Fatal Violence Research Articles

Association between Neighborhood and Racial Composition of Victims on Fatal Police Shooting and Police Violence: An Integrated Review (2000–2022)

Police violence is a multidimensional issue that requires consideration of the violent events and how these events reflect systemic oppression. Violence and policing practices are influenced by race and ethnicity, place/neighborhood, structural inequality, and racism. We performed an integrated literature review to critically evaluate the current evidence, focusing on the racial composition of communities and neighborhoods and its association with police-involved violence and fatal shootings between 2000 and 2022. We used Scopus and Web of Science to include peer-reviewed articles in English that studied racial/ethnic differences in police-involved violence in the United States between January 2000 and February 2022. We excluded prior systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and articles on drug-related arrests. Using a PRISMA approach from 651 identified articles, we included 37 articles. Our findings showed that racial/ethnic minorities are disproportionately stopped, experience a higher probability of arrest, and are more commonly subjected to police-involved fatal shootings. Victims are more likely to live in neighborhoods with lower income and distressed communities of color, higher poverty ratios, and the highest levels of criminal violence. Citizens reporting of negative interactions with police is strongly associated with race/ethnicity. Maintaining the highest standards of professional practice consistent with the law and protections guaranteed by the Constitution may reduce police violence. In addressing police violence, policymakers not only need to consider the multidisciplinary nature of vulnerability to address the needs of vulnerable populations and create a collaborative environment but also to control police violence. Considering community-based approaches, encouraging training to interact with minority individuals, and adjusting the racial composition of the police officers by the racial composition of communities are other strategies; more importantly, prioritizing strategies to reduce social inequality and structural racism are crucial.

Intimate partner violence victimization and perpetration as precursors to suicide

It remains unclear how often and under what circumstances intimate partner violence (IPV) precedes suicide. Available research on IPV and suicide focuses largely on homicide-suicide, which is a rare event (<2% of suicides). We focus instead on single suicides (i.e., suicides unconnected to other violent deaths), which are the most common type of fatal violence in the US.Unfortunately, information about IPV circumstances is often unavailable for suicides. To address this gap, we sought to identify the proportion of single suicides that were preceded by IPV in North Carolina (NC), to describe the prevalence of IPV victimization and perpetration as precursors to suicide, and to explore how IPV-related suicides differ from other suicides. We used data from the NC Violent Death Reporting System (2010–2017, n = 9682 single suicides) and hand-reviewed textual data for a subset of cases (n = 2440) to document IPV circumstances.We had robust inter-rater reliability (Kappa: 0.73) and identified n = 439 IPV-related suicides. Most were males who had perpetrated nonfatal IPV (n = 319, 72.7%) prior to dying by suicide. Our findings suggest that IPV was a precursor for at least 4.5% of single suicides.Next, we conducted logistic regression analyses by sex comparing IPV-related suicides to other suicides. For both men and women, IPV was more common when the person who died by suicide had recently disclosed suicidal intent, was younger, used a firearm, and was involved with the criminal legal system, even after controlling for covariates. We also found sex-specific correlates for IPV circumstances in suicide.Combined with homicide-suicide data (reported elsewhere), IPV is likely associated with 6.1% or more of suicides overall. Results suggest clear missed opportunities to intervene for this unique subpopulation, such as suicide screening and referral in IPV settings (e.g., batterer intervention programs, Family Justice Centers) that is tailored by sex.

Trends, Correlates, and Contexts of Robbery-Homicide in South Africa

South Africa has amongst the highest rates of homicide in the world, yet little is known about the contexts that shape fatal violence. One frequently feared context is robbery. We examine 68,801 robberies reported between 2003 and 2014 to predict risk factors for cases resulting in victim death. Robbery-homicide is rare in South Africa and its risk factors differ from the country’s overall homicide profile. Significant correlates include day of the week, time of the day and the victim’s race. These findings demonstrate how context-sensitive understandings of violence are crucial to advancing research on homicide in low- and middle-income countries.

Repressing worker dissent: lethal violence against strikers in the early American labor movement

ABSTRACT Despite U.S. labor-management history having long been recognized as the most violent and bloody of any Western industrialized nation, unanimity has failed to materialize regarding its impact on concomitant labor protests, organizations, and politics. We examine the impact of striker fatalities on the strength and trajectory of the early American labor movement against the null hypothesis that such bloodshed is largely random and/or inconsequential by building recently constructed measures of fatal strike violence into time-series regression models of strike frequency, union membership, and membership within the Socialist Party of America. The results suggest that killing strikers, labor organizers, and strike sympathizers had deleterious consequences for labor: dampening strike activity through the long-term cumulative history of picket-line deaths – particularly strikes for union recognition; and hampering union and Socialist Party organizational growth. Thus, repressive elite violence appears to have contributed, in part, to propelling the American labor movement along what has traditionally been characterized as an ‘exceptional’ path of weakening labor’s potential power during its formative decades.

