This research examines the ways in which assaults motivated by bias are similar to and different from other types of assault. Analyses are based on data from the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS), pooled across eleven states. We find evidence suggesting that offenders motivated by racial and ethnic bias are more likely to be versatile offenders than specialists: they are more (not less) likely to be using drugs and alcohol during the crime than conventional offenders. Bias offenders are also more likely to seriously injure the victim. Finally, we find that the risks of bias crime victimization (relative to the risk of assault victimization generally) are similar for blacks and other racial minorities.

Drawing on a large sample of genetically related pairs of adolescents from the Add Health, we examine the influence of sibling deviance on adolescents' participation in minor deviance compared to the influence received from mutual friends (i.e., friends shared between siblings) and influence from unique friends (i.e,, friends unique to each sibling). Multivariate analyses that control for genetic relatedness using DeFries-Fulker regression (1985) indicate that after aspects of the shared and non-shared environment of siblings are accounted for, the heritability effect, capturing genetic relatedness in sibling deviance, is no longer significantly associated with deviance. The deviance of siblings' unique friends accounts for a large portion of the heritability effect of sibling deviance.Sociology and criminology have a rich and extended history of examining family and peer effects on adolescent deviance and delinquency. Research focusing on family effects has investigated parent-child rearing behaviors (e.g., parental discipline, parental supervision, parent attachment), family structure (e.g., the effect of living in a single-parent family,