Levels Of Homicide Research Articles

Sociology of individual tragedies. Homicides and suicides: Cross-country cluster analysis

Sociology and psychology closely study the phenomena of homicide and suicide among countries of the world, but both remain little studied in the context of the levels of countries’ development and international comparisons. Developed countries (in terms of GDP per capita) show a decrease in the relative rate of homicides, but the case of suicides is not so explicit. This paper examines the relative levels of suicides and homicides all around the world in the context of socio-economic indices as well as indicators of mental health among the population. Addressing the example of the BRICS countries, the authors discuss the impact of economic imbalances on homicide and suicide levels. The analysis demonstrates that social inequality determines cross-country differences for relative levels in terms of homicide rates, including the course of events in the post-Soviet countries. And in the case of Russia, it is possible to make a conclusion not only about the presence of deep inter-regional differences, but also about a large-scale reduction in the frequency of two tragic phenomena between 2000 and 2017 during the economic recovery.

Homicide in Scotland, 1800–1849: Numbers and Theories (2)

This article challenges a series of orthodox propositions put forward by historians writing on the decline in homicide levels over the last three hundred years. Firstly, there was a decline in impulsive violence; secondly, there was a shift from stranger to intimate killing; and thirdly, there was a transition of the site of murder from the public to the private sphere. It will be argued that murder remained a mainly spontaneous action, a response to highly charged or impassioned insults and words, sometimes alcohol-fuelled and while the killing of spouses and other immediate family members increased over the course of 150 years (1700–1849), the pattern established in the second half of the eighteenth century was hardly disturbed since most victims were known to their assailants as family, friends or workmates. Stranger killing became more commonly associated with drunken brawls in taverns or in the streets; homicides that involved premeditative action, such as robbery, were rarely the cause of death. It is also clear that the street rather than the home was the most common location, again reflecting the spontaneous and opportunistic character of homicide.

Homicide and social media: Global empirical evidence

This study investigates the relationship between social media and homicide in a cross section of 148 countries for the year 2012. The empirical evidence is based on Ordinary Least Squares, Tobit and Quantile regressions. The findings from Ordinary Least Squares and Tobit regressions show a negative relationship between Facebook penetration and the homicide rate. The negative relationship is driven by the 75th quantile of the conditional distribution of the homicide rate. The negative nexus is also driven by upper middle income countries and “Europe and Central Asia”. Three main implications are apparent when the findings are compared and contrasted. First, established findings from OLS and Tobit regressions are driven by countries with above-median levels of homicide. Second, such above-median countries are largely associated with upper middle income countries and nations in “Europe and Central Asia”. Third, modelling the relationship between Facebook penetration and homicide at the conditional mean of homicide may be misleading unless it is contingent on initial levels of homicide and tailored differently across income levels and regions of the world.

“Gentefication” in the Barrio: Examining the Relationship Between Gentrification and Homicide in East Los Angeles

Research has increasingly moved toward a consensus that violent crime declines as neighborhoods gentrify, yet some studies find the direction of this relationship varies by type of violent crime. This finding becomes even more important when connected with recent research that finds the structural influences of gang and non-gang homicide are disparate. The current study engages with research in each of these areas by examining the relationship of gentrification with levels of total, gang, and non-gang homicide in Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) Hollenbeck Community Policing Area. We find gentrification was not associated with variation in total or gang homicide, but was positively associated with non-gang homicide.

Relations between economic development, violence and corruption: A nonparametric approach with DEA and data panel

This research analyses the connection between homicides, corruption, and economic development in Colombian government departments. This empirical research explores the trends of homicides, corruption, and economic development utilizing different estimation techniques: DEA and econometric analysis with panel data. The DEA is applied to assess socioeconomic performance and interactions of homicides, corruption, and economic progress in Colombian, according to the rank and uncertainty of corruption and violence. Econometric models are Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimates to determine the incidence of some institutional and socioeconomic variables on the score range of uncertainty and risk generated by DEA in terms of the level of corruption and homicides. Estimates with DEA data envelopment analysis shows that the risk score associated with homicides and corruption has different tendencies, socioeconomic and political instability are causes that explain the behaviour of this variable over time. The results of the panel data estimation show that there are several hypotheses and theories that explain the effects of corruption and violence on the economic development of countries. This finding indicates the importance of developing effective policies that strengthen public administration, the judicial structure, and public social spending and thus rupture the cycles of corruption and homicides that prevent the creation of sustained economic growth and development.

