Race And Victimization

Each year, data are obtained from a nationally representative sample of about 90,000 households, comprising nearly 160,000 persons, on the frequency, characteristics, and consequences of criminal victimization in the United States. Each household is interviewed twice during the year. The survey enables BJS to estimate the likelihood of victimization by rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated and simple assault, theft, household burglary, and motor vehicle theft for the population as a whole as well as for segments of the population such as women, the elderly, members of various racial or ethnic groups, city dwellers, and other groups. The NCVS provides the largest national forum for victims to describe the impact of crime and characteristics of violent offenders.”

Crime has always been a hot topic in sociology. There are many different reasons for people to commit criminal acts. There is no way to pinpoint the source of crime. I am going to show the relationship between race and crime. More specifically, I will be discussing the higher chances of minorities being involved in the criminal justice system than the majority population, discrimination, racial profiling and the environment criminals live in.

In this article, Robert, April, and Jorge (2010) acknowledges previous research reports on this topic and reveals that race, and racial patterns have found their way in involvement of crime. However, Robert, April, and Jorge (2010) argue that there is no significant proof that there are meaningful racial disparities in the legal systems. Although some literatures provide research on the existence of racial profiling by police, in imprisonment, and sentencing, other researchers report no significant racial disparities in the legal systems (Black and Reiss, 1970; Pilivian and Briar, 1964). However, other researchers report on ample racial disparities based on race. These researches are controversial because the size of the differences in such reports tends to bring up the question of meaningfulness of the differences observed (Wilbanks, 1987).

On the other hand, others argue that disproportionality in arrest decisions is commensurate with the racial distributions in offending rather than residential distribution in the population (D’Alessio & Stolzenberg, 2003; Sampson & Lauritsen, 1997). Putting it differently, proponents of this group hold that differential involvement in crime commission leads to higher arrest rates. For this reason, employing frequency of crime involvement as a baseline measure would yield different findings as opposed to relying only population as a baseline measure (Golub et al., 2007).

Statistics do show that African Americans have a higher percent of crime rates than Caucasians. African Americans makes up thirteen percent of the countries total population; however they also make up thirty-one percent of all of the arrests. “... analysts say, [police] stop many more blacks and Hispanics on highways and on city streets then they do whites” (“Crime and Race”). Do the police target these minority races merely on race? Analysts not only believe the idea of racial profiling, they refute it. They consider the fact that these races commit more crimes than whites do. The high crime rates of minorities are argued that the minorities are arrested at a higher rate than whites because a higher population of minorities live in poor neighborhoods. Areas where unemployment is high, poverty is common, and schools are unfunded. Many socialists point out that crime tends to correlate with both poverty and unemployment. These factors may make minority youth feel they have to turn to criminal activities because of the “blocked opportunities” other adolescent people might receive. Minorities are not arrested at higher rate because they are targeted by police, they are just committing more crimes for the reason that they live in deprived regions (“Update: Crime and Race”).

Although a crime is reported in the Uniform Crime Report does not mean that the arrestee in that crime is representative of the population. It is easy to misinterpret the Uniform Crime Report and generalize a certain race or even gender to a particular crime. We often see poor, nonwhite males in the Uniform Crime Report for committing Part I crimes. This diverts the attention away from the wealthy white businessman who might be a part of white-collar crime. White-collar crime is hardly represented in this type of crime measurement (Barkan, 2012).

The existence of racial disparity and structural inequality within the criminal justice system renders the concept of true justice for all unobtainable. The statistics of convictions and prison sentences by race definitely support the concept that discrimination is a problem in the justice system as well as the insignificantly number of minority judges and lawyers. There are a multitude of circumstances that influence these statistics according to the “Central Eight” criminogenic risk factors. The need for programs and methods to effectively deter those at risk individuals has never been greater and the lack of such programs is costing society in countless ways.

