State of the City Picture Book-

Violent Crimes by Race

The Memphis Shelby Crime Commission produced a study in June 2007 entitled Race on Race Crime.  The study gathered statistics for four violent crimes (homicide, rape, assault and robbery) by race of offender and by race of victim.  Statistics for Memphis and nine other cities of comparable population were included.

Examined in the charts below are the percentage of victims of the four crimes by race for Memphis for the years 2003-2005.  For three of the four crimes, excluding robbery, African Americans were disproportional victims of crimes.  In other words, the percentage of African American who were crime victims was higher than their percentage of the total population.  The population of the City of Memphis in 2005 was approximately 30% white and 63% African-American.