Different Paths: The Role of Immigrant Assimilation on Neighborhood Crime*

ObjectiveThis article considers immigration a process that extends beyond numerical size. Processes of assimilation alter the effect of immigration on crime. That means the study is not concerned with direct but with contingent effects. The goal is to demonstrate how paths of segmented assimilation modify the effect of immigration on crime.MethodsCombining a data set on neighborhood crime with U.S. Census demographic indicators, this study relies on zero‐inflated negative binomial regression models to examine variation in neighborhood levels of homicide and property offenses as a consequence of interactions between immigration size and assimilation patterns.Results and DiscussionImmigrant assimilation moderates the effect of immigration size on crime. Controlling for neighborhood disadvantage, when the probability of downward assimilation is high, immigration size reduces neighborhood safety. When the probability is low, immigration size enhances it. The effects are more robust for homicide regression models with recent immigrants and immigrants with limited linguistic skills.ConclusionThe analyses highlight the benefits of contingent models for understanding the relationship between immigration and crime.

Did de‐policing cause the increase in homicide rates?

Research SummaryWidespread protests and demands for accountability in the wake of broadly publicized police killings of unarmed civilians coincided with the marked upturn in homicide levels, especially in large U.S. cities, in 2015. Many observers, including prominent political figures, claimed that de‐policing caused the homicide rate to rise: Fearing increased legal liability and publicity, the police employed less proactive enforcement and made fewer arrests, producing an increase in homicide levels. We use structural equation modeling to estimate the simultaneous relationship between arrest and homicide rates between 2010 and 2015 in 53 large cities. We find no evidence of an effect of arrest rates on city homicide rates for any offense category for any year in this period, including 2015, the year of the spike in homicide levels.Policy ImplicationsThe results of our analysis reveal that declining rates of arrest did not produce the rise in homicide levels. But arrests, the chief formal reaction to crime, can play an important supporting role in crime prevention. Ample research findings have demonstrated the effectiveness of proactive policing practices, such as targeted patrol, in reducing crime rates. The success of such tactics depends, in turn, on citizens’ belief that criminal offenders face an appreciable risk of arrest. It is equally important, however, that residents of communities that have experienced unwarranted police violence believe that law enforcement is fairly applied. Lack of trust and confidence in the police militates against crime prevention as a co‐production of police and community and may promote violence as a form of self‐help.

Homicide and Indigenous peoples in North America: A structural analysis

Abstract Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States experience high levels of homicide and violence. In fact, the Indigenous homicide rate is the highest of any racial and ethnic group in either country. Of particular concern, is the amount of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. While violence has been subject to vast research in Canada and the United States, most of the literature focuses upon the micro factors. These types of explanations however, largely fail to provide the historical and structural framework for understanding violence affecting Indigenous peoples. For instance, the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls must not be separated from the structural embeddedness of colonialism and the impacts of patriarchy. While the history of colonialism is usually evoked within the literature to provide context, this paper argues that colonialism is not only a contextual factor to situate individual violence, but rather that the embeddedness of colonialism within the political, economic, and social organization, or structure of society, leads to the continued precarity of Indigenous people to violence and victimization – particularly homicide.

Upsurge of Homicides and Its Impact on Life Expectancy and Life Span Inequality in Mexico, 2005-2015.

To quantify the effect of the upsurge of violence on life expectancy and life span inequality in Mexico after 2005. We calculated age- and cause-specific contributions to changes in life expectancy and life span inequality conditional on surviving to age 15 years between 1995 and 2015. We analyzed homicides, medically amenable conditions, diabetes, ischemic heart diseases, and traffic accidents by state and sex. Male life expectancy at age 15 years increased by more than twice in 1995 to 2005 (1.17 years) than in 2005 to 2015 (0.55 years). Life span inequality decreased by more than half a year for males in 1995 to 2005, whereas in 2005 to 2015 the reduction was about 4 times smaller. Homicides for those aged between 15 and 49 years had the largest effect in slowing down male life expectancy and life span inequality. Between 2005 and 2015, three states in the north experienced life expectancy losses while 5 states experienced increased life span inequality. Ten years into the upsurge of violence, Mexico has not been able to reduce the homicide levels to those before 2005. Life expectancy and life span inequality stagnated since 2005 for young men at the national level. In some states, males live shorter lives than in 2005, on average, and experience higher uncertainty in their eventual death.

