By DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE NEW ZEALAND

“…The study includes statistical information to the extent that it is available. The law and administrative procedures are described and where appropriate psychological and sociological factors are discussed. This factual background is essential for informed consideration of the criminal scene. Inevitably interpretations are made and a variety of opinion is offered. It was not the purpose of the Department to produce a colourless official document devoid of all contentious matter. Although there has been a measure of co-ordination, diversity of opinion and spontaneity remain. It would therefore be difficult to agree with everything that is said or suggested.”

Ministry of Justice. New Zealand. 1968. 410p.

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 This annual study examines black homicide victimization at the state level utilizing unpublished Supplementary Homicide Report data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.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 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 Sara Bourdeau,

At the direction of Sheriff Walt McNeil, the Leon County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) began a review of data related to the 141 homicides recorded in Leon County from 2015-2020.A The purpose of this exploratory project was to gain a better understanding of the commonalities between the people, conditions, and circumstances contributing to the incidents. The Anatomy of a Homicide Project goals included: 1. Examining commonalities of homicide victims and offenders. 2. Identifying underlying issues, such as adverse childhood experiences (ACE), which may have contributed to or resulted in the homicides. 3. Understanding the various behavioral, social, environmental, economic, or situational factors experienced by both victims and offenders and how these factors may be correlated to the homicides. 4. Identifying commonalities in location, time, and methods by which homicides are committed. 5. Understanding motivational factors contributing to the homicides. 6. Identifying intelligence and investigative gaps and methods to better collect this data in the future. 7. Developing recommendations for targeted actions to mitigate contributing factors and prevent future homicides. The social, emotional, and financial costs of homicide for victims and offenders, the criminal justice system, the health care system, and society in general, far exceed those of other crimes. One study estimated the cost of one (1) murder to be 38 times higher than rape, 51 times higher than an armed robbery, and 119 times higher than an aggravated assault.1 Prevention of homicides is a top priority for the Leon County Sheriff’s Office. Additional research is needed to fully diagnose the problem and move forward with a series of people, place, and behavior-based strategies. When treated as a public health problem, using a scientific epidemiological approach, homicides can be prevented.2 It will take an ALLin community working together with focus, fairness, and a balanced approach of prevention and enforcement. The Leon County Sheriff’s Office dedicates this report to the victims of the homicides which occurred in Leon County from 2015-2020 and the families, friends, and neighborhoods impacted by these tragedies. While we will never fully understand the circumstances of these events, we will build on what we have learned by advocating for additional research, improved data collection and analysis, increased collaboration and information sharing between agencies, providers, and the community, and solutions which are both evidence-based and community informed.

2021 94p.

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 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.

Sustainability 2021, 13, 5520. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su13105520

By Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies,

Most countries have actually experienced sustained declines in homicidal violence across several decades. Notwithstanding the disruptive effects of COVID-19 and associated economic stresses in 2020, these trends are expected to continue in several parts of the world. For most people, the world is a much safer place than it was at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This does not guarantee that the future will be more secure, but it does suggest whatever the causes, progress has been made.

A new report from Pathfinders – Future Trends in Homicide – finds that these positive trends could be undermined within the next decade unless more investment in violence prevention is undertaken. Specifically, the total number of homicides could rise by 28 percent over the next ten years – three times the expected rate of global population growth with increases most acute in the Americas and Africa. The cumulative total homicide count would reach 4.3 million by 2030. Similar trends are also evident in relation to terrorist killings, with increases across all regions especially Africa and Asia.

New York: Center on International Cooperation, 2020. 28p

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 J. E. Logan, Tadesse Haileyesus, Allison Ertl, Whitney L Rostad, andJeffrey H Herbst

Since interpersonal violence was recognized as a public health problem in the 1970s, much attention has focused on preventing violence among young persons and intimate partners (1). Violence directed against older adults (≥60 years) has received less attention, despite the faster growth of this population than that of younger groups (2). Using data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-All Injury Program (NEISS-AIP) and the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), CDC analyzed rates of nonfatal assaults and homicides against older adults during 2002-2016. Across the 15-year period, the nonfatal assault rate increased 75.4% (from 77.7 to 136.3 per 100,000) among men, and from 2007 to 2016, increased 35.4% (from 43.8 to 59.3) among women. From 2010 to 2016, the homicide rate increased among men by 7.1%, and a 19.3% increase was observed from 2013 to 2016 among men aged 60-69 years. Growth in both the older adult population and the rates of violence against this group, especially among men, suggests an important need for violence prevention strategies (3). Focusing prevention efforts for this population will require improved understanding of magnitude and trends in violence against older adults.

MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2019 Apr 5;68(13):297-302.

By Anna-Maria Getoš Kalac.

First Findings from the Balkan Homicide Study.The first volume using original empirical data from the Balkan Homicide study. Performs analysis from 3000 case files from 6 Balkans countries. Addresses prosecution case files as well as judicial case files, enabling methodological and phenomenological investigation into the nature of (lethal) violence in the Balkans.

Cham: Springer, 2021. 124p.

By Sylvia Walby, Jude Towers, Susie Balderston, Consuelo Corradi, Brian Francis, Markku Heiskanen, Karin Helweg-Larsen, Lut Mergaert, Philippa Olive, Emma Palmer, Heidi Stöckl and Sofia Strid.

“Lethal violence is enormous. There are nearly half a million (437,000) intentional homicides globally each year. Lethal violence is gendered. Globally, 95% of perpetrators of intentional homicide are male. Every year, intimate partners or family members perpetrate nearly 64,000 intentional homicides; two thirds of victims are female. Half the intentional homicides of women are perpetrated by an intimate partner or other family members, compared to 6% of intentional homicides of men.“

Policy Press (2017) 193 pages.