the arrest picture

i made this figure for yesterday's talk on how low-level arrest records affect employment. i wanted to show that only a small proportion of arrests involve violent crimes such as murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. so, i plotted data from the fbi's 2007 uniform crime reports to show the distribution of the 14,209,365 u.s. arrests in that year. i usually walk through such numbers in my intro crime and delinquency courses.

• about 4 percent of arrests are for violent "index" crimes -- murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
• if arrests for burglary, theft, auto theft, and arson are added to the violent crimes above, a total of about 16 percent of arrests are for part I offenses. so, about one in six arrests involve one of the index crimes that are commonly reported as the nation's crime rate.
• the big greenish slices of the pie are all drug- and alcohol-related.
• the large purplish region is for "all other offenses" -- violations of state or local laws not specifically identified as part i or part ii offenses, excluding traffic violations.