Relationship between menstruation phase and fatal self-directed violence among females of the reproductive age group

Relationship between menstruation phase and fatal self-directed violence among females of the reproductive age group

Sexual assault and fatal violence against women during the Irish War of Independence, 1919–1921: Kate Maher’s murder in context

At the height of the Irish War of Independence, 1919–1921, 45-year-old Kate Maher was brutally raped. She subsequently died of terrible wounds, almost certainly inflicted by drunken British soldiers. This...

Rethinking Older Adult Murder Victims: Looking Back at 25 Years of Homicide Studies to Inform Future Research Needs

Over the past 25 years, homicide researchers have largely ignored older adults. This pattern continues even in light of the ongoing demographic shift associated with the aging baby boomer generation. This article reflects on the current state of the literature and discusses areas in need of attention. Future research needs can be categorized into substantive and methodological issues. The insights gained by exploring these topics can generate nuanced explanations for fatal violence against older adults and support future evidence-based prevention policies.

Fatal police violence by race and state in the USA, 1980–2019: a network meta-regression

SummaryBackgroundThe burden of fatal police violence is an urgent public health crisis in the USA. Mounting evidence shows that deaths at the hands of the police disproportionately impact people of certain races and ethnicities, pointing to systemic racism in policing. Recent high-profile killings by police in the USA have prompted calls for more extensive and public data reporting on police violence. This study examines the presence and extent of under-reporting of police violence in US Government-run vital registration data, offers a method for correcting under-reporting in these datasets, and presents revised estimates of deaths due to police violence in the USA.MethodsWe compared data from the USA National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) to three non-governmental, open-source databases on police violence: Fatal Encounters, Mapping Police Violence, and The Counted. We extracted and standardised the age, sex, US state of death registration, year of death, and race and ethnicity (non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic of other races, and Hispanic of any race) of each decedent for all data sources and used a network meta-regression to quantify the rate of under-reporting within the NVSS. Using these rates to inform correction factors, we provide adjusted estimates of deaths due to police violence for all states, ages, sexes, and racial and ethnic groups from 1980 to 2019 across the USA.FindingsAcross all races and states in the USA, we estimate 30 800 deaths (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 30 300–31 300) from police violence between 1980 and 2018; this represents 17 100 more deaths (16 600–17 600) than reported by the NVSS. Over this time period, the age-standardised mortality rate due to police violence was highest in non-Hispanic Black people (0·69 [95% UI 0·67–0·71] per 100 000), followed by Hispanic people of any race (0·35 [0·34–0·36]), non-Hispanic White people (0·20 [0·19–0·20]), and non-Hispanic people of other races (0·15 [0·14– 0·16]). This variation is further affected by the decedent's sex and shows large discrepancies between states. Between 1980 and 2018, the NVSS did not report 55·5% (54·8–56·2) of all deaths attributable to police violence. When aggregating all races, the age-standardised mortality rate due to police violence was 0·25 (0·24–0·26) per 100 000 in the 1980s and 0·34 (0·34–0·35) per 100 000 in the 2010s, an increase of 38·4% (32·4–45·1) over the period of study.InterpretationWe found that more than half of all deaths due to police violence that we estimated in the USA from 1980 to 2018 were unreported in the NVSS. Compounding this, we found substantial differences in the age-standardised mortality rate due to police violence over time and by racial and ethnic groups within the USA. Proven public health intervention strategies are needed to address these systematic biases. State-level estimates allow for appropriate targeting of these strategies to address police violence and improve its reporting.FundingBill & Melinda Gates Foundation, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

626Epidemiology of facial injuries in the context of fatal family violence in the Victorian population

