By Elenice De Souza Oliveira , Braulio Figueiredo Alves da Silva , Flavio Luiz Sapori & Gabriela Gomes Cardoso

Many studies demonstrate that homicides are heavily concentrated in impoverished neighborhoods, but not all socially disadvantaged neighborhoods are hotbeds of violence. Conducted in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, this study hypothesizes that the association between high rates of homicide and impoverished areas is influenced by the emergence of a specific type of street drug-dealing common to favelas (slums). The study applies econometric techniques to police data on homicides and drug arrests from 2008 to 2011, as well as 2010 Census data, to test its hypothesis. The findings provide insight into the development of crime prevention policies in areas of high social vulnerability.

International Journal of Law and Public Administration Vol. 3, No. 2; December 2020

By Lizabeth Remrey

In 2023, there were an estimated 19,800 homicide victimizations in the United States, a rate of 5.9 homicides per 100,000 persons (figure 1). This was lower than the estimated 22,240 victimizations (6.7 per 100,000) in 2022 but higher than the 16,670 victimizations (5.0 per 100,000) in 2019. (See appendix table 1 for state estimates.) Homicide refers to the offenses of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter and is defined as “the willful (nonnegligent) killing of one human being by another.”1 Findings in this report are based on the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ and FBI’s National IncidentBased Reporting System (NIBRS) Estimation Program and the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR).

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics , 2025. 23p.

By Allison Lind , Ryan P. Larson , Susan M. Mason , Christopher Uggen

There is abundant research showing the disproportionate impacts of violence on health in disadvantaged neighborhoods, making an understanding of recent violent crime trends essential for promoting health equity. Carjackings have been of particular interest in the media, although little research has been undertaken on this violent crime. We use interrupted time series models to examine the impact of the police killing of George Floyd on the spatiotemporal patterns of carjacking in Minneapolis in relation to neighborhood disadvantage. To provide grounding, we compare our results to the well-studied patterns of homicides. Results indicate that carjackings both increased and dispersed spatially after the murder of George Floyd and subsequent social unrest, more so than homicides. Socially disadvantaged neighborhoods experienced the greatest absolute increase while more advantaged neighborhoods saw a greater relative increase. The challenge ahead is to identify policy responses that will effectively curb such violence without resorting to harsh and inequitable policing and sentencing practices.

By Hannah Miles Samantha Bricknell

The National Homicide Monitoring Program is Australia’s only national data collection on homicide incidents, victims and offenders. This report describes 262 homicide incidents recorded by Australian state and territory police between 1 July 2023 and 30 June 2024. During this 12-month period there were 277 victims of homicide and 278 identified offenders

Statistical Report no. 52.

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2025. 77p.

By David Blake Johnson and Jason Szkola

Existing research examining gun violence often faces criticism because of complications related to gun laws and gun culture. In this manuscript, we argue that these elements change the overall quality of gun owners and this quality has a significant effect on homicide. To demonstrate this, we introduce a measure of gun owner quality independent of local law enforcement and possibly indicative of illegal or dubious transfer of firearms: the time to crime of "exported" crime guns. We find that decreases in the time to crime of exported crime guns increase homicides and gun homicides while also having no effect on non-gun homicides and only a small effect on suicide. We then show how the time to crime of exported crime gun changes as a function of gun culture and gun laws.

Unpublished paper, 2024, 25p.

By Samantha Bricknell, Hannah Miles

This study uses 34 years of data from the National Homicide Monitoring Program to describe the prevalence and characteristics of homicide of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, finding Indigenous women experienced a homicide victimisation rate up to seven times the national average.

These data complement the findings from the currently small number of studies about the homicide of Indigenous women and contribute long-term data with which to measure national targets to reduce rates of victimisation and eliminate the circumstances that initiate lethal violence.

Key findings

• Between 1 July 1989 and 30 June 2023, 476 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women were victims of homicide.

• 96% of the 473 homicide incidents involving an Indigenous woman were cleared by police.

• 97% of victims from cleared incidents were killed by someone they knew.

• 72% of Indigenous women were killed by a current or former male intimate partner, with smaller proportions killed by another family member or a friend or acquaintance (13% each).

• 92% percent of the male intimate partner offenders were also Indigenous.

• The homicide of Indigenous women mostly occurred in a private residence, although over a third took place in a community setting, specifically an open area or streetscape. This pattern differs from homicide generally, which less commonly occur in public locations.

• Around half of the homicides were immediately preceded by some form of domestic conflict or enmity.

