Levels Of Lethal Violence Research Articles

Animal behaviour: Lethal violence deep in the human lineage.

Researchers estimate that the incidence of human lethal violence at the time of the origin of our species was about six times higher than for the average mammal, but about as violent as expected, given our great-ape ancestry. See Letter p.233 The philosopher Thomas Hobbes said that people are inherently violent; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that people are usually peaceable. The reality presumably lies somewhere in between, but where? Here Jose Maria Gomez et al. present a phylogenetic analysis of intraspecies lethal violence in more than 1,000 mammalian species. They show that whereas lethal violence is almost unknown in some clades, such as bats and whales, it is a particular feature of primates. The level of lethal violence during human prehistory inferred from empirical observations is in line with the phylogenetic prediction, but during most historic periods was higher than the phylogenetic predictions. In modern times, cultural practices appear to have modulated the tendency towards violence that nature has given us.

From Armed Conflict to Political Violence: Mapping & Explaining Conflict Trends

Most contemporary lethal violence does not occur in conflict zones, the majority of states most affected by lethal violence are not at war, and the levels of lethal violence in many nonconflict settings are higher than in war zones. Much of this nonwar violence is organized, not random, and political in nature. A narrow focus on wars and formal armed conflicts thus obscures the high levels of everyday violence and insecurity around the world. This essay makes the case that adopting a broad understanding of political violence – including violence committed by the state and its agents, and nonphysical violence as the violation of basic rights – is essential to gain insight into the causes and consequences of, and to frame appropriate responses to, war and violence in the twenty-first century.

Pre-emptive or Arbitrary

This article analyzes the determinants of the variation in the levels of lethal violence against civilians during a civil war. It departs from the usual explanations of this variation, advancing two different logics to account for civilians' victimization: strategic violence directed to avoid rebellions by targeting would-be political entrepreneurs and violence as a consequence of the breakdown of the state's authority. It uses a new data set on violence against civilians during the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939.

Historical Origins of a Cross-National Puzzle

Cross-national studies of homicide are dominated by theories that focus on inequality and other structural factors as the source of variation in the level of lethal violence. As a nation with a comparatively high homicide rate in the presence of a strong welfare state, Finland represents a puzzle to this paradigm. The apparent weakness of the structural approach opens the door for cultural explanations. As the basic step in this path, the purpose of this research is to examine the historical origins of the Finnish problem with lethal violence. The authors find that the homicide patterns responsible for the exceptional status of Finland are of relatively recent origin. The authors conclude the study by proposing that specific features of the Finnish welfare state inadvertently sustain a subculture of alcohol-related lethal violence.

Simplistic Explanations are the Problem: Crime, Homicide, and the Zimring–Hawkins Proposition

In a popular statement in 1997, Zimring and Hawkins argued that crime was not an important determinant of levels of lethal violence in the USA. Zimring and Hawkins’ proposition is evaluated using multiple regression analyses of homicide using state‐, city‐, and county‐level data. The results indicate that there is a consistent crime effect on homicide rates at all three levels of analysis. More important than falsifying their hypothesis, we contend that overly simplistic notions about crime and justice distract the public and policy‐makers from the complex economic and structural conditions that contribute to high levels of homicide.

Traveling to Violence: The Case for a Mobility-Based Spatial Typology of Homicide

According to routine activities theory, crime is the result of an intersection between victims and offenders in both time and space. We introduce a spatial typology that identifies five combinations of victim and offender mobility to homicide incident locations: internal, predatory, intrusion, offense mobility, and total mobility types. The authors’ argue that the joint mobility pattern of the victim and offender is the mechanism underlying routine activities theory, and made explicit by the spatial typology. Using information on the 420 homicides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, between 1987 and 1995, we demonstrate that the majority of homicides involve at least some mobility on the part of victims and/or offenders. Our results also indicate that mobility to homicide incident locations is most associated with event characteristics such as motive, rather than with characteristics of the participants. With most offenders committing the homicide outside of their own neighborhood, levels of lethal violence in a community are influenced more by the interaction among nonlocal participants than by the violent actions of local residents.

COMMUNITIES, STREET GUNS AND HOMICIDE TRAJECTORIES IN CHICAGO, 1980–1995: MERGING METHODS FOR EXAMINING HOMICIDE TRENDS ACROSS SPACE AND TIME*

We merge Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) and a semi‐parametric, group‐based trajectory procedure (TRAJ) to classify communities in Chicago by violence trajectories across space. Total, street gun and other weapon homicide trajectories are identified across 831 census tracts between 1980 and 1995. We find evidence consistent with a weapon substitution effect in violent neighborhoods that are proximate to one another, a defensive diffusion effect of exclusively street gun‐specific homicide increases in neighborhoods bordering the most violent areas, and a spatial decay effect of temporal homicide trends in which the most violent areas are buffered from the least violent by places experiencing mid‐range levels of lethal violence over time. In merging these two methods of data analysis, we provide a more efficient way to describe both spatial and temporal trends and make significant advances in furthering applications of space‐time methodologies.