Homicide and Social Media: Global Empirical Evidence

This study investigates the relationship between social media and homicide in a cross section of 148 countries for the year 2012. The empirical evidence is based on Ordinary Least Squares, Tobit and Quantile regressions. The findings from Ordinary Least Squares and Tobit regressions show a negative relationship between Facebook penetration and the homicide rate. The negative relationship is driven by the 75th quantile of the conditional distribution of the homicide rate. The negative nexus is also driven by upper middle income countries and “Europe and Central Asia”. Three main implications are apparent when the findings are compared and contrasted. First, established findings from OLS and Tobit regressions are driven by countries with above-median levels of homicide. Second, such above-median countries are largely associated with upper middle income countries and nations in “Europe and Central Asia”. Third, modelling the relationship between Facebook penetration and homicide at the conditional mean of homicide may be misleading unless it is contingent on initial levels of homicide and tailored differently across income levels and regions of the world.

Impulse Purchases, Gun Ownership and Homicides: Evidence from a Firearm Demand Shock

Do firearm purchase delay laws reduce aggregate homicide levels? Using quasi-experimental evidence from a 6-month countrywide gun demand shock starting in late 2012, we show that U.S. states with legislation preventing immediate handgun purchases experienced smaller increases in handgun sales. Our findings are hard to reconcile with entirely rational consumers, but suggest that gun buyers behave time-inconsistently. In a second step, we demonstrate that states with purchase delays also witnessed 3% lower homicide rates during the same period compared to states allowing instant handgun access. We report suggestive evidence that lower handgun sales primarily reduced impulsive assaults and domestic violence.

The Impact of Gangs on Community Life in Trinidad

Trinidad and Tobago has more than 100 criminal gangs, some of which engage in high levels of homicide and violence. Recent research has shown that gang members in Trinidad and Tobago are more likely than nongang members to be arrested for violent, property, and drug crimes. As gangs continue to proliferate throughout the Caribbean, there is a pressing need to understand the nature of these gangs and their impact on the communities in which they are entrenched. Using data from interviews with community members, police officials, and gang members, as well as ethnographic observations from 10 high crime, predominantly Black communities in the Port of Spain area, this article investigates the impact of gang violence and the role of gangs in these urban communities. Our findings reveal the dominant nature of certain gangs and their formidable role in controlling turf and using violence to retaliate and intimidate.

The Impact of Gangs on Community Life in Trinidad

Trinidad and Tobago has more than 100 criminal gangs, some of which engage in high levels of homicide and violence. Recent research has shown that gang members in Trinidad and Tobago are more likel...

Impulse Purchases, Gun Ownership and Homicides: Evidence from a Firearm Demand Shock

Do firearm purchase delay laws reduce aggregate homicide levels? Using quasi-experimental evidence from a 6-month countrywide gun demand shock starting in late 2012, we show that U.S. states with legislation preventing immediate handgun purchases experienced smaller increases in handgun sales. Our findings are hard to reconcile with entirely rational consumers, but suggest that gun buyers behave time-inconsistently. In a second step, we demonstrate that states with purchase delays also witnessed 3% lower homicide rates during the same period compared to states allowing instant handgun access. We report suggestive evidence that lower handgun sales primarily reduced impulsive assaults and domestic violence.

The impact of alcohol consumption on homicide: A time-series analysis of three Nordic countries

The article explores the statistical association between annual alcohol consumption and homicide mortality in Finland, Sweden and Norway from the early 19th century to 2013. The results show statistically significant impacts on overall and male homicide mortality in Finland and on male homicide mortality in Sweden. In Norway, we found no significant impacts. The results suggest that changes in the level of alcohol consumption have had a stronger impact on homicide rates in Finland, characterized by a heavier drinking culture, than in Norway or Sweden. The strength of the association between alcohol consumption and homicide levels seems also to vary over time and to be conditioned by economic and socio-political factors.

