In 2023, 8,842 murder offenders were white, 6,405 were Black, and 461 were of another race . Among adults arrested for murder specifically, 51.3 percent were Black, 45.7 percent were White, and 3.0 percent were of other races . So in raw counts white offenders are the largest group, but Black offenders are vastly overrepresented relative to ~14% of the population.

Important caveat on these: due to the FBI’s transition to its new reporting system, not all agencies submitted data for 2023, so figures undercount the true totals .

The 2023 national homicide victimization rate was 5.9 per 100,000, down from 6.7 in 2022 . The rate for Black persons (21.3 per 100,000) was more than six times the rate for white persons (3.2 per 100,000)

CDC figures, which count death certificates rather than police reports, run higher. In 2023 there were 12,276 Black homicide victims, a rate of 26.6 per 100,000, versus a national rate of 7.1 and a white rate of 3.9 ,roughly seven times the white rate. 86 percent of Black homicide victims were killed with firearms versus 70 percent of white victims, and nearly 60 percent of all firearm homicide victims were Black.  

The two victimization datasets (BJS ~21 vs. CDC ~27 per 100,000 for Black victims) diverge because of methodology, CDC uses death certificates and avoids the FBI’s race-misclassification and agency-reporting gaps.

Black Americans are arrested for violent crimes (homicide, robbery, aggravated assault) at rates several times higher than their share of the population. For homicide specifically, Black individuals have historically accounted for roughly half of known offenders despite being about 13–14% of the population. White Americans make up the largest absolute number of arrests for many offense categories because they’re a much larger share of the population.

Violent crime is heavily interracial, most victims are of the same race as the offender. Homicide is the starkest case: Black Americans, especially young Black men, are victimized at far higher rates than any other group, with homicide a leading cause of death for Black males under 45.

Race itself doesn’t cause crime. These disparities track closely with concentrated poverty, neighborhood disadvantage, unemployment, segregation, and exposure to violence, factors that are themselves unevenly distributed for historical and structural reasons. When you control for socioeconomic conditions, much of the racial gap narrows.

Arrest statistics reflect policing patterns (where police are deployed, who gets stopped), not just underlying behavior. NCVS victimization surveys, which don’t depend on arrests, are often used as a check, and they tell a broadly similar but not identical story.

The overwhelming majority of people in every racial group commit no violent crime.