By The Violence Policy Center

For the past 25 years, the Violence Policy Center (VPC) has published its annual study When Men Murder Women. Released for Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October, the studies analyzed data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) and ranked the states by their rates of females killed by males in single victim/single offender incidents. In addition to ranking the states by this homicide victimization rate, the studies also offered information on the age and race of these female homicide victims, victim to offender relationship, circumstance, and weapon type. The most recent edition (released in 2022 and which analyzed 2020 SHR data), was the final report to be published by the VPC using SHR data. In January of 2021, the FBI changed the way crime data are collected and reported, which has impacted the reliability of subsequent data. That year, the FBI retired the SHR system and replaced it with the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). While NIBRS will eventually provide much more comprehensive and robust crime data compared to the SHR, transitioning law enforcement agencies to the new data collection and reporting system has been slow and burdensome. Indeed, many law enforcement agencies did not transition to NIBRS by January of 2021, which has had a significant impact on the reliability of 2021 crime data. After a careful analysis of that year’s crime data, the VPC has determined that current NIBRS data are not reliable for state-by-state gun violence research as required by When Men Murder Women. 

As a result, for the time being the VPC is unable to continue researching and publishing When Men Murder Women, although we hope that we will be able to resume publication of the report in the future. Though other national data sources contain information about homicides, these data sources do not contain the detailed information that was collected and publicly reported by the SHR (for example, sex of offender, type of firearm, relationship, and circumstance).b Over its 25-year publication history, the findings of the report have: led to the passage of laws that protect women and children from domestic violence, including legislation focused specifically on removing guns from the hands of domestic violence offenders; resulted in statewide public education campaigns; spurred the establishment of domestic homicide review boards; and, been repeatedly cited in the support of legislation and policies that protect women and children, including the federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).   

Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 2023. 21p.

By Terra Wiens

In 2001, the United States experienced a historic demographic change. For the first time, Hispanics became the largest minority group in the nation, exceeding the number of Black residents.2 With a population in 2020 of 62.1 million, Hispanics represent 18.7 percent of the total population of the United States.3 This study is intended to report on Hispanic homicide victimization and suicide in the United States, the role of firearms in homicide and suicide, and overall gun death figures. Recognizing this demographic landscape, the importance of documenting such victimization is clear. Indeed, studies have found that Hispanic individuals are more likely to die by firearm homicide compared to white, non-Hispanic individuals.  

Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 2023. 23p.

By Marty Langley and VPC Executive Director Josh Sugarmann.  

To educate the public and policymakers about the reality of black homicide victimization, each year the VPC releases Black Homicide Victimization in the United States (follow this link to download the study as a pdf). This annual study examines black homicide victimization at the state level utilizing unpublished Supplementary Homicide Report data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The study ranks the states by their rates of black homicide victimization and offers additional information for the 10 states with the highest black homicide victimization rates.

Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 2023. 18p.

By Yongjae (David) Nam, Travis Carter, Scott Wolfe, Allison Rojek, Spencer G. Lawson

The City of Saginaw (MI) was financially crippled by the lengthy national recession and steady
deterioration of the domestic automobile industry. Once home to five automobile production
plants, four of those sites now sit uninhabited. Several other major manufacturers have closed
plants or drastically reduced the number of employees. These losses dramatically increased
unemployment and devastated the city’s tax base. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
unemployment in Saginaw peaked in July 2009, standing at 23.5%. The 2018 American Community
Survey indicates that the unemployment rate for Saginaw was 14.9%. This rate is higher compared
to a national unemployment rate of 5.9% and a rate of 6.5% for Michigan. The 2010 Census reports
that Saginaw’s median household income was $29,809 and per capita income was a mere $16,153,
both nearly half the state of Michigan and U.S. averages. About 33.6% of the total population lives
below the poverty line, more than double the state of Michigan average (14.2%) and nearly triple
the U.S. average (12.3%). Census reports show the population of Saginaw decreased by nearly
13,000 people (20.7%) from 2000 to 2018 (from 61,799 to 48,997 people). Saginaw’s population
decline, deteriorating property values, shrinking income tax collections, and drastically reduced
state revenue sharing continue to severely impact the city’s ability to provide basic public services,
creating quality of life issues and high violent crime rates. Despite a high incidence of crime, poor
economic conditions forced the city to make the inevitable decision to reduce the size of its police
department from 160 police officers in 1997 to its current level of 54 officers (66.3% decrease).
From 2016 to 2018, 42 homicides were committed in Saginaw. Most were committed with a
firearm, and more than three-fourths were drug and/or gang-related. Additionally, there were
another 138 victims of non-fatal shootings. In 2018, Saginaw’s violent crime rate per 100,000
residents (1,621) was more than four times the national average (381) and more than three times
Michigan’s average (449). In addition, Saginaw’s homicide rate (22.8) was over four times both the
national average (5.0) and Michigan’s average (5.5). Moreover, data reveal that Saginaw's overall
crime rates are 64% higher than Michigan’s average and are 34% higher than the nation's average.
The Saginaw Violent Gang and Gun Crime Reduction Program (hereafter, Saginaw PSN) was
aimed at addressing these problems. Table 1 provides an overview of the goals, objectives, and
outcomes of the Saginaw PSN program

East Lansing, MI: School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University., 2022. 53p.