INEQUALITY, WELFARE STATE, AND HOMICIDE: FURTHER SUPPORT FOR THE INSTITUTIONAL ANOMIE THEORY*

Building directly on key insights from two prior tests of the institutional anomie theory, we predict that the positive effect of economic inequality on the level of lethal violence is limited to nations characterized by relatively weak collective institutions of social protection. This hypothesis is tested with two complementary cross‐national data sets. Both settings reveal a negative interaction effect between economic inequality and the strength of the welfare state. Nations that protect their citizens from the vicissitudes of market forces appear to be immune to the homicidal effects of economic inequality. This finding provides critical support for the institutional anomie theory.

Violence and the Politics of Law and Order

Crime Is Not the Problem makes a case for prioritizing violence reduction as a separate and distinct problem from crime more generally. Zimring and Hawkins persuasively argue that we live with distinctively high levels of lethal violence, within a high-- gun-use environment, where the most lethal forms of violence are concentrated in the least-advantaged inner-city communities. Their analysis suggests important questions that may indeed change the subject from crime to violence, as the authors hope. What kinds of violence are responsible for the greatest harm? How can we reduce the harms associated with violence in ways that will strengthen those communities most victimized by crime and violence? But the analysis of Zimring and Hawkins depends on a peculiar set of assertions about fear that shifts their policy focus away from these broad questions about violence and community. Instead of focusing on policies to reduce the most common forms of violence, Zimring and Hawkins choose a much more narrow and problematic focus on stranger homicides associated with armed robberies. And instead of a focus on violence reduction That will strengthen those communities most victimized by crime, Zimring and Hawkins favor targeting the punitive power of the state on inner-city neighborhoods and African American men. Making Crime Pay demonstrates that citizen fears have an observable and complex political history that complicates efforts to justify excessively punitive policy on the basis of public opinion without a rigorous and persuasive empirical analysis of the complex political dynamics only hinted at by Zimring and Hawkins. Understanding that history shows that the further weakening of inner-city communities associated with the kinds of extremely punitive approaches to violence advocated by Zimring and Hawkins is a foreseeable consequence of responding to only the most politically salient citizen fears. Further, the political forces responsible for amplifying the fears used to justify excessive punishment are also those seeking to dismantle the social welfare state, to reassert traditional family values in place of investing in the quality of life for actual families, and to consistently block gun control legislation. This more complete analysis of the politics central to debates about reducing violence could not be more important or timely. It demonstrates that a failure to account for the politics of law and order will likely block progressive reform efforts and lead to support for the existing menu of punitive (and ineffective) approaches, as seen even in an otherwise important book like Crime Is Not the Problem. Taken together, then, these two books offer a critically important foundation for constructing more effective alternatives to the excessively punitive approaches to crime control that currently prevail in the United States. I. Crime is Not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America According to Zimring and Hawkins, there are three reasons for changing the subject from crime to lethal violence. First, since lethal violence is what distinguishes the U.S. public safety problem from the problems experienced by our closest allies, reducing lethal violence first ought to distinguish our policy priorities. Second, since we know more about the proximate causes of lethal violence than we know about the root causes of crime or violence, a focus on lethal violence is the most prudent and promising way to invest our criminal justice resources. And finally, more punitive action is the democratic response to the citizen fears associated with lethal violence. Lethal Violence Is a Distinctively U.S. Problem When compared to other G7 countries, neither the crime nor the non-lethal violence rates in the United States are distinctively high. International comparison of aggregate national-level data, however, demonstrates that U.S. homicide rates are much higher than the rates of our closest allies. …

Crime is Part of the Problem: Contexts of Lethal Violence in Finland and the USA

According to Zimring & Hawkins, the exceptionally high level of homicide in the USA is unrelated to the nation's overall crime problem. In contrast to this statement, a critical review of their evidence suggests that criminal activity may explain a significant share of the excess levels of lethal violence in the USA. As a first step towards testing this hypothesis, we have created a uniform victim-level data file of information on the method and the situational context of homicide cases in Finland and the USA. In support of the hypothesis, we find that homicides that occur in the context of another crime are much more prevalent in the USA than in Finland. This difference accounts for 35% of the overall gap in the homicide rate between these two nations. Moreover, our research indicates that the effect of the criminal context cannot be reduced to the 'instrument effect', i.e. the fact that handguns are much more prevalent in the USA. In light of these findings, it would be premature, in terms both of theory and of public policy, to treat lethal violence as a problem entirely independent of other crime.

Impact of petroleum development on lethal violence

Rapid social change is hypothesized to be associated with social disorder. This study investipates the relationship between petroleum extraction activity in the Gulf of Mexico and lethal violence in Louisiana across allphases of development, controlling for degree and type of community involvement in the industry. The results show that rapid increases in petroleum activity are associated with increases in lethal violence. Rapid decreases in activity are disruptive and associated with high levels of lethal violence. The relationship between petroleum extraction and lethal violence differs by degree, but not type, of involvement in the industry. The evidence implies that petroleum industry activity is a force of production, but not direction, of lethal violence.