JUST ANOTHER CRIME? Examining Disparity in Homicide Sentencing

Analyses of disparity in sentencing most frequently use general felony court samples. Because of this, little is known about the specific patterns of sentencing disparity among defendants convicted of criminal homicide. Using a sample of defendants adjudicated guilty of homicide in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, over the period 1995–2000, this research seeks to describe and explain patterns of sentencing with reference to legal and extralegal defendant and case characteristics. The findings indicate that it is primarily legally relevant variables that influence sentencing outcomes in homicide cases; however, some evidence is found for case processing effects as well as for the operation of criminal stereotypes in the generation of sentence disparities. Implications of these findings for research designs and theory development are discussed.     

Exploring the Social Construction of Crime by Neighborhood: News Coverage of Crime in Boston

ABSTRACT

Information disseminated by the news shapes the way that the public perceives criminal events, often providing a distorted view of crime. Previous research has largely overlooked neighborhoods in discussions of how the news portrays crime. This study examines the ways that the news media report the neighborhoods in which homicides, robberies, and assaults are committed. Multiple theoretical perspectives rooted in the law of opposites and racial typification provide differing explanations for the reporting of crime. Using Boston as a test site, this study employs a content analysis of The Boston Globe crime articles to identify the neighborhoods in which instances of homicide, robbery, and assault receive coverage. A comparison with official crime data from the Boston Police Department suggests differences in neighborhood reporting trends for robbery and assault but not for homicide. Specifically, the news media tend to disproportionately report more robberies and assaults in neighborhoods with lower levels of neighborhood disadvantage. Implications for the social construction of crime and neighborhoods as well as criminal justice response for disadvantaged neighborhoods are discussed.     

Neighborhood co-offending networks,structural embeddedness,and violent crime in Chicago

Neighborhood disparities in crime are a persistent feature of U.S. cities. Scholars have documented that both local structural conditions and characteristics of spatially proximate communities influence neighborhood crime rates. Previous studies on neighborhood inequality in crime, however, are limited by their focus on identifying average spillover effects between pairs of spatially contiguous neighborhoods, and have neglected to consider how the broader social organization of the city influences local outcomes. This study examines the role of neighborhood-level criminal networks in shaping the distribution of crime throughout cities. Employing arrest records and survey data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, we construct a neighborhood-level co-offending network for Chicago for 2001. We use this network to investigate how a focal neighborhood’s homicide rate is influenced by its structural embeddedness within the larger inter-neighborhood co-offending network. Results indicate that a neighborhood’s embeddedness increases the local homicide rate, even after controlling for the neighborhood’s internal propensity toward crime and accounting for unobserved spatial processes.     

The Span of Collective Efficacy: Extending Social Disorganization Theory to Partner Violence

This research applies the social disorganization perspective on the neighborhood‐level determinants of crime to partner violence. The analysis brings data from the 1990 Decennial Census together with data from the 1994–1995 Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods Community Survey, the 1994–1995 Chicago homicide data, and data from the 1995–1997 Chicago Health and Social Life Survey. The findings of this study indicate that collective efficacy—neighborhood cohesion and informal social control capacity—is negatively associated with both intimate homicide rates and nonlethal partner violence. Collective efficacy exerts a more powerful regulatory effect on nonlethal violence in neighborhoods where tolerance of intimate violence is low. Collective efficacy also increases the likelihood that women will disclose conflict in their relationships to various potential sources of support.     

Homicide Arrest Clearances: A Review of the Literature

This is a review of the research literature on homicide arrest clearances or homicides for which no offender is arrested. The article describes the decline in the percent of homicides resulting in arrests and charges from over 90 pecent in 1960 to 61 percent in 2006. Research is reviewed on the reasons for the lack of public attention and concern and the low homicide clearance rates in the USA in comparison with other countries. Research on the extent to which homicides are uncleared because they involve low-status persons and those economically disadvantaged is compared with research suggesting that it is the characteristics of the homicide event that make clearance difficult. It seems that such factors as age, gender, and race/ethnicity play a role in whether the homicide is cleared by arrest. Characteristics of homicides that increase clearances include occurrence in private residences, domestic homicides, and homicide with weapons other than firearms. Research on what police can do to increase clearances is examined. Suggestions on how to increase access to information on how homicide investigations are carried out are also discussed.     