Abstract Background The oral cavity is reported to be a key focus of physical injury in family violence (FV). Our purpose is to explore the potential opportunity for dentists to assist in the prevention of serious injuries in FV. This paper aims to describe the patterns of orofacial injuries in FV homicides. Methods All FV homicides in Victoria, Australia January 2006-December 2018, were identified amongst closed cases of assaults screened for eligible victim-offender relationships. Epidemiologic trends in FV in the Victorian population over the 12-year period were determined. Sociodemographic, interpersonal, incident and injury characteristics including ICD-10 coding were studied and compared across facial and non-facial injury FV subgroups. Results There was a non-significant downward trend in FV homicide over the period. Of 170 adult cases, 150 were included for facial injury analysis. Of these, 117 (78%) showed orofacial injuries in the 12-year period. Two-step cluster analysis revealed blunt force and threat to breathing injury mechanisms to be significantly associated with facial FV and sharp force with nonfacial FV. Among the additional 26 child homicides, descriptive analysis elucidated patterns in 20 cases eligible for facial injury analysis. Coding limitations were found for the FV homicide cases. Conclusions This population study reports significant involvement of the orofacial region in the FV homicide population during the 12-year study period, potentially informing dental practice and the related policy framework in Victoria and internationally. Key messages The significant involvement of the orofacial region in FV homicides may inform optimal intervention outcomes in FV in Victoria.

U.S. News Coverage of Transgender Victims of Fatal Violence: An Exploratory Content Analysis.

Media portrayals of crime help shape public perceptions of victims and the demographic groups to which they belong. For transgender people, who already face heightened disparities and stigma, news coverage may reinforce negative stereotypes and minimize the wider context of transphobic violence. The present study, a content analysis of news articles (n = 316) pertaining to 27 transgender people killed in the United States in 2016, addresses positive and negative depictions of victims, use of language affirming and delegitimizing transgender identities, and framing of transphobia as a systemic problem. Themes, implications, and future research directions are discussed.

Community gun violence and functional disability: An ecological analysis among men in four U.S. cities.

This study uses data on neighborhoods in four U.S. cities over five years to examine the relationship between fatal and non-fatal gun violence and rates of functional disability among men. Descriptive analyses indicate significant disparities in shooting rates across neighborhoods and heightened associated disability in high shooting communities. Multivariate results show that rates of non-fatal shootings correspond to greater functional disability among young men, but not older men. Fatal gun violence is not associated with increased community disability. The findings suggest that improvements in local gun violence prevention may serve to address broader community disparities in health and well-being.

Firearm violence against children in the United States: Trends in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUNDThis study aimed to evaluate the patterns of firearm violence against children before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the patterns of specific types of firearm violence against children over time (2016–2020).METHODSRetrospective firearm violence data were obtained from the Gun Violence Archive. The rate of firearm violence was weighted per 100,000 children. A scatterplot was created to depict the rate of total annual child-involved shooting incidents over time; with a linear trendline fit to 2016 to 2019 data to show projected versus actual 2020 firearm violence. All 50 states were categorized into either “strong gun law” (n = 25) or “weak gun law” (n = 25) cohorts. Multivariate linear regressions were performed for number of child-involved shootings over time.RESULTSThere were a total of 1,076 child-involved shootings in 2020, 811 in 2019, and 803 in 2018. The median total child-involved shooting incidents per month per 100,000 children increased from 2018 to 2020 (0.095 vs. 0.124, p = 0.003) and from 2019 to 2020 (0.097 vs. 0.124, p = 0.010). Child killed by adult incidents also increased in 2020 compared with 2018 (p = 0.024) and 2019 (p = 0.049). The scatterplot demonstrates that total child-involved shootings in addition to both fatal and nonfatal firearm violence incidents exceeded the projected number of incidents extrapolated from 2016 to 2019 data. Multivariate linear regression demonstrated that, compared with weak gun law states, strong gun law states were associated with decreased monthly total child-involved shooting incidents between 2018 and 2020 (p < 0.001), as well as between 2019 and 2020 (p < 0.001).CONCLUSIONChild-involved shooting incidents increased significantly in 2020 surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that gun law strength was associated with a decreased rate of monthly child-involved firearm violence, public health and legislative efforts should be made to protect this vulnerable population from exposure to firearms.LEVEL OF EVIDENCEEpidemiological, level III.

Non-fatal gun violence and community health behaviors: A neighborhood analysis in Philadelphia.

Research shows that community violence is associated with an array of negative health outcomes, yet no study has examined the specific association between different types of gun violence and collective health behaviors in local neighborhoods. Using data from neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia, this study examines the association between total, fatal, and non-fatal gun violence and measures of physical inactivity, obesity, sleep, and smoking. We find the rate of non-fatal shootings is associated with a composite measure of health behaviors, net of all neighborhood-level covariates and general community violence. Ancillary analyses show that non-fatal shootings are particularly associated with physical inactivity and obesity. Notably, fatal shootings are not associated with any behavioral health measure after accounting for nonlethal shootings. The results support improved data collection efforts to measure non-fatal shootings across the U.S. and greater attention to the collective health consequences of gun violence in local communities.

