ABSTRACT
Measuring violent crime is complicated and imprecise because of filtering processes that occur between commission of a crime and it is reporting. In contrast to Uniform Crime Reports trends, National Crime Survey rates of reported violent crimes were virtually flat between 1975 and 1989. In addition to these institutional systems, independent researchers collect data on self-reported behaviour. The largest and most systematic of these, the National Youth Survey, provides still another basis for evaluating the social distribution of violent offending. Statistical data on the social distribution of violent offenders confirm the broad black/white patterns sketched by cause-of-death data but indicate very different patterns of violent offending by age and gender. Delbert Elliott suggests that the age trend in the mid-twenties may be especially significant for understanding racial differences. African Americans, constituting about 12 percent of the US population, are especially overrepresented in arrests for the three most serious violent crimes.