The influence of southern culture on race‐specific homicide rates

The influence of cultural and structural variables on race‐specific homicide rates in the political subunits of Louisiana is analyzed with the purpose of further explication of the independent role these factors play as determinants of lethal violence. It is argued that the southern culture of violence hypothesis is more appropriately tested through separate examination of white, black, and total rates of homicide. The results of this study indicate clear differences in the effects of cultural and structural factors on these different rates. One of the more interesting findings is the inverse relationship between black homicide rate and percent nonwhite, which casts some doubt on sociological interpretations of the relatively higher rates of black violence as resulting from racial oppression alone. Implications are discussed.     

Beyond Collective Supervision: Informal Social Control,Prosocial Investment,and Juvenile Offending in Urban Neighborhoods

This article examines prosocial investment and supervision of youth as separate indicators of informal social control. Data from 599 survey respondents in 90 Indianapolis, IN, block groups indicate that, at the neighborhood level, the relationship between these two variables and delinquency during early and middle adolescence varies by severity of offense. Specifically, negative binomial models reveal an inverse relationship between supervision and both status offenses and misdemeanors, but the relationship with misdemeanors is stronger in areas with higher levels of prosocial investment. In contrast, prosocial investment has an inverse association with felony charges. Overall, these results call for future quantitative scholarship that contextualizes neighborhood‐level supervision and that is attentive to neighborhood support and empowerment assets in models of urban adolescent delinquency.     

CONCENTRATED POVERTY, RACE, AND HOMICIDE

Research on the link between levels of poverty and homicide in urban areas has persistently reported the existence of a relationship for whites but not for blacks. This is despite the fact that most analysts expect that the higher levels of urban black homicide are due in part to the higher levels of urban black poverty. The present research introduces a more meaningful, spatially based measure of concentrated poverty and argues that the effect of concentrated poverty on homicide rates should be the same for both racial groups. The hypotheses are tested with race-disaggregated data for a sample of central cities circa 1990. The results suggest that, when poverty is measured as a linear spatially based phenomenon, in is a more important determinat of race-specific homicide rates than overall city levels of disadvantage and that the concentration of poverty increases both black and white homicide rather equally.     

Small Arms Mortality: Access to Firearms and Lethal Violence

There is an intuitive appeal to the notion that the more lethal the weaponry the more lethal the violence. We explore one aspect of lethal weaponry, firearm accessibility. Using nation-level (N = 168) data from the Small Arms Survey and the World Health Organization's measures of mortality we examine whether rates of small arm ownership have a positive effect on rates of homicide and suicide. Contrary to the opportunity model, the accessibility of firearms does not produce more homicide or suicide when other known factors are controlled for. Consistent with past research, structural factors, like deprivation, explain a large portion of the cross-national variation in homicide and suicide, with some interesting differences between the two models. We discuss explanations for our findings and suggest that firearm accessibility may make some structural positions more lethal.     

CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC SOURCES OF HOMICIDE IN THE UNITED STATES

Are high rates of homicide better explained by cultural or economic factors? Some research suggests that a regional culture of violence underlies high rates of homicide, whereas other research suggests that poverty or economic inequality increases the likelihood of homicide. A major limitation of this body of research has been the failure of researchers to include an indicator of cultural support for violence that is analytically separate from measures of southern region. In this article, a 12-item Legitimate Violence Index (LVX) is introduced that measures cultural support for violence. Using the 50 states as the units of analysis, hypotheses derived from cultural and economic theories of homicide are investigated using multiple regression. Several additional variables are included in the analysis to control for spurious relationships. The results show that legitimate violence, poverty, and economic inequality are significantly associated with state-to-state differences in the incidence of homicide.     

A RETROSPECTIVE INVESTIGATION OF GENDER INEQUALITY AND FEMALE HOMICIDE VICTIMIZATION

ABSTRACT

For the period 1981 to 1993 women represented 21 to 26 percent of homicide victims in the United States annually (Smith and Kuchta 1993 Smith , M. Dwayne and Ellen S. Kuchta . 1993 . “Trends in Violent Crime Against Women, 1973–89.” Social Science Quarterly 74 : 28 – 45 . [CSA]  [Google Scholar]). During this same time period sex-specific homicide rates have been among the forms of disaggregation researchers have used to test the utility of traditional correlates of homicide in predicting rates across various population subgroups and units of analysis. Based upon earlier research of the effects of gender inequality upon rates of lethal violence against women, and by applying a feminist theoretical perspective, it is hypothesized that the effect of general social structural characteristics of cities upon women's risk of homicide is mediated by levels of gender inequality. Specifically, this study examines the effects of gender, socioeconomic, legislative, political and extra-legal inequality upon female homicide victimization among 217 U.S. central cities for the period of 1989–1991. Using structural equation modeling results indicate that, among traditional social structural factors, economic deprivation, population size, divorce rate, and the sex ratio all have significant, positive effects on female homicide rates. However, in subsequent models testing the mediating effects of measures of gender inequality on the association between social structural variables and female homicide rates the divorce rate is the only social structural factor that continues to have a significant, positive effect upon homicide rates. Among the four measures of gender inequality, and in support of an ameliorative feminist argument, socioeconomic inequality has a significant, positive influence on rates of female homicide victimizaton. There is also a significant, negative effect of gender legislative inequality upon these rates. That is, the more laws or acts favorable to women, the lower their rates of homicide victimization. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Characteristics of homicidal and violent juveniles