Statistical Bulletin 46 Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2024. 17p.

By: D J Williams, Michael Arntfield, Kaleigh Schaal, Jolene Vincent

Over the past several years, an online community of self‐described “incels,” referring to involuntary celibates, has emerged and gained increased public attention. Central to the guiding incel ideology and master narrative are violent misogynistic beliefs and an attitude of entitlement, based on male gender and social positioning, with respect to obtaining desired and often illusory sexual experiences. While violence and hate speech within the incel community are both common, there exists a notable subset of incels who have been willing to act on those violent beliefs through the commission of acts of multiple murder. This study explores the demographic, cognitive, and other characteristics of seven self‐identified incels who have attempted and/or successfully completed homicide. The findings suggest that although self‐perceptions tend to reflect either grandiosity or self‐deprecation, homicidal incels share similar demographic characteristics and dense common clusters of neutralization techniques, cognitive distortions, and criminal thinking errors.

Behav Sci Law. 2021;1–16.

By: Ecaterina Balica

Objective. The present paper analyses the relation between the number of blows, location of wounds and the length between homicide and suicide in homicide-suicide (HS) cases committed in Romania in the timeframe 2002-2013. At the same time, the study presents the correlation between three types of HS (intimate partner homicide-suicide (IPH-S), filicide- suicides (FS), familicides-suicides (Fam-S) and the above mentioned variables.

Method. The data regarding the number of blows, location of wounds and length between homicide and suicide were extracted from the Homicide-suicides in Romania 2002-2013 database (N=132). The database includes information regarding all HS committed in Romania and the data were collected from the recordings of the Criminal Investigations Services, from criminal files in prosecutors’ custody and from articles published in online newspapers. The data analysis was done by using SPSS 22.0.

Results. More than a half of the suicides occurred immediately after the aggressor committed the homicide (N=71; 53.8%). In approximately two thirds of the cases (N=56; 57.1%), the death of the victim resulted from a great number of blows. Many aggressors preferred to hit their victims in the head area (21.5%) or neck area (22.3%) only. The most common suicide method recorded in HS cases was by hanging (34.8%).

Conclusions. The prevention of the HS seems to be a difficult task after the aggressor initiated the first act of aggression (the homicide). Therefore, prevention and intervention have to be focused on the initial phases of the acts of violence that precede HS.

Rom J Leg Med [26] 308-313 [2018]

By: David B. Johnson and Joshua J. Robinson

We explore the relationship between gun prevalence and homicides in the United States from 2003–2019. Unlike previous research, which typically uses an indirect, state-level measure of gun prevalence, we use a direct measure of guns in a narrow geographic area: gun dealers. We find an increase in gun dealer density is significantly and positively associated with increased homicides in subsequent years. We compare estimates from our preferred measure, the number of dealers per 100 square miles in a local area, to those found using other gun prevalence measures and find our preferred measure to be more consistent in magnitude across three different estimation methods and two different data sources. We additionally show the effect of gun dealer density is limited mostly to counties that have a high percent of Black residents. We propose that the so-called “Ferguson Effect”—a sharp increase in violent crime in urban and Black communities after 2014—might be partially explained by an influx of gun dealers in Black communities, rather than just a change in the propensity of Black residents to call the police or changes in police behavior.

October 1, 2021

By: Jesem Douglas Yamall Orellana, Geraldo Marcelo da Cunha, Bárbara Christie de Souza Brito, Bernardo Lessa Horta

Objective: to identify characteristics, magnitude and factors associated with homicide in Manaus-AM, Brazil.

Methods: cross-sectional study, with data from the Mortality Information System (SIM); homicide rates and odds ratio (OR) were estimated, comparing to other external causes, for 2014; logistic regression was used.

Results: of the 1,657 violent deaths, 913 were due to homicide; homicide rate was of 55.8/100 thousand inhabitants (95%CI 52.1;59.7); odds ratio was higher among males (OR 3.4; 95%CI 2.3;5.1) when compared with females; among single (OR 1.6; 95%CI 1.1;2.5) and widowed individuals (OR 4.1; 95%CI 1.1;15.6), when compared with married individuals; at night/early hours (OR 2.1; 95%CI 1.6;2.9) and in the afternoon (OR 1.7; 95%CI 1.2;2.4), when compared with the morning period; the probability was higher among individuals under 35 years, with less schooling.

Conclusion: homicide mortality in Manaus was high, especially among males and young individuals with less schooling.

