendium of Federal Justice Statistics 2001, p. 102 (fed-eral prisons).Information on state prison admissions for whites, Indi-ans, Asians, and Pacific Islanders is from the National Correc-tions Reporting Program (NCRP) [BJS, National Corrections Reporting Program, 2001: United States[Computer file],Census Bureau, ed. ICPSR (Ann Arbor, Mich., ICPSR, 2004)].Information on federal admissions for whites, Indians, andAsians/Pacific Islanders comes from the Federal Justice Sta-tistics Program (FJSP). [The Urban Institute.Federal JusticeStatistics Program Data, 2001[Computer file] (Washington,DC: Urban Institute),
http://fjsrc.urban.org/. Accessed July
New Century Foundation - 23 - The Color of Crime, 200511, 2005.]All population estimates are from the Census Bureau’s na-tional and state estimates of population by race and Hispanicorigin in 2001. “Annual Estimates of the Population by Sex,Race and Hispanic or Latino Origin for the United States: April1, 2000 to July 1, 2004.” Census Bureau, “Annual Estimatesof the Population by Sex, Race and Hispanic or Latino Originfor States: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2003 (SC-EST2003-03-13)” (Census Bureau, 2004),
http://www.census.gov/popest/ states/asrh/SC-EST2003-03.html. Accessed July 11, 2005.Further information on the calculation of incarceration ratesis available in the Methodological Notes.25Crime in the United States, 2002, p. 252.26US, General Accountability Office, “Information onCriminal Aliens Incarcerated in Federal and State Prisons andLocal Jails, GAO-05-337R” (Washington, DC: USGAO,2005), pp. 15, 19.27Data are from NCRP, FJSP, and “Prisoners in 2002.”28W. B. Miller,The Growth of Youth Gang Problems inthe United States: 1970-1998 (Washington, DC: US, Dept. of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Preven-tion (OJJDP), 2001), pp. 2, 64. A. Egley Jr. and Aline K. Ma- jor. “Highlights of the 2002 National Youth Gang Survey, FactSheet #2004-01” (OJJDP, 2004).29Crime in the United States, 2003, p. 23.30National Youth Gang Center, National Youth Gang Sur-vey: 1999-2001(OJJDP, Forthcoming). Information from theforthcoming report is given at National Youth Gang Centerwebsite. [National Youth Gang Center, “Frequently AskedQuestions Regarding Gangs” (OJJDP),
http://www.iir.com/ nygc/faq.htm#r44. Accessed July 3, 2005.]31Most of the gang members reported on by the NationalYouth Gang Center are between ages 12 and 24. To calculaterates of gang membership, populations by race for this agegroup were used. [Census Bureau, “Table NA-EST2002-ASRO-03—Annual Resident Population Estimates of theUnited States by Age, Race, and Hispanic or Latino Origin:April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2002” (Census Bureau, 2003), http://
http://www.census.gov/popest/archives/2 ... RO-03.html. Accessed July 11, 2005.]32Arian Campo-Flores, “The Most Dangerous Gang inAmerica,” Newsweek , March 28, 2005.33Mareva Brown and Elizabeth Hume, “Full-Blown Warby Hmong Gangs Alarms Police,”Sacramento Bee, Feb. 28,2005. “Six Charged in Pool Hall Killings,” KARE 11 (Minne-apolis), Feb. 6, 2005,
http://www.kare11.com/news/ news_article.aspx?storyid=75111#. Accessed Aug. 16, 2005.Gillian Flaccus, “Cambodian Men Fall Prey to Gang Violence,”AP, June 30, 2004.34“Minorities, Crime, and Criminal Justice,” p. 66.35FBI,Crime in the United States, 2002(USGPO, 2003),pp. 68-76. Census Bureau, 2002 American Community Sur-vey, “Percent of People Below Poverty Level in the Past 12Months (State Level)” (Census Bureau), http://
http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/Ranking/2002/ R01T040.htm. Accessed July 9, 2005. US, Dept. of Labor,Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Regional and State Employmentand Unemployment: December 2002” (Washington, DC: US,Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics 2003), http://
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archive ... 282003.pdf. Ac-cessed July 11, 2005. Census Bureau, 2002 American Com-munity Survey, “Percent of People 25 Years and Over WhoHave Completed High School (State Level)” (Census Bureau),
