For whites and blacks, persons 18 to 21 were most
at risk of becoming a murder victim.
Murder rates for blacks were 8 times higher than
for whites 1 in every 894 and 1 in every 7,334
persons, respectively.
Blacks, about 12% of general population, comprised
51% of murder victims. Almost 1 in 10 of black
murder victims were age 18 to 21.
Two competing explanations for these large race disparities have been proposed. The first, referred to here as the “differential involvement hypothesis,” is that Blacks simply commit more crime and more of the types of crime (e.g., violence) that lead to official criminal justice system processing (Blumstein, 1982, 1993; Wilbanks, 1987), and Blacks also continue to commit crime (especially that of violence) into adulthood when White rates appear to decrease (Elliott, 1994).2 The second hypothesis, referred to here as the “differential criminal justice system selection hypothesis,” asserts that differential police presence, patrolling, and profiling, combined with discrimination in the courts and correctional systems, leads to more Blacks being arrested, convicted, and incarcerated (Chambliss, 1994, 1995; Hindelang, 1978; Tonry, 1995; Zimring & Hawkins, 1997). It is also the case that this hypothesis is more likely to apply to the sorts of (victimless) crimes in which there is more discretion available to agents of formal social control (e.g., drug use, “public order” crimes, etc.). Self-report studies that show a somewhat weaker statistical association between race and criminal behavior have been used to support this position.3
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2782848/