Epidemiol. Serv. Saude, Brasília, 26(4), Oct-Dec 2017

By: Salma Hamza, Imran Khan, Linlin Lu, Hua Liu, Farkhunda Burke, Syed Nawaz-ul-Huda, Muhammad Fahad Baqa and Aqil Tariq

The geographical concentration of criminal violence is closely associated with the social, demographic, and economic structural characteristics of neighborhoods. However, few studies have investigated homicide patterns and their relationships with neighborhoods in South Asian cities. In this study, the spatial and temporal patterns of homicide incidences in Karachi from 2009 to 2018 were analyzed using the local indicators of spatial association (LISA) method. Generalized linear modeling (GLM) and geographically weighted Poisson regression (GWPR) methods were implemented to examine the relationship between influential factors and the number of homicides during the 2009–2018 period. The results demonstrate that the homicide hotspot or clustered areas with high homicide counts expanded from 2009 to 2013 and decreased from 2013 to 2018. The number of homicides in the 2017–2018 period had a positive relationship with the percentage of the population speaking Balochi. The unplanned areas with low-density residential land use were associated with low homicide counts, and the areas patrolled by police forces had a significant negative relationship with the occurrence of homicide. The GWPR models effectively characterized the varying relationships between homicide and explanatory variables across the study area. The spatio-temporal analysis methods can be adapted to explore violent crime in other cities with a similar social context.

Pakistan. Sustainability 2021, 13, 5520.

By: António Castanho

This report concerns the review of a domestic violence homicide situation that was the subject of case No. 2892 / 15.9JAPRT of the Comarca of Porto Este, whose final decision resulted from a judgment of the Court of Appeal of Porto, 22.2.2017.

In this case, B, a male, aged 60, was convicted of qualified homicide [articles 131 and 132, paragraphs 1 and 2 b), e) and i) Criminal Code] and attempted qualified homicide (art. 22, 23, 73, 131, 132, paragraphs 1 and 2 (a), (c), (e) and (h) Criminal Code) and sentenced to 23 years and 10 months’ imprisonment.

• The events occurred on September 27, 2015.

• The victim of the murder was his wife - M who was 58 years old.

• The victim of the attempted murder was the father of the attacker - J, aged 87.

The report includes:

• a) The presentation of as much information as is known about the incident, the behaviour patterns of the perpetrator, the factors that influenced him, as well as the responses and support provided to the victims and the perpetrator; and

• b) Analysis of the above with the aim of extracting lessons from this case so that changes are made to reduce the risk of further homicides.

Agency contact and involvement with the victims and perpetrator were considered from 2010 and included justice, police and health.

The review process began on 04/17/2017; the preliminary report was drawn up on 9/1/2017; the review meetings were convened on 9/9/2017, 27/9 and 10/25/2017.

The Domestic Homicide Review Team (EARHVD) was composed of its permanent members plus a non- permanent member representing the Republican National Guard (Territorial Command of Porto), the police force that had jurisdiction in the area in which the events occurred.

Case no1/2017-AC

By: Kacper Choromański

Currently, there are over a thousand unsolved homicide cases in Poland. Up to this point, numerous, mostly popular science, research papers have been focusing on the individual units in charge of these difficult cases. This paper, however, is an attempt to represent the current state of investigations that were discontinued due to the fact that the perpetrators could not be found, hereinafter referred to as Cold Case Homicides. This paper depicts both the researcher's perspective and the statistical side of such conduct. Furthermore, it presents the first results of a pilot study conducted among the prosecutors, concerning the problem of Cold Case Homicides from their perspective, the possibility of cooperation with the academics, and their opinion on the idea of complex research, concerning the reconstruction of events in this specific area of crime.

