Race and Violent Offender “Propensity”: Does the Intraracial Nature of Violent Crime Persist on the Local Level?

Abstract

In the 1980s, some scholars suggested black violent offenders had a “propensity” to select white victims. Subsequent research demonstrated, however, that violent offenders tend to victimize intraracially. One weakness of this research was its reliance on national-level data. Using national-level estimates to calculate expected values of interracial offending implicitly assumes people have access to each other across the nation. Segregation patterns suggest otherwise. This study examines whether the propensity of violent offenders to select victims intraracially holds up if expected values are calculated locally. Findings indicate that violent offenders do tend to select victims intraracially at the local level, but that the intraracial character of violent offending varies by crime, offender race, and locale. For most cities in the analysis, assault is predominantly intraracial across offense/offender categories. For a few cities, however, criminal assault is less intraracial than expected (with white offenders victimizing interracially more than random selection would predict).