By Brendan O'Flaherty and Rajiv Sethi

Crime and policing activities routinely involve interactions between strangers and require the interacting parties to make highly consequential decisions under time pressure. Under such conditions, stereotypes based on visual or other cues can influence behavior. This review considers the role of stereotypes in shaping the manner in which such interactions proceed and the likelihood with which they occur in the first place. Our focus is primarily on robbery, murder, police stops and searches, and the use of deadly force, but the arguments apply more generally. We also consider how stereotypes can become entrenched through the behavioral changes they induce, given large differences across offenses in rate of arrest and prison admission.

Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 7, Page 383 - 401

By Philip J. Cook and Ashley Mancik

In 1962, the FBI reported a national homicide clearance rate of 93%. That rate dropped 29 points by 1994. This Great Decline has been studied and accepted as a real phenomenon but remains mysterious, as does the period of relative stability that followed. The decline was shared across regions and all city sizes but differed greatly among categories defined by victim race and weapon type. Gun homicides with Black victims accounted for most of the decline. We review the evidence on several possible explanations for the national decline, including those pertaining to case mix, investigation resources, and citizen cooperation. Our preferred explanation includes an upward trend in the standard for arrest, with strong evidence that although clearance-by-arrest rates declined, the likelihood of conviction and prison sentence actually increased. That result has obvious implications for the history of policing practice and for the validity of the usual clearance rate as a police performance measure.

Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 7, Page 59 - 83

By Paul G. Cassell

Recently, major cities across the country have suffered dramatic spikes in homicides. These sudden spikes are remarkably large and widespread. At this rate, 2020 will easily be the deadliest year in America for gun-related homicides since at least 1999, while most other major crime categories are trending stable or slightly downward.

This article attempts to explain why so many cities have seen extraordinary increases in murder during the summer of 2020. A close analysis of the emerging crime patterns suggests that American cities may be witnessing significant declines in some forms of policing, which in turn are producing the homicide spikes. Crime rates are increasing only for a few specific categories—namely homicides and shootings. These crime categories are particularly responsive to reductions in proactive policing. The data also pinpoint the timing of the spikes to late May 2020, which corresponds with the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis and subsequent antipolice protests—protests that likely led to declines in law enforcement.

The thesis of this article is that the recent spikes in homicides have been caused by a “Minneapolis Effect,” similar to the earlier “Ferguson Effect.” Specifically, law enforcement agencies have been forced to divert resources from normal policing to patrolling demonstrations. And even as the anti-police protests have abated, police officers have scaled back on proactive or officer-initiated law enforcement, such as street stops and other forms of policing designed to prevent firearm crimes. If this thesis is correct, it is reasonable to estimate that, as a result of de-policing during June and July 2020, approximately 710 additional victims were murdered and more than 2,800 victims were shot. Of course, this estimate relies on various assumptions, and further research on the issues surrounding the homicide spikes should be an urgent priority.

If this article’s thesis about a Minneapolis Effect is correct, an important implication is that policy makers in major cities should proceed cautiously before taking steps to “defund” the police in ways that might reduce the proactive policing that is important in preventing gun violence.\

Federal Sentencing Reporter (2020) 33 (1-2): 83–127.

By Katherine A. Fowler, Rachel A. Leavitt, Carter J. Betz, Keming Yuan & Linda L. Dahlberg

Multi-victim homicides are a persistent public health problem confronting the United States. Previous research shows that homicide rates in the U.S. are approximately seven times higher than those of other high-income countries, driven by firearm homicide rates that are 25 times higher; 31% of public mass shootings in the world also occur in the U.S.. The purpose of this analysis is to examine the characteristics of mass, multiple, and single homicides to help identify prevention points that may lead to a reduction in different types of homicides.

We used all available years (2003–2017) and U.S. states/jurisdictions (35 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico) included in CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS), a public health surveillance system which combines death certificate, coroner/medical examiner, and law enforcement reports into victim- and incident-level data on violent deaths. NVDRS includes up to 600 standard variables per incident; further information on types of mental illness among suspected perpetrators and incident resolution was qualitatively coded from case narratives. Data regarding number of persons nonfatally shot within incidents were cross-validated when possible with several other resources, including government reports and the Gun Violence Archive. Mass homicides (4+ victims), multiple homicides (2-3 victims) and single homicides were analyzed to assess group differences using Chi-square tests with Bonferroni-corrected post-hoc comparisons.