Homicidal youth have received considerable attention in the mass media and social science literature in recent years. Due to several methodological obstacles, relatively little is known about the premorbid and offense characteristics of this population. The current investigation compared 30 juvenile males charged with murder with a group of 62 juvenile males charged with other violent felony offenses. Comparisons were made across 33 demographic, historical, clinical, offense, and forensic characteristics. Both groups were similar in their demographic characterishics and family backgrounds. Juvenile homicide defendants, however, were less likely than the comparison group to have a current Axis I psychiatric diagnosis. Homicide defendants were also more likely to have acted alone and to have committed their alleged crime in a domestic setting. Implications of the results are discussed as are suggestions for future research.     

Reconsidering the Unusual Suspect: Immigration and the 1990s Crime Decline

The United States experienced a dramatic decline in crime during the 1990s. A number of explanations for this decline have been put forth, including demographic shifts, economic trends, stricter gun control laws, and changes in drug markets. A widely reported explanation is that the surge of immigration during the 1990s was the main cause for that decade's crime decline. Although the claim has received considerable attention, it has yet to be tested empirically using national‐level data. In order to fully test the immigration‐1990s crime decline relationship, we use national‐level homicide and Census data from 1990 to 2000. Our results reveal four key findings: (1) crime declined for nearly all groups during the 1990s; (2) non‐Latino blacks contributed the most to the crime decline, by a wide margin; (3) both overall and black homicide declined the least in areas with the highest levels of immigration; and (4) we find no evidence that immigration indirectly lowered non‐immigrant crime rates by revitalizing communities. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings.     

America's Foreign Wars and the Legitimation of Domestic Violence

Do wars between nations encourage violence on the home front by legitimating violence? A time series regression analysis of U. S. homicide trends from 1947 to 1978 shows that neither war years nor postwar years show significantly higher homicide levels than other years, other things being equal. In the U. S., those postwar years which showed higher violence rates, after the Vietnam War, had higher violence levels only because of higher proportions of the population in the high-violence ages, lower criminal justice system effectiveness in crime control, and other differences which characterized those years. Survey research findings support the conclusion that violent actions of government agents like soldiers and police officers, on the one hand, and violent actions by private citizens, on the other hand, lie in distinct and separate cognitive categories for most Americans. Consequently there is little reason to expect that governmental violence serves to legitimate, or exerts a modelling influence on, violent behavior of private individuals in the U. S. Official killing by the state makes killing respectable. It not merely dulls the sensibilities of people to cruelty and inhumanity but actually stimulates cruelty.     

Race,Mortgage Lending and Loan Rejections in a U.S. City

Abstract

The negative effect of neighborhood racial composition on mortgage lending has been documented in recent years in several cities, even after controlling for income, condition of housing and related neighborhood and housing characteristics. Lending industry officials maintain that the racial distribution of mortgage lending is the unintended consequence of profit-based lending activities. In contrast, community activists and civil rights groups claim that racial discrimination is the motivating force underlying mortgage lending practices. Data from the 1991 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) for the Kansas City metropolitan area are used to measure trends in mortgage lending and loan rejection ratios by local lenders. This study finds that Kansas City lenders reject minority applicants at higher rates than whites and reject high-income minorities as often as low-income whites. More importantly, results show that high-income African Americans are rejected at a higher rate than low-income whites, indicating that race of loan applicants plays a crucial role in the decision to approve a mortgage loan, even after controlling for income and other factors. Findings from Kansas City and other cities indicate that the low percentage of minority loan applications from some lenders suggests not only meager marketing, but possible pre-screening of minority applicants where they are discouraged from completing an application form.     

