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What are the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program statistics on murder rates by race?
Executive summary
FBI UCR “Expanded Homicide” tables show that when victim race is known, Black victims have comprised a plurality of murder victims in multiple recent years—for example, 51.6% in 2014 and 53.3% in 2018—while White victims made up roughly 45–44% in those same years [1] [2]. The FBI also reports arrest shares for murder by race (e.g., adults arrested for murder were 53.0% Black in 2018 and 51.3% Black in 2019) in its Table 43 summaries [3] [4].
1. What the FBI tables actually report: victim and arrest shares
The FBI’s Expanded Homicide pages and tables present counts and percentages for murder victims by race among those cases where race was recorded: in 2014 the FBI reports 51.6% of victims were Black, 45.7% White, and 2.6% other (race known) [1]; for 2018 the FBI reports 53.3% Black, 43.8% White, and 2.8% other [2]. Separately, the FBI’s arrest tables (Table 43) give the racial composition of people arrested for murder: adults arrested for murder were 53.0% Black in 2018 and 51.3% Black in 2019, with Whites around the mid‑40s percent in those years [3] [4].
2. Important caveat — “race known” and incomplete reporting
The FBI materials emphasize that many tables are limited to incidents where race (and sometimes other attributes) was recorded; incidents with unknown offender or victim race are excluded from those percentage calculations [5]. Expanded Homicide pages also note counts of victims with unknown race in some years (for example, the 2018 narrative notes race was unknown for 233 victims) [2]. Therefore the published percentages are conditional on available supplemental data, not unconditional national totals [2] [5].
3. Differences between “victim share” and “rate per population”
The FBI pages cited above report shares (percent of known victims or arrests by race) rather than crime rates per 100,000 population by race; reporting shares can be misleading if not compared to population sizes. The Office of Justice Programs summary notes the UCR produces numbers and rates over multi‑year periods (e.g., homicides by sex and race, 2009–2018), indicating that complementary rate tables exist within UCR releases and related OJP reports [6]. However, the specific share figures quoted in the Expanded Homicide and Table 43 overviews are percentage shares among known cases [2] [3] [4].
4. Arrest data vs. offender-victim matching and context
FBI arrest statistics (Table 43) summarize arrests made for murder and should not be interpreted as definitive proof of offender guilt; they are records of arrests reported by agencies [3] [4]. Expanded Homicide tables that link victim and offender race are based on supplemental incident-level reporting, but those tables exclude incidents where the agency did not supply offender information [5]. The FBI narrative itself distinguishes justifiable homicides, unknowns, and other classifications that can affect counts [2] [1].
5. Trends and multi‑year perspectives
Available materials include multi‑year comparisons: the Expanded Homicide narratives for different years (2014 and 2018 examples) show the Black share of known victims rising slightly between those years (51.6% to 53.3% in the examples provided) [1] [2]. The Office of Justice Programs report highlights the UCR’s multi‑year tables and notes changes in violent crime rates and homicide over time [6]. For longer trend analysis or rate calculations by racial population group, the UCR data tables and the Crime Data Explorer are the primary sources to consult [7] [8].
6. What the sources do not say or clarify
Available sources do not mention adjusted homicide rates per 100,000 population by race in the specific snippets provided here—those rate calculations are present elsewhere in the UCR portfolio but are not in the quoted Expanded Homicide summaries above [2] [1] [3]. Also, these sources do not provide explanations for underlying causes of disparities; they supply counts, percentages, and methodological notes but not causal analysis [6].
7. How to use these figures responsibly
Use the FBI’s victim and arrest shares as descriptive snapshots conditional on reported race data, and pair them with population‑based rates (from UCR tables or CDE) and local context before drawing conclusions [5] [6] [7]. Remember that reporting completeness, classification rules (e.g., justifiable homicide), and whether data are counts versus rates all shape interpretation [2] [1].
If you want, I can extract specific table values or compute homicide rates per 100,000 population by race from the UCR/CDE tables—but those calculations require pulling the relevant UCR tables or CDE outputs beyond the narrative snippets cited here [7] [8].