The Color of Justice 5th Edition by Samuel Walker,Cassia Spohn,Miriam DeLone

Exercise 4

The descriptive information in UCR arrest data depicts an overrepresentation of African American offenders for most violent and property crimes. What are the possible explanations for such disparity? Is this picture of the offender the result of differential offending rates or differential enforcement practices? What must a researcher include in a study of "why people commit crime" to advance beyond a description of disparity to test for a causal explanation?