Stability and Change in Female and Male Violence across Rural and Urban Counties, 1981–2006

Two durable criminological patterns have been higher violence rates in urban compared to rural areas and by males compared to females. To derive and evaluate hypotheses related to correspondence across place and sex groups in changes in violence trends, we draw on a spatial‐inequality perspective that attends to the geographic distribution of inequalities at the subnational scale, as well as to recent extensions of social‐disorganization theory to variation in rural and female violence rates. Our study's focus is on systematically delineating the extent and timing of change in female and male violence trends, the rural‐urban violence gap, and the gender gap. We apply epidemiological joinpoint techniques to Uniform Crime Reports arrest data from completely rural to highly urbanized settings for several violent offenses (homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, and misdemeanor assault) between 1981 and 2006. Female and male violence rates in rural to urban settings generally followed the same course over 25 years. Analyses generally indicated parallel violence trends of rural and urban females and males and only subtle changes in the rural‐urban and gender gaps in serious violence. Serious violence became somewhat less concentrated in urban centers owing to more sizable urban rate declines after the mid‐1990s. In all contexts, the gender gap in assault arrests narrowed, but the female share of serious violence (homicide, robbery) remained much the same; this result suggests change in the social control of minor violence by females across rural and urban settings.     

The social sources of homicide in different types of societies

A consistent finding to emerge from cross-national studies of crime is a positive relationship between the degree of social inequality and levels of homicide. This finding contrasts with the results of anthropological case studies that reveal high rates of homicide in some extremely egalitarian societies. Viewed together, these two sets of findings raise the question of whether the patterns observed in cross-national research on homicide are generalizable to the typically small, nonindustrial simple societies studied by anthropologists, but generally neglected by comparative sociologists. We address this issue in an analysis of homicide for a sample of small, nonindustrial societies. Our findings indicate that the degree of inequality in such societies is not significantly associated with the level of homicide. By contrast, levels of homicide do vary systematically with the complexity of the political and military organization of such societies. These results suggest that some of the most important findings of cross-national research in sociology are not readily generalizable across different types of societies.This is a revised version of a paper presented at the meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Chicago, 1988.     

Collective Efficacy and Crime in Los Angeles Neighborhoods: Implications for the Latino Paradox*

We use data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Study (LAFANS) to examine the degree to which social ties and collective efficacy influence neighborhood levels of crime, net of neighborhood structural characteristics. Results indicate that residential instability and collective efficacy were each associated with lower log odds of robbery victimization, while social ties had a positive effect on robbery victimization. Further, collective efficacy mediated 77 percent of the association between concentrated disadvantage and robbery victimization, while social ties had no mediating effect. The mediation effect for concentrated disadvantage, however, was substantially weaker in the Latino neighborhoods (where it was 52%) than in the non‐Latino neighborhoods (where it was 82%), suggesting that a “Latino paradox” may be present in which crime rates in Latino neighborhoods appear to have less to do with local levels of collective efficacy than in non‐Latino neighborhoods. Implications for future research bearing on both the Latino paradox and the systemic model of social control are discussed.     

Community Informant Explanations for Unusual Neighborhood Rates of Child Maltreatment Reports

This study explored perceptions of community informants on socioenvironmental factors that explain why rates of child maltreatment reporting are different in neighborhoods with similar population characteristics. This study used data from the SoCal Neighborhoods and Child Welfare study, a multiphase, mixed-methods study of neighborhoods in Los Angeles and San Diego counties. Semistructured qualitative interviews with key informants (N = 28) in 22 census tracts explored factors that account for differences in maltreatment rates among sociodemographically similar neighborhoods. Thematic content analysis revealed three themes regarding neighborhood contributors to maltreatment behaviors and reporting: (a) community norms and values, (b) community resources and providers, and (c) housing dynamics and built environment. Findings indicate complexity in forces that affect maltreatment behavior and reporting. Adding to research on neighborhood social dynamics and child maltreatment, findings suggest that composite indicators of maltreatment within neighborhoods are affected by maltreatment behaviors and the definition, recognition, and reporting of maltreatment.     

Measuring the influence of built neighborhood environments on walking in older adults

There is a need for greater understanding of how perceptions and objective measures of the physical environment influence physical activity among seniors. The goal of this study was to examine the degree of association between perceived and objective characteristics of the neighborhood environment and the relation of each type of measurement to neighborhood walking in older adults. Data on self-reported frequency of walking in the neighborhood and perceived measures of neighborhood environment from 105 older adults were linked to objective measures assessed by geographic information systems and an audit instrument. Perceived and objective measurements of the built environment exhibited a low degree of agreement (kappas: <.20). After adjustment for education, age, and gender, presence of a mall was positively associated with neighborhood walking in both the objective and perceived models.