this extended example concerns homicide victimization, but essentially the same patterns appear when we examine other sorts of criminal violence. whether we look at victimization rates for rape, robbery, or assault, or whether we look at homicide offenders, rapists, robbers, or other violent criminals, the basic patterns are the same: males are both more likely to be victimized (with the obvious exception of sexual assault) and more likely to commit violent offenses; adolescents and young adults have the highest rates of both victimization and offending; and nonwhites are more likely to be both victims and offenders than whites (maguire and pastore 1996; snyder and sickmund 1995; zawitz et al. 1993). if random violence refers to risks spread evenly among society's members, then contemporary criminal violence is patterned, not random.
DEUS VULT