International Journal of Legal Studies No 2(8)2020

By the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

The Americas have the highest regional homicide rate in the world, and high rates of homicidal violence related to organized crime. This research brief, excerpted from the UNODC Global Study on Homicide 2023, notes several recurrent patterns with respect to factors shaping criminal homicides in Latin America and the Caribbean: › Homicides related to organized crime and gangs are significantly more volatile than homicides perpetrated by intimate partners or other family members. › Subregions, countries and cities with a high homicide rate tend to be associated with a larger proportion of firearm-related homicide. › Settings with a high homicide rate also typically report a large proportion of homicides involving male victims. › High homicide rates are also usually associated with a proportionately higher number of homicides related to organized crime. Where there is a higher density of criminal organizations, there is a higher risk of homicidal violence. › Drug markets alone do not predict homicide but they are frequently associated with lethal violence, especially in the context of multiple competing criminal factions. Amid mounting public concern with violent crime and low trust in police, some Latin American and Caribbean governments are enacting “states of emergency” in response to organized crime and violent gangs. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed concern about the human rights impacts of states of emergency introduced to address organized crime and violence1, while the Secretary-General’s New Agenda for Peace policy brief 2 notes that over-securitized responses can be counterproductive and can reinforce the very dynamics they seek to overcome, as their far-reaching consequences – blowback from local populations, human rights violations and abuses, exacerbation of gender inequalities and distortion of local economies – can be powerful drivers for recruitment into terrorist or armed groups.  

Vienna: UNODC, 2024. 42p.

By Scott Phillips ,  Justin F. Marceau,   Sam Kamin ,  Nicole King

In this essay, we update and expand David Baldus’s famous study of Georgia homicides in the 1970s to uncover the impact of the race and sex of homicide victims on whether a defendant was sentenced to death and ultimately executed. We show that the odds of a death sentence were sixteen times greater if the victim was a White woman than if the victim was a Black man, even when other factors that might explain the disparity were taken into account. Furthermore, we identified a clear hierarchy among victims with regard to whether a death sentence was ultimately carried out. Among the defendants who were sent to death row for killing a White woman, 30% were executed. But the share drops to 19% if the victim was a White man, 10% if the victim was a Black woman, and 0% if the victim was a Black man. We then use contemporary, nationwide Supplemental Homicide Report (SHR) data to show that the effect we identified in Georgia in the 1970s generalizes to the nation as a whole and to the present day. We argue that these disparities, which cannot be explained by factors extrinsic to the victim’s race and sex, are further evidence that the ultimate question of who lives and  dies in our criminal justice system remains unconstitutionally tainted by outdated notions of chivalry and White supremacy.   

114 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY 67 (2024).

By NSW Domestic Violence Death Review Team

This report is the most comprehensive data analyses the Domestic Violence Death Review Team has undertaken to date, presenting detailed findings from over two decades of domestic violence homicides in NSW. It provides crucial insights to guide policymakers, service providers and advocates in preventing, responding to, and aiding recovery from domestic violence.

The dataset has continued to grow year-on-year, not only in the number of cases— now over 1,800— but also in relation to the breadth and complexity of the data captured. The analysis in this report identifies a range of key findings and themes to direct the Team’s work as it recommences its in-depth case review analyses over the next reporting period.

Key findings

• Almost one-third of all homicides in NSW occurred in a context of domestic violence.

• While most homicides overall involved the deaths of males, females were far more likely to be killed in a domestic violence-context homicide.

• Approximately 80% of intimate partner violence homicides involved men killing women.

• Men who killed their female intimate partner were almost always the domestic violence abuser in the relationship, while women who killed men were almost always the victim of their partner’s violence.

• Over 25% of people killed in a context of domestic violence were born outside of Australia.

• Almost 19% of people killed in the context of domestic violence identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander.

• For 90% of children killed there was a history of intimate partner violence between their parents.

• Over 80% of relative/kin domestic violence-context homicide offenders had a history of experiencing mental health issues.

Sydney: Government of New South Wales, 2024.

By Insight Crime

  At least 117,492 people were murdered in Latin America and the Caribbean during 2023, putting the median homicide rate around 20 per 100,000 people. But homicide data in many countries is missing or unreliable, so the actual number is likely higher. Here, InSight Crime dives into our yearly round-up, analyzing the organized crime dynamics behind the violence in each country of the region.

Washington, DC: Insight Crime, 2024. 52p.  

By Maury Nation

The author reports on the motivation for developing and performing the Nashville Longitudinal Study of Youth Safety and Wellbeing (NLSYSW) as well as the project’s activities and outcomes, and resulting artifacts. The work of the NLSYSW was organized into working groups corresponding to the principal required tasks to develop the multi-sectoral dataset. The four data collection working groups focused on the following: Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) administrative data; MNPS survey data; contextual data; and youth mapping data. Two data management working groups focused on data anonymization and data archiving. The report describes the major tasks of each working group, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic disruptions, and NLSYSW outputs and artifacts. The major output of the study was a compilation of multiple data sources with over two million observations and 450 variables; the report provides a list of data sources with the years of data included and a short description of each data set, and directs readers to the user guide and codebook sections for complete details.

Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University, 2023. 167p.

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.