http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/Ranking/2002/ R01T040.htm. Accessed July 9, 2005.36The square of the correlation coefficient indicates thestrength of the relationship between two variables. The corre-lation between percent black-and-Hispanic and the violentcrime rate is 0.81; the square is 0.66. The correlation betweenhigh school education and violent crime rate is 0.37; the squareis 0.14. Racial mix predicts the violent crime rate more thanfour times better than lack of a high school education.37The interracial crimes of the 20th century that receivedwidest media attention were white-on-black murders: EmmettTill was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 for flirting with awhite woman, and James Byrd was dragged to death by whitesupremacists in Texas in 1998. Amazon.com sells no fewerthan nine books on Emmett Till and two on James Byrd. PBShas devoted documentaries to each of these murders.Academic studies of interracial crime focus on white crimi-nals. A good example is the recent book on hate crimes byPhyllis B. Gerstenfeld, a California State University criminolo-gist. In her chapter on hate crime offenders, Prof. Gerstenfeldmentions six hate crimes committed by whites, but only onecommitted by a non-white. Her discussion of the motives of racial hate-crime offenders focuses exclusively on whites. Thechapter on victims of hate crimes discusses offenses againstblacks, Jews, Asians, Hispanics, Arabs, homosexuals, the handi-capped, and women, but not whites. [Phyllis Gerstenfeld, HateCrimes: Causes, Controls and Controversies(Thousand Oaks,Calif.: Sage Publications, 2004).]38NCVS clearly classifiesvictimsby race (including His-panic and non-Hispanic), but classifies perpetratorsonly as“white,” “black,” and “other.” Because the “black” categoryof perpetrators is clear, NCVS therefore gives a good indica-tion of black-on-white crime. For “white”-on-black-crime, thevictims are accurately categorized as black, but it is possibleonly to guess how many Hispanics are included in the “white”perpetrator class.Because violent criminals disproportionately choose vic-tims of their own race, one of the best indicators of the race of a criminal when it is unknown is the race of the victim. Be-tween 2001 and 2003, NCVS’s “white” criminals committed344,000 violent crimes against Hispanics, whereas NCVS’s“other” criminals committed 179,000. The higher number of Hispanic victims of “white” criminals suggests that at leasthalf of Hispanic criminals may have been classified as “white.”39“White”-on-black crime is inflated for several reasons.First, Hispanics who are included in the “white” category com-mit more crimes than non-Hispanic whites. Moreover, His-panics are more likely than whites to live in urban areas inclose association with blacks, and therefore are likely to com-mit a larger proportion of their violent crime against blacksthan whites do.There is another, more subtle way in which NCVS figuresdistort a comparison of interracial crime rates. Please recallthat victims are carefully classified by race but perpetratorsare not. This means the number of potential “white” offenders(which includes some Hispanics) is larger than the number of “white” victims (which donot include Hispanics). Thus, if a
New Century Foundation - 24 - The Color of Crime, 2005Hispanic commits a crime against a black, this could be countedin the “white”-on-black total, but if a black commits a crimeagainst the same Hispanic, it wouldnot be counted as a black-on-white crime but as a black-on-Hispanic crime.40These estimates are based on both single and multipleoffender crimes in NCVS. For information on the tabulationof the number of offenders in NCVS, please see the Method-ological Notes.41BJS, “Homicide Trends in the U.S.: Trends by Race”(BJS),
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/ ovracetab.htm. Accessed July 13, 2005.42To understand how population differences skew interra-cial crime rates, imagine a society of 100,000 people that is 90percent white, 10 percent black, and perfectly integrated. Forboth blacks and whites, 90 percent of the people they meet arewhite and 10 percent are black. Imagine that everyone com-mits one crime per year against someone without regard torace. The 10,000 blacks would commit 10,000 crimes but with9,000 against whites, making the interracial crime rate 9,000/ 10,000, or 0.9 for blacks. Whites would commit 90,000 crimes,of which 9,000 would be against blacks, making the interra-cial crime rate 9,000/90,000, or 0.1 for whites.Thus, even though blacks had no greater inclination to com-mit interracial crime than whites, the black rate of interracialcrime would be nine times the white rate simply because thereare nine times as many whites as blacks available as victims.Dividing the black interracial crime rate of 0.9 by nine givesus 0.1, which was the white interracial crime rate.We can make the same calculation for the United States byusing 5.5 instead of nine. Interestingly, although blacks andwhites are not perfectly integrated, and segregation varies con-siderably by neighborhood, the same figure of 5.5 applies ev-erywhere. This is because segregation decreases blacks’ con-tact with whites, but it also decreases whites’ contact with blacksby exactly the same amount. Segregation, whatever its degree,therefore does not change therelativelikelihood of blacks en-countering whites and vice versa.43On violent criminals committing crimes in their ownneighborhoods, see Richard T. Wright and Scott H. Decker, Armed Robbers in Action(Boston: Northeastern UniversityPress, 1997), pp. 73-76. J. L. LeBeau, “The Journey to Rape,” Journal of Police Science and Administration, 15 (1987), 129-136.44“Homicide Trends in the U.S.: Trends by Race.”45FBI, Hate Crime Statistics, 2002(USGPO, 2004), p. 1.46 Hate Crime Statistics, 2002, p. 9.47 Hate Crime Statistics, 2002, p. 11.48There were 497 blacks charged with anti-white hatecrimes and 111 charged with anti-Hispanic hate crimes. Therewere 1,689 whites charged with anti-black hate crimes. [ HateCrime Statistics, 2002, p. 14.] Since both white and Hispanicoffenders are classified as white, the number of anti-Hispanichate crimes committed by blacks must be combined with thenumber of anti-white hate crimes to get a victim category com-parable to the offender category.49Adding the 251,000 multiple-offender black-on-whitecrimes to the corresponding figure of 32,000 for “white”-on-black crimes yields a sum of only 283,000, which is far lessthan the figure of 572,000 acts of interracial group crime notedin the previous paragraph. Who is committing the rest of theinterracial multiple-offender crimes? The majority—215,000a year—are committed by the NCVS “other” category. Thiscategory includes a large but unknown number of Hispanics,and it is unfortunate not to have details about who is commit-ting this large number of crimes. Once again, loose NCVSracial classifications make complete understanding impossible.50Bob Gardiner, “Cops, Teens Aim to Ease Tensions,”Times Union(Albany), Feb. 6, 2002. Michele Morgan Bolton,“Sobbing Defendant Denies Stabbing,”Times Union(Albany),Nov. 22, 2002. Michele Morgan Bolton, “Deliberations toResume Today in Murder Trial,”Times Union(Albany), Nov.22, 2002. Michele Morgan Bolton, “Stabbing Suspect Acquit-ted,”Times Union(Albany), Nov. 27, 2002.51Mark Kataoka, “Two to Be Tried in Slaying,”Press- Enterprise(Riverside, Calif.), Nov. 8, 2002.52Joe Robertson, “Victim in Belton Double Homicide Re-membered as Caring, Hard Working,”Kansas City Star , Aug.28, 2002. “Man Pleads Guilty to Killing Wife, Son-in-Law,”AP, Dec. 27, 2002.53Larry Oakes, “One Deadly Night: The Killing of LouieBisson,”Star Tribune(Minneapolis), April 25, 2004.54BJS, “Homicide Victimization, 1950-2002” (BJS), http:/ /
www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/totalstab.htm. Ac-cessed June 20, 2005.BJS, “National Crime Victimization Survey Violent CrimeTrends, 1973-2003”(BJS),
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/ glance/tables/viortrdtab.htm. Accessed June 20, 2005.BJS, “National Crime Victimization Survey Property CrimeTrends, 1973-2003” (BJS),
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/ glance/tables/proptrdtab.htm. Accessed June 20, 2005.BJS, “Number Of Sentenced Inmates Incarcerated UnderState and Federal Jurisdiction per 100,000 Population” (BJS),
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/incrttab.htm. Ac-cessed June 20, 2005.55BJS, “Correctional Populations” (BJS),
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/corr2tab.htm. Accessed June 20,2005.56Paul G. Cassell, “Too Severe? A Defense of the FederalSentencing Guidelines,”Stanford Law Review, 56 (2004):1017-48.57William Spelman, “The Limited Importance of PrisonExpansion,” inThe Crime Drop in America, eds. AlfredBlumstein and Joel Wallman (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 2000), p. 123.58Information on Hispanic prisoners: BJS,CorrectionalPopulations in the United States, 1993(USGPO, 1995), p. 9.Paige M. Harrison and Allen J. Beck, “Prisoners in 2003”(USGPO, 2004), p. 9.59Information on non-citizen prisoners: BJS, Census of State and Federal Correctional Facilities, 1995 (USGPO, 2004),p. 11. “Information on Criminal Aliens,” pp. 15, 19.60“Prisoners in 2003,” p. 9.61Curt Anderson, “FBI Says Murders Up for 4th StraightYear,” AP, Oct. 25, 2004.62BJS, “Expenditure Trends by Function” (BJS), http://
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/exptyp.htm. Accessed July 12,2004.63“I ask myself whether the untruth [about race] is notbetter for American society than the truth.” Nathan Glazer,“The Lying Game,”The New Republic, Oct. 31, 1994, p. 16.