Gestational exposure to fatal police violence and pregnancy loss in US core based statistical areas, 2013-2015.

BackgroundFatal police violence in the United States disproportionately affects Black, Native American, and Hispanic people, and for these groups it is a racially oppressive population-level stressor that we hypothesize increases the risk of pregnancy loss. Focusing on core based statical areas (CBSAs) surrounding small and large urban centers, we accordingly tested whether gestational exposure to fatal police violence decreased the number of live births, which is reflective of a rise in lost pregnancies.MethodsOur observational study linked microdata for all births (N = 7,709,300) in 520 CBSAs with at least one incident of fatal police violence in 2013–2015 to Fatal Encounters, a database that prospectively identified 2594 police-related fatalities using online media reports and public records. We estimated the association between month-to-month fatal police violence and conceptions resulting in live births using distributed lag quasi-Poisson models with CBSA-level fixed effects, adjusted for seasonality and stratified by maternal race/ethnicity.FindingsFor each additional police-related fatality that occurred in the first through sixth months of gestation, we observed a 0.14% decrease (95% confidence interval: 0.05%, 0.23%) in the total number of live births within CBSAs, and a 0.29% decrease in births to Black women (95% CI: 0.11%, 0.48%). The association was null for births to White women.InterpretationOur findings suggest fatal police violence may have population-level consequences for pregnancy loss and adds to the evidence regarding the importance of preventing these fatalities.

Multifaceted Offenders and Minimization of Victims: U.S. National News Media Coverage of Offenders and Victims in Coverage of Filicide

There has been more discussion by and from the media in recent years over the issue of domestic violence, this has largely overlooked instances of fatal family violence. This project examines 340 cases of parents or stepparents who killed their children between January 1, 2004, and December 31, 2013 and reported in the U.S. national news media. A content analysis of the news coverage identified themes of positive, negative, and sympathetic portrayals of offenders and victims as well as the minimization of victims. News coverage of offenders depicted them as multifaceted persons with details that could humanize or other offenders while victims were minimized with more focus on the harm done to them than the lives they led. As the focus on offenders occurred in conjunction with the minimization of victims, it is concluded that news media coverage is offender-centric and such media coverage needs to be more balanced in portrayals of victims and offenders to better address and respond to the issue of fatal family violence.

Competing discourses and cultural intelligibility: Familicide, gender and the mental illness/distress frame in news

Familicide – the killing of a partner and child(ren) – is a rare and complex crime that, when it occurs, receives intense media coverage. However, despite growing scholarly attention to filicide in the news, little research to date has looked at how familicide is represented. Situated at the intersection of filicide, intimate partner homicide and very often suicide, how the knotty and confronting issue of familicide is reported on is telling of the discourses available to understand complex forms of family violence. In this article, we argue that reporting on familicide mirrors broader feminist concerns about the tendency to frame fatal family violence at the hands of men in individualised terms – often as driven by mental illness – at the expense of an accounting of gender and power. Here, we seek to elaborate on and contextualise what we call the mental illness/distress frame as part of the broader tendency towards psychocentrism. This is amplified in cases of familicide where cultural signifiers for the increasingly publicly conceived of issue of ‘domestic violence’ are often not apparent, leading to popularised psychological explanations to be assumed. The mental health/distress frame operates not only to obscure the role of gender and power in domestic and family violence; it obscures the connection between gender, mental distress and violence, naturalising (and gender-neutralising) mental distress and violence as a response to it. We argue that intersecting discourses – of gender, age, disability and the heterosexual nuclear family, for instance – operate in important ways to suggest, support and rationalise this frame. We illustrate these ideas through a detailed case study analysis of news reporting on a case of familicide in Sydney, Australia.

Occurrence of fatal police violence during pregnancy and hazard of preterm birth in California.

