Homicide

Question 1

Violent crimes < 5% (what?)

Answer 1

• Homicide
• Rape
• Aggravated assault
• Robbery
• Arson

Question 2

Virtually every homicide in the US becomes known to the police. How?

Answer 2

• Vital statistics - death certificates
• UCR
• Victimization surveys

Question 3

Why is it true that every homicide becomes know to the police?

Answer 3

Physical evidence

Question 4

How many people are present during a homicide event ?

Answer 4

> 2 people. Most homicides have witnesses.

Question 5

Chances of getting killed in the US (race/gender)

Answer 5

• White male 1/164
• White woman 1/450
• Black female 1/117
• Black male 1/28

Question 6

Best predictor of homicide risk is where you live - inner-cities and their characteristics

Answer 6

o Single-mother households
o 40-50% unemployment
o Bad schools

Question 7

Elijah Anderson - who?

Answer 7

• Born in the inner cities of Philadelphia
• Wrote books:
  o “The Code of the Street”
  ♣ The only thing you have is respect.

Question 8

Gentrification definition

Answer 8

The process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste - when richer people move to poor areas and dismantle them to build their mansions – property prices go up, taxes go up etc. Poor people move out somewhere else or become homeless.

Question 9

What weapons and how often are they used in homicide events

Answer 9

- 65% guns
   o 50% hard guns
   o 10% shot guns
   o 5% rifles
- 20% knives
- 10% other weapons (poison…)
- 5% personal means (strangling, choking…)

Question 10

Are murderers re-offenders usually?

Answer 10

Most people arrested for homicide have been arrested zero times. If they have been arrested it was for alcohol abuse or minor crimes…

Question 11

Recidivism rate and homicide patterns

Answer 11

For burglars it is 90%. For murderers it is about 0%. 90% of murderers are male and between 16-24 (crime prone ages). The peak age for homicide in the us is 22. Mostly men are murdered. Homicide is overwhelmingly intraracial (whites-whites, black-black). Interestingly women rarely kill other women.

Question 12

Criminologist Martin Wolfgang

Answer 12

In most homicides the victim and the offender know each other. Criminologist Marvin Wolfgang wrote the bible of homicide “patterns in criminal homicide”. He wrote that book in the 1950s. He was a professor at UPenn. He collected thousands of homicide reports from the PD and looked at the relationship between the victim and offender:

• 60% cases – victim and offender very close – relatives, close friends, lovers
• 28% acquaintances – coworkers…

Question 13

Nuclear family homicides

Answer 13

1. Spousal – most likely
2. Parent kills child
3. Child kills parent
4. Sibling homicide – least likely

Question 14

Spousal homicide

Answer 14

Wives are most likely to kill their husbands in the kitchen with a knife - now more often with a gun. Men kill wives most usually in the bedroom.

Question 15

How homicide occurs?

Answer 15

More than 2 people present. Where/when are they committed? – leisure time, usually Saturday. In that group are two young males. An argument/quarrel puts the homicide into motion. Escalation through insults. One of the parties retaliates with a physical attack

Question 16

Romantic triangle

Answer 16

Killing someone because they insulted their partner

Question 17

Periodicity

Answer 17

- Hour to hour 
   o 11pm-2am
- Day to day 
   o Saturday 
- Long term
   o July to September 
   o Christmas

Question 18

Mass murder

Answer 18

No different than murder:

• Same killer profile
• Dispute as the trigger
• Uses a firearm
• In most mass murders the victim and murderer know each other.

Question 19

Serial killers:

Answer 19

• Most kill women
• Do not involve firearms – strangulation
• Sexual motive

Question 20

Kinsey report

Answer 20

♣ Kinsey developed the Kinsey Scale, which was a numerical ranking of sexual behavior on a scale of complete heterosexuality to complete homosexuality.
♣ Kinsey’s open discussion of sexuality in the 1950s contributed to the sexual revolution of the following decade, in which social standards that limited sex to heterosexual marriage were loosened.
♣ The Kinsey Report is frequently invoked to support the common estimate of one in ten Americans being a homosexual.

Question 21

Aggravated assault

Answer 21

An unlawful attack by one person upon another for a purpose of inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury. Virtually everything we learned about homicide is true about aggravated assault. A homicide is an aggravated assault that leads to death.