Organized Crime in New York City - Characteristics of Offenders

Characteristics of Offenders

Further information: Race and crime in the United States

For 2011, law enforcement made approximately 12,400,000 arrests nationally. Arrested offenders in the United States tend to be male, over age 18, and white.

Arrested offenders by race (2011)

Year	White	Black	American Indian	Asian or Pacific Islander	White (%)	Black (%)	American Indian (%)	Asian or Pacific Islander (%)
2011	6,578,133	2,697,539	142,422	81,631	69.2	28.4	1.5	0.9

Arrested offenders by gender (2011)

Year	Male	Female	Male (%)	Female (%)
2011	7,066,303	2,471,370	74.1	25.9

Characteristics of offenders vary from the average for specific types of crimes and specific crimes. In terms of violent crime by gender, in 2011, 80.4% of arrested persons were male and 19.6% were female. Males were 88.2% of those arrested for homicide, while females were 11.8%. Among those arrested for rape in 2011, males were 98.8% and females were 1.2%. For property crime in 2011, 62.9% of arrested persons were male and 37.1% were female.

For violent crime by race in 2011, 59.4% of those arrested were white, 38.3% were black, and 2.2% were of other races. For persons arrested for homicide in 2011, 49.7% were black, 48% were white, and 2.3% were of other races. For persons arrested for rape in 2011, 65% were white, 32.9% were black, and 2.1% were of other races. For property crime in 2011, 68.1% of arrested persons were white, 29.5% were black, and 2.4% were of other races.

In 2011, law enforcement reported 6,222 bias-motivated incidents, known as hate crimes, for which 5,731 offenders were identified. Of these, 59% were white, 20.9% were black, 7.1% were of various races, 1.4% were Asian or Pacific Islanders, 0.8% were Native American, and 10.8% were of unknown race.

Reporting at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (August 3, 2008), sociologists at Bowling Green State University found that men who attend college are more likely to commit property crimes during their college years than their non-college-attending peers. The research draws from three waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and examines education, crime levels, substance abuse and socializing among adolescents and young adults. Also, according to Naci Mocan of the University of Colorado and Erdal Tekin of Georgia State University, "We find that unattractive individuals commit more crime in comparison to average-looking ones, and very attractive individuals commit less crime in comparison to those who are average-looking."