Exposure to fatal police violence may play a role in population-level inequities in risk for preterm delivery. To evaluate whether exposure to fatal police violence during pregnancy affects the hazard of preterm delivery and whether associations differ by race/ethnicity and fetal sex. We leveraged temporal variation in incidents of fatal police violence within census tracts to assess whether occurrence of fatal police violence in a person's tract during pregnancy was associated with increased hazard of extremely (20-27weeks), early (28-31weeks), moderate (32-33weeks), and late (32-36weeks) preterm delivery in California from 2007 to 2015. We used both death records and the Fatal Encounters database to identify incidents of fatal police violence. We estimated hazard ratios (HR) using time-varying Cox proportional hazard models stratified by census tract, controlling for age, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, health insurance type, parity, and the year and season of conception. We further stratified by race/ethnicity and infant sex to evaluate whether there were differential effects by these characteristics. Exposure to an incident of fatal police violence was associated with a small increase in the hazard of late preterm birth using both the death records (N=376,029; hazard ratio [HR] 1.05, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.00, 1.10) and the Fatal Encounters data (N=938,814; HR 1.03, 95% CI 1.00, 1.06). We also observed an association for moderate preterm birth in the Fatal Encounters data (HR 1.06, 95% CI 0.98, 1.15). We did not observe associations for early or extremely preterm birth in either data source. Larger relative hazards of moderate (HR 1.25, 95% CI 0.93, 1.68) and late preterm delivery (HR 1.18, 95% CI 1.05, 1.33) were observed among Black birth parents with female births in the Fatal Encounters data. Preventing police use of lethal force may reduce preterm delivery in communities where such violence occurs.

Lest Death Do Them Part: Protection of Older Women From Intimate Partner Injury and Fatality

Protecting and preventing older women from fatal and near fatal violence by current or former intimate partners are public health and international human rights concerns. Older women are most often killed (“femicide”), injured in the home by a spouse, partner, x-partner, or family member. Older women experience physical, psychological, sexual abuse, neglect, and financial exploitation. Wherein there is more research on risk factors, study of protections lags behind. Through three very different studies, risks and protections will be explored with national and international policy implications for each.

Accounting for Multiple Nonfatal Strangulation in Intimate Partner Violence Risk Assessment.

Nonfatal strangulation is a prevalent, underreported, and dangerous form of intimate partner violence (IPV). It is particularly important to assess for strangulation among abused women as this form of violence may not leave visible injury. The most severe negative physical and mental health consequences of strangulation appear to be dose-related, with those strangled multiple times or to the point of altered consciousness at higher risk of negative sequelae. This research examines the relationship between multiple strangulation, loss of consciousness due to strangulation, and risk of future near-fatal violence to modify the Danger Assessment (DA) and the Danger Assessment for Immigrant women (DA-I), IPV risk assessments intended to predict near-fatal and fatal violence in intimate relationships. Data from one study (n = 619) were used to modify the DA to include an item on multiple strangulation or loss of consciousness due to strangulation. Data from an independent validation sample (n = 389) were then used to examine the predictive validity of the updated DA and DA-I. The updated version of the DA predicts near-fatal violence at 7-8 months follow-up significantly better than the original DA. Adding multiple strangulation or loss of consciousness to the DA-I increased the predictive validity slightly, but not significantly. The DA and DA-I are intended to be used as a collaboration between IPV survivors and advocates as tools for education and intervention. Whether or not an IPV survivor has been strangled, she should be educated about the dangerous nature of strangulation and the need for medical intervention should her partner use strangulation against her. This evidence-based adaptation of the DA and DA-I may assist practitioners to assess for and intervene in dangerous IPV cases.

Impeding fatal violence through third-party diplomacy: The effect of mediation on conflict intensity

Existing research provides no systematic insights into if and how mediation impedes battle-related deaths. Therefore, this article presents a temporally disaggregated analysis and assesses the effect of mediation on monthly fatal violence. The article predicts that adversaries evaluate opponents’ trustworthiness from both fighting and negotiation behavior. It argues that reducing fighting intensity during negotiations is a sign of cooperation, which can be negotiated by mediators to build trust. Over the course of mediation, the content of negotiations provides information about how genuinely a conflict party is interested in conflict resolution. Only if mediation achieves negotiation of core incompatibilities will conflict parties be willing to reduce fighting intensity. Under these conditions, information revealed in a mediation process can build trust and substantively reduce violence. An empirical analysis of all African conflicts between 1993 and 2007 supports this prediction and shows that on average mediation is followed by substantive and lasting reductions in fatal violence, if mediation discusses the conflict’s main incompatibility. In contrast, mediation on other topics is associated with a small, fleeting reduction in violence. Data of battle-related fatalities in Syria during negotiations as well as qualitative evidence further support the theoretical mechanism and the model prediction. The study concludes that mediation can reduce conflict intensity substantively, if it achieves exchange between conflict parties on the main conflict issues.