Challenges to the veracity and the international comparability of Russian homicide statistics

Homicide statistics are often seen as the most reliable and comparable indicator of violent deaths around the world. However, the analysis of Russian homicide statistics challenges this understanding and suggests that international comparisons of homicide levels can be hazardous. Drawing on an institutionalist perspective on crime statistics, official crime-based homicide statistics in Russia are approached as a social construct, a performance indicator and a tool of governance. The paper discusses several incentives to misrepresent official homicide data in contemporary Russia, including politicization of homicide statistics as a legacy of the Soviet’ era’s falsified crime statistics and the role of policing. Mainly, the paper identifies and describes the exact legal, statistical and country-specific substantive mechanisms that allow homicide statistics to be distorted in Russia. By considering legal mechanisms alone, the more accurate homicide rate may be at least 1.6 times higher than that reported in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Global Study on Homicide 2013.

The Dynamic Theory of Homicide: Adverse Social Conditions and Formal Social Control as Factors Explaining the Variations of the Homicide Rate in 145 Countries

Cross-national comparisons of crime across the world consistently show that homicide rates are higher in more impoverished countries. However, the role of formal social controls as mediators between social conditions and homicide has never been investigated across a large number of countries. To provide data on the efficiency of criminal justice systems across the world, we found 1,223 experts and had them fill out a questionnaire, providing data for 145 countries. Results from structural equations models (Amos) show that adverse social conditions (collective and individual poverty, inequality, and youthfulness of the population) downwardly affect the level of formal social control (application of the rule of law, low corruption rate, effectiveness of the criminal justice system, and satisfaction with the criminal justice agencies). Low levels of formal social control lead to higher levels of homicide. In other words, the effect of adverse social conditions on homicide is mediated by formal social control.

RACE, CRIME, AND THE CHANGING FORTUNES OF URBAN NEIGHBORHOODS, 1999–2013

AbstractFor over a century, scholars have traced higher levels of serious crime in minority compared to White neighborhoods to stark socioeconomic inequality. Yet, this research is largely cross-sectional and does not assess how ethnoracial differences in crime patterns evolve over time in response to shifting structural conditions. The new century witnessed substantial changes to the circumstances that undergird the ethnoracial divide in neighborhood crime as well as a national crime decline. How are the changing dynamics of urban inequality reinforcing or diminishing racial and ethnic disparities in neighborhood crime in the context of the “Great American Crime Decline”? We address this question by first identifying distinct paths of violent and property crime change between 1999 and 2013 for almost 2700 neighborhoods across eighteen cities. We then assess how initial and changing levels of disadvantage, housing instability, and demographics explain divergent crime trajectories within neighborhoods. We find that most neighborhoods have lower levels of homicide and burglary than fifteen years ago. However, homicide and burglary increased in some neighborhoods, and this trend is largely limited to Black neighborhoods. Disadvantage and the housing crisis are critical in accounting for the heightened risk of neighborhoods having increasing rather than decreasing crime trends. In contrast, immigration is linked with declining and stable trends in violent and property crime. Overall, results indicate a widening of the racial-spatial divide for the most marginalized communities in the United States.

Violence and Elias's Historical Sociology: The Case of Cambodia

Elias’ historical sociology method and his civilising process theory have rarely been applied to study long term trends in violence in non-western societies. Drawing from colonial archives, historical and contemporary secondary sources, official police data, crime victim surveys, and newspaper records we estimated the trends in homicide victims in Cambodia between 1900 and 2012, and, from a study of historical developments during the same period, examined whether Elias’ civilising process theory could explain the long term variations in violence in this country. His interrelated concepts of sociogenesis and psychogenesis, particularly state formation and monopolisation of force, interdependencies, sensitisation to violence, as well as dis-civilisation periods, adequately accounted for the successive ebbs and flows in the level of homicides in Cambodia.

Violence and Elias’s Historical Sociology: The Case of Cambodia

Elias’ historical sociology method and his civilising process theory have rarely been applied to study long term trends in violence in non-western societies. Drawing from colonial archives, historical and contemporary secondary sources, official police data, crime victim surveys, and newspaper records we estimated the trends in homicide victims in Cambodia between 1900 and 2012, and, from a study of historical developments during the same period, examined whether Elias’ civilising process theory could explain the long term variations in violence in this country. His interrelated concepts of sociogenesis and psychogenesis, particularly state formation and monopolisation of force, interdependencies, sensitisation to violence, as well as dis-civilisation periods, adequately accounted for the successive ebbs and flows in the level of homicides in Cambodia.