Results: Mass homicides more often had female, child, and non-Hispanic white victims than other homicide types. Compared with victims of other homicide types, victims of mass homicides were more often killed by strangers or someone else they did not know well, or by family members. More than a third were related to intimate partner violence. Approximately one-third of mass homicide perpetrators had suicidal thoughts/behaviors noted in the time leading up to the incident. Multi-victim homicides were more often perpetrated with semi-automatic firearms than single homicides. When accounting for non-fatally shot victims, over 4 times as many incidents could have resulted in mass homicide.

Conclusions: These findings underscore the important interconnections among multiple forms of violence. Primary prevention strategies addressing shared risk and protective factors are key to reducing these incidents.

Injury Epidemiology (2021) 8:49

By Kylie Murdock and Jim Kessler

Takeaways: The murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Donald Trump has exceeded the murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Joe Biden in every year from 2000 to 2020. Over this 21-year span, this Red State murder gap has steadily widened from a low of 9% more per capita red state murders in 2003 and 2004 to 44% more per capita red state murders in 2019, before settling back to 43% in 2020. Altogether, the per capita Red State murder rate was 23% higher than the Blue State murder rate when all 21 years were combined. If Blue State murder rates were as high as Red State murder rates, Biden-voting states would have sued over 45,000 more murders between 2000 and 2020. Even when murders in the largest cities in red states are removed, overall murder rates in Trump-voting states were 12% higher than Biden-voting states across this 21-year period and were higher in 18 of the 21 years observed.

Washington, DC: Third Way, 2023. 10p

By Joel Wallman, Richard Rosenfeld, Randolph Roth

The twenty-five-year epidemic of opioid misuse in the United States has taken at least 750,000 lives through overdose. We undertook to learn whether this toll might have been accompanied by an increase in violence resulting from growth in the illicit opioid market, which, like most illicit drug markets, includes a risk of violence due to conflicts among sellers and between sellers and buyers. We found that increases in activity in this market were associated with—and arguably caused—increased levels of homicide. Using county opioid overdose rates as a measure of levels of transactions in the illicit market, we looked for an association between those rates and county homicide rates between 1999 and 2015. …Despite this growth in overdose rates during the period, homicide rates declined for both groups and in both Appalachian and non-Appalachian counties. … The finding of another harm wrought by the opioid epidemic provides another reason to pursue vigorous public-health efforts, with a strong emphasis on treatment, to stem the epidemic.   

New York:  The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, 2023. 20p.

By Rachel Delafave

This Article empirically illustrates that red flag laws—laws which permit removal of firearms from a person who presents a risk to themselves or others—contribute to a statistically significant decrease in suicide rates, but do not influence homicide rates. I exploit state-level variation across time in the existence of red flag laws between 1990 and 2018 and find that the existence of a risk-based law reduces firearm-related suicides by 6.4% and overall suicides by 3.7%, with no substitution to non-firearm suicides. Red flag laws are not associated with a statistically significant change in homicides rates. Policymakers should consider red flag laws an effective tool to prevent firearm-related suicide, one of the most prevalent preventable causes of death in the United States. In light of this evidence, red flag laws should be more politically successful in the current partisan environment than other forms of gun control legislation because of their targeted nature and potential to balance the interests of gun owners against the negative externalities of gun violence.

52 Loy. U. Chi. L. J. 867 (2021)

By Anu Koskivirta

"This work explores the quantitative and qualitative development of homicide in eastern Finland in the second half of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth. The area studied comprised northern Savo and northern Karelia in eastern Finland. At that time, these were completely agricultural regions on the periphery of the kingdom of Sweden. Indeed the majority of the population still got their living from burn-beating agriculture. The analysis of homicide there reveals characteristics that were exceptional by Western European standards: the large proportion of premeditated homicides (murders) and those within the family is more reminiscent of modern cities in the West than of a pre-modern rural society. However, there also existed some archaic forms of Western crime there. Most of the homicides within the family were killings of brothers or brothers-in law, connected with the family structure (the extended family) that prevailed in the region. This study uses case analysis to explore the causes for the increase in both familial homicide and murder in the area. One of the explanatory factors that is dealt with is the interaction between the faltering penal practice that then existed and the increase in certain types of homicide.

Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society / SKS, 2003. 217p.

By Roger Lane.

This book is a history of criminal homicide, or murder, in America. Murder is one of the two most common forms of intentional homicide, defined simply as the killing of one human being by another; the other is war. The third, capital punishment, is linked to both; death may be decreed either for failing to kill when a society demands it or for killing when a society forbids it. All three forms are linked in other, sometimes surprising ways. But while war has been a main—perhaps the main— subject of traditional history, historians have only newly turned their attention to criminal homicide.

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University, 1997. 399p.