Race and crime in the United States

The relationship between race and crime in the United States has been a topic of public controversy and scholarly debate for more than a century. The incarceration rate of blacks (African Americans) is more than three times higher than the national average. Research suggests that the overrepresentation of some minorities in the criminal justice system is due to socioeconomic factors and racial discrimination by the criminal justice system.

In the United States, crime data are collected from three major sources: law enforcement agency crime reports, collected monthly by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and processed annually as Uniform Crime Reports (UCR); victimization surveys, collected biannually by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and processed annually in the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS); and self-report surveys. The Uniform Crime Reports represent the primary source of data used in the calculation of official statistics regarding serious crimes such as murder and homicide, which is supplemented by the information provided through the NCVS and self-report studies, the latter being the best indicator of actual crime rates for minor offenses such as illegal substance abuse and petty theft. These crime data collection programs provide most of the statistical information utilized by criminologists and sociologists in their analysis of crime and the extent of its relationship to race. Another form of data is that regarding the prison population.

The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) program, established in 1927, is a summary-based reporting system that collects data on crime reported to local and state law enforcement agencies across the United States. The UCR system indexes crimes under two headings: Part I and Part II offenses. Part I offenses include: murder and non-negligent homicide; non-lethal violent crimes comprising robbery, forcible rape and aggravated assault; and property crimes comprising burglary, larceny/theft, motor vehicle theft and arson. Part II offenses include fraud, forgery/counterfeiting, embezzlement, simple assault, sex offenses, offenses against the family, drug and liquor offenses, weapons offenses and other non-violent offenses excluding traffic violations.

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