During the past four years, violent crime has been decreasing nationwide, according to the latest data. But rates of violent crime are mixed in the Mountain West.
The rate of violent crime decreased by 15% between 2020-2022, according to the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer. The national average in 2022 is 380 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Idaho and Wyoming’s averages were lower at 241 and 201, respectively. Meanwhile, Colorado (492) and Nevada (454) had higher averages, and New Mexico experienced violent crimes at nearly twice the national average at a rate of 780.
Most offenders are white men, followed by Black men. Yet, Black men are arrested more often, said Justin Nix, a Criminal Justice associate professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha.
“We know that non-white suspects are more likely to be arrested than white suspects and this is true after we control for things like severity of the crime, evidence, prior records,” Nix said. “Controlling for all those things does not wash the race effect away. The evidence tells us that race of the suspect matters.”
Institutional racism remains an issue, said Dr. Charis Kubrin, professor of criminology at UC Irvine, explaining why Black men are disproportionately represented in crime statistics.
“FBI reports 80% (of those arrested) are male,” Kubrin said. “We can compare that to the overall U.S. population, which is 49%. If we look at race and in particular African-Americans, we see that while they comprise 52% of homicide offenders, that’s much higher than their representation in the population.”
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio (KNPR) in Las Vegas, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