Q1.The racial/ethnic differences in offending, victimization, and incarceration? Minorities, particularly African Americans, are generally overrepresented in the criminal justice system both as offenders and as victims.  According to the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) for 2003, African Americans (who were 12.7 percent of the population in 2003) were arrested for 37 percent of violent crimes (murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault) and 29 percent of property crime (102:288). African Americans are disproportionately arrested for violent crimes and whites for burglaries and property crimes. Although most crime is committed by males, black women are also disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system. The rate of black women under control of the criminal justice system is growing faster than for any other group, including black men and white men (86:136). Blacks are victims of serious violent crimes at far higher rates than whites. In 2002, blacks were 6 times more likely to be murdered than whites; and although homicide levels have declined for all groups over the past decade, during the 1976 to 2002 period, rates were disproportionately high for African Americans at 47 percent of victims (28

It is hypothesized that racial profiling is a relative to population in specific areas as well as its subjective. Racial profiling can be viewed as subjective, because it is nearly impossible to identify underlying prejudices or racist attitudes that may drive some individuals who engage in true racial profiling. Another hypothesis formed by this writer is that some incidences or frequency of crime increase police interactions and oftentimes support the necessity for criminal profiling which can be misconstrued as racial profiling (e.g. incidences of violent crimes committed by a particular

Almost everyone has heard the famous hymn, “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” but not all understand the true meaning when it says, “Red, and yellow, black, and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” The moment sin entered into the world, perfection no longer existed. This loss of perfection changed the way humans viewed each other. It made one ethnicity view another ethnicity as inferior, and in doing so, created what people now know of as racism. For centuries, racism has been a part of society, shaping the way humans view each other, but with the aid of Young Women 's Christian Association (YWCA) - Stand Against Racism, racial discrimination and injustice can be eliminated.

It may seem that incarceration rates are high for minorities at the federal level, but the rates are even higher at the state levels. African Americans are 5.6 times, and Hispanics are 1.8 times more likely to be incarcerated than whites. Young African American and Hispanic males are leading incarceration rates for robbery, drug offenses, followed by murder and nonnegligent manslaughter. Whites show a significant lower number than of the Hispanics and blacks for the violent crimes, but lead incarceration rates for rape and sexual abuse. Whites also exceeded minorities in property crime (108,560), compared to blacks (78,197) and Hispanics (38,264) (E. Ann Carson and Daniela Golinelli, 2013). The demographics show that young minority males are being incarcerated at higher rates for majority of the main crimes

Statistics have been made to show what races are linked to certain types of crime. The Uniform Crime Report has been made to show these types of information. However, these reports only show information about offenders that the crime was resulted in an arrest. This presents many issues because there are a lot of crimes committed that were not reported. Also, the UCR only shows crime reports linked to only four racial groups, Caucasian, African American, Native American, and Asian.

Victimization is an interesting concept. Being a victim is entirely subjective depending on who is asked and depending on their individual situation. So, I too have my own subjective definition; a victim is someone who was put in a situation that either took something physically or emotionally away from them. For example: a victim of a robbery, a car jacking, or rape is truly a victim in my eyes. Members of Black Lives Matter enjoy pretending to be victims by using the narrative that black people are dying at the hands of white racist police officers. When facts come into account, we realize that black on black deaths account for the large majority of black murders, whites die at the hands of police officers more often than blacks, and black officers are more likely to kill a black suspect than a white officer. So, are black people victims of police brutality or are Black Lives Matter ignorant of facts? I am no stranger to being a victim, I despise people who play the victim and blame others for their shortcomings because I too

During this essay, I will be discussing recorded crime statistics and victimisation surveys as they are our primary techniques of measuring levels and trends of crime. After briefly explaining what is meant by these terms, I will seek to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses in order to question the extent to which they are reliable resources that provide us with accurate information.

The National Crime victimization Survey (NCVS) collects personal and household criminal data by a consistent ongoing survey. This program is useful for showing how many crimes happened that may have not have been reported to the police. Victims and criminals are a lot more likely to admit to a survey of criminal events that happened rather than to the police themselves. Unlike UCR and NIBRS, NCVS does not include detailed information